‘Red’: Proof that Old People Can Kick Major Ass

I shouldn’t refer to the actors of Red as “old.” Maybe I should refer to them “mature” or “veteran” or “experienced.” However you put it, the movie gives the opportunity for a roster of still-cool-and-perfectly-aged actors to scratch their itchy trigger finger and let off some action hero steam.

The aforementioned “mature” actors include grade A thespians like Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich and Bruce Willis at the head of the pack (although I wouldn’t necessarily rate Willis with an A, more like a B+).

Willis is Frank Moses, a retired black op agent who gets his jollies off by having a flirty phone affair with Sarah (Mary-Louise), an office drone at the Office of Personal Management.

Sarah is naïve. She’s a bit ditzy. She’s dying for something new. Lucky for her, Moses gets ambushed and finds out that he is marked for assassination. Turns out that he may know a little too much about a secret the government is trying to keep under wraps – which would explain why they are trying to kill him.

Staying one step of the game, he kidnaps her (with an abundant amount of duct tape) to keep her safe. He assembles his old crew that includes the paranoid Marvin (Malkovich), the good ol’ boy Joe (Freeman) and the elegant domestic Goddess Victoria (Mirren) to get to the bottom of the madness. All the while, the stoic stare and monotone voice of government authority, William Cooper (Karl Urban) is chasing them down – mainly Frank – but he isn’t 100 percent sure why he is trying to kill him.

If you look past the disposable romantic story line of Sarah and Frank, the movie is a considerable dollop of cinematic fun. Based on the D.C. comic series, Red had the potential to be as hokey as the name it was based (RED is an acronym for Retired Extremely Dangerous) – but even something like Academy Award winning actress Dame Helen Mirren fire a machine gun in a white evening gown and combat boots without blinking doesn’t cross the hokey threshold. In fact, it’s kind of invigorating…and hot.

The movie keeps a clever balance of acting (thanks to scene-stealer Malkovich and worthy appearances by Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, and Ernest Borgnine) and medium-grade action. Even the slightest imbalance of that scale could have thrown the whole thing into a cheesy “old people trying be cool by firing guns” world. Fortunately, it did not. Much like their action hero colleagues, these actors can be just as badass as some of their younger action hero colleagues. The only difference is that their acting chops are right on par with how they can handle a firearm.