Quick Review: Red (2010)

There’s plenty of exploding things and gunfire to keep you awake and it’s fun to see the cast of veteran actors (I won’t call them senior citizens) as leads in this all-out action spy romp. Bruce Willis is at his bad-ass best as a retired CIA operative who proves he hasn’t lost his touch when team-after-team of geared-up government hit squads are dispatched to take him out. He gets the band back together (Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren) and they take it on the road, trading bullets with bad guys while they rush to discover who’s trying to eliminate them and why.

Willis is perfect in this role (which, at this point, he could do in sleep) and Malkovich has the most to do as a character dealing with the lasting effects of years of mind control experiments. While it was fun to see Mirren drop her Martha Stewart retirement veneer to pick up an automatic weapon, I thought her part a bit weak. And thankfully, Mary-Louise Parker, as the love interest unwittingly dragged on the adventure, wasn’t nearly as annoying as I often find her to be.