Red: Review

Red (Retired Extremely Dangerous) has all the ingredients of a good night out: a top cast, action, comedy, just pure escapism. And yet, it also is a little disappointing.

Bruce Willis plays Frank Moses, a retired CIA agent who lives alone and tears up his pension cheques so he can speak everyday to single pension adviser Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker). During one night, his house is raided by masked gunmen out to kill him. Of course they come off worse and he heads to Kansas City, fearing that the conversations he has been having with Sarah were heard and they would attack her. He kidnaps her and so begins a chase across America, where Moses enlists his fellow ex CIA agents Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren, to uncover why they want him dead and what connects it with the murder of a New York reporter.

There's plenty on offer here to enjoy yet you get the destinct impression that the cast had loads of fun but most has ended up on the cutting room floor and will be a glorious extra on the DVD.

Director Robert Schwentke must have been smiling with glee at the cast but he doesn't let them loose. This is the problem with the film as a whole. There are moments of silliness and fun but they are just moments, as if Schwentke decides that he doesn't want it to get sillier. The perfect example is the scene in which Willis, Malkovich and Parker are pinned down in a store area. It is so silly you cannot help but laugh and yet its over far too quickly. For an action film, there doesn't seem to be enough action and yet when it does come, it is pulled back, restrained.

Willis is as cool as ever, proving he still has it in the action stakes. Morgan Freeman is, well, Morgan Freeman, while the image of Helen Mirren in a long flowing white evening gown, hob-nail boots and firing a sub machine gun will be an image that will stick around for years. Malkovich gets to overact like crazy as the paranoid member of the team, and his performance raises more than a smile. The star of the film, however, is Mary-Louise Parker. After years on the hit TV show Weeds, she is back and acts all the leads off the screen, delivering some of the best lines and is constantly watchable throughout.

When the film ends, you know you've had a good time but with so much talent on show, you want just that little bit more. Not a terrible film by a long shot, just one that has much more potential. Maybe if there is a sequel, they will up the silliness factor.