RED

Retired, extremely dangerous. Is what it stands for. Could also mean Retired, Extremely Durable, as almost all the actors in this movie are. Starring Bruce Willis is a role which requires him to have that constipated look of anger which has been a constant in his face since Die Hard I and which with that smirk which is used when he converts normal automobiles into surface to air missiles, is all the acting that he does. Good thing then that the people around him are having a ball of a time and hamming away to glory. Starting of course, with Morgan Freeman, then we have John Malkovich, Helen Miller and Brian Cox. Mary Louise Parker and Karl Urban are the rather clueless young peoples in this mix. This is to aging actors what From Paris with love was to john travolta (kewl, travolta in fact maybe same vintage as most of the actors here).

The oldies which include Mirren, Malkovich, Freeman, Cox and Willis are all out of have fun, it is full of these throwaway dialogues and set pieces which make such movies tick. Mirren especially seems to be having a ton of fun.. while Malkovich, is positively zany.. Freeman has this tired look about him, which seems to say, hmm, why am i doing this movie, ah, the money i presume.. Cox is good fun as Ivan the Russian spy, who has a thing for Mirren's character (who is English and MI6). Anyways, the story is some nonsense, which sets up the reason to send well armed, Swat teams after Willis and gang and provides them with a reason to blow up and shoot up a lot of people which armament enough to arm a small country. All fun then. Willis does do a couple of his usual antics, including a money shot which has him step out of a spinning police car to shoot a tonne of bullets into Karl Urban's car's windshield. Malkovich goes head to head with a woman firing a bazooka with a pistol, looked to me like a Desert Eagle (i could be wrong), and winning the round. All hell breaks loose as usual and the villain is a rather wimpy looking Richard Dreyfuss, who plays a bad ass defence contractor (according to avclub, he is a stand in for the obligatory Dick Cheney villainous character). Anyways, all's fun and the movie ends with Willis and Malkovich in a field with the Moldovan army after them. Anyways, nice movie to watch, if you want to just park your brains outside and not worry about anything else. Watch for the cast and nothing else - they are the thing that makes this movie work. and seeing them you know that they are having a ton of fun.