Monday 28 February 2011

RED

Last night Colin Firth was finally acknowledged by the Academy and given a shiny gold statue, this ties us neatly to the winner of the Best Actress Oscar in 2006; another rather posh Brit by the name of Helen Mirren, honoured for her role in The Queen as... well, the Queen.  I doubt she knew four years later she'd be wielding a machine gun and making rouge operations look classy.  Today I'll be looking at RED.
RED stands for Retired: Extremely Dangerous, a group of former CIA agents are being targeted for elimination due to some rather sensitive information threatening the Vice Presidents bid for the ultimate leg up on the career ladder.  They've all moved on with their lives but this threat sees them team up one final time along side a rather cheerful former Russian secret agent.

They are all getting on a bit now, living ordinary lives or in one case an underground bunker to avoid those pesky helicopters.  The CIA want rid of them, especially ring leader Frank and so assign a rather enthusiastic and by the book agent, William Cooper.  As is the way with these films nothing is what it seems, initially the former agents seem to be suffering from some sort of collective alzheimers over why they are being targeted, but it soon becomes all too clear and their decisive action is going to cause a lot of paper work for the CIA.

Along the way we are introduced to Franks potential love interest, a pensions clerk, Sarah, who has been dealing with Frank over the phone for some time; this sub plot is set off with an slightly weird stalker moment which lands poor Sarah in the forced vacation from hell.

This is a comedy action film, and both are abundant making a fast paced and witty running time.  It is also a top notch group of actors, Willis is as good as he was in the first Die Hard combining an unflappable exterior with a touching lonely side, Freeman is a tad underused with only a hint of his characters rather perverted behaviour which could have been used for some more comedy gold.  Mirren pulls off flower-arranging action gran with as much grace and gravitas as her former Queen role, this is one granny you will not mess with other wise you'll be on the wrong end of a sniper rifle.

Of course the show stealing performance belongs to Malkovich as the crazy and paranoid Boggs, he carries a grenade launcher round in a pig shaped bag (causing an hysterical cry of "open the pig!") and laments that while most people get paper cuts he mostly gets shot.
Malkovich always likes to bring a bit of danger to a game of hide and seek.
RED pulls together all the elements that make an action film good, the pace never dwindles with pointless exposition, there are bullets and explosions galore and who doesn't enjoy a bit of grenade rounders.  It's tightly written, although based on a book it has pulled away from the dark and relatively humourless source material making an enjoyable and worthwhile romp.

You have to see this film, and hope that rumours of a sequence are fulfilled.  Grab your mates, beer and popcorn; cram onto the sofa and bask in the fact it's still possible to make an original, attention holding action movie.  There is only one thing left to say and that's break open the pig!!

Red (Special Edition)

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