Available from Amazon(US) or Amazon(UK).
Original release date: October 2010 (US Box Office)
Director: Robert Schwentke
Starring: Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren
Movies wherein an ex-boxer, commando, assassin or whatever comes out of retirement for one last job can be clichéd, but still have the potential to be highly entertaining. As the number of retired folk goes up, however, the quality often comes crashing down. As a general rule, any movie that involves some kind of getting-the-old-gang-back-together plot should set off alarm bells – see Aces: Iron Eagle III and Space Cowboys for the worst offenders. Somehow, though, RED manages to pull off this most risky of premises with aplomb.
Screenwriters Jon and Erich Hoeber make a few of those small, unnecessary changes to the source material that adaptations typically make – Paul Moses becomes Frank Moses, and the ‘red’ that originally referred to his everything-definitely-not-okay status once he came under fire from a three-man kill team now apparently stands for ‘Retired, Extremely Dangerous’. What RED also does, though, is expand on the simple ideas in the Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner comic in smart and vital ways, both in order to fill a two-hour running time and to provide some valuable depth. Gone, for example, is the new Director of the CIA who sees evidence of Moses’ state-authorised crimes and decides that his current retirement isn’t nearly permanent enough. In his place is a much more silver screen-friendly conspiracy plot involving a dead journalist, corrupt bureaucrats and a years-old cover-up.
A barely-there sub-plot in the comic involving Moses’ friendship with his retirement handler, Sally Janssen, is developed in the movie into a fledgling romance with Sarah Ross from Pension Services. A clearly bored and lonely Moses tears up pension cheques as an excuse to call and speak to Sarah, and reads the same trashy romance novels as her, in an attempt to find out what she wants from a man. It is this connection that drives the narrative (as much as the conspiracy plot), but also completely changes the character of Moses into something much more human than we ever see in the comic. Whereas the Paul Moses of the comic is happy to be left alone, quietly keeping his secrets and living with his demons, the Frank Moses of the movie is someone who craves human contact and who wants, to some degree, to fit in. Bruce Willis’ Moses is someone who has seen the worst the world has to offer and is desperately searching for something better.
Karl Urban’s character, William Cooper, is a very welcome addition to the movie, as he provides a walking, talking counterpoint to Moses’ argument in the comic that the kids running things nowadays, ‘the frightened boys in suits’, are not real men. Here we have a highly capable, highly professional CIA operative who is every bit as determined and ruthless as Moses but, unlike Moses, has managed a degree of balance that enables him to also be a family man.
All the actors involved do a fine job. Willis is Willis. Parker is charming as the reluctant love interest. And the other retired spies and hitmen – Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren and Brian Cox – are on good, fun form. It is Malkovich, though, who steals every scene he is in as the justifiably paranoid, experimented-on soldier of yesterday.
Red the comic is a brief, to-the-point tale of an ill-judged command and its violent, vengeful consequences. RED the movie is a darkly funny, action-packed romp that shows what can be done with comic adaptations when the people in charge stop trying to impress ‘comic fans’ and just concentrate on making a good movie.
reluctantrolemodel 