Red Review

Director: Robet Schwentke (Flightplan, The Time Traveler's Wife)
Screenplay: John and Erich Hoeber (Whiteout)
Starring: Bruce Willis (Die Hard, The Sixth Sense), Morgan Freeman (Glory, The Shawshank Redemption), Helen Mirren (The Queen, National Treasure: Book of Secrets), John Malkovich (Being John Malkovich, Empire of the Sun), Mary Louise-Parker (Weeds, The West Wing), and Karl Urban (Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)
Gross Revenue: $154,662,000
Rotten Tomatoes TomatoMeter: 70%
IMDB Rating: 7.2
    Old age: many long for it, others fear it.  While old age brings wisdom and understanding of the way the world works, it also brings health problems, and proves the mortality of man.  For this reason, many people struggle with complacency when they reach old age.  This is the subject of the spy action thriller Red, which features several great stars as retired secret agents re-entering the field.  It had such promise to be a different take on this typical genre, but Red is just standard action movie fare, and doesn't rise above its potentially awesome premise.
    Red, which stands for Retired Extremely Dangerous, is about a group of retired secret agents who go back into the field, as members of their former team start to be mysteriously killed off.  The group, led by extremely talented agent Frank Moses, tracks down their assassins, and uncover a conspiracy that goes all the way to the Vice President of the United States.

    Red has a very interesting premise.  Taking the traditional spy caper movie and turning it on its ear by making the protagonists old people was a very clever idea.  However, the movie is only different and unique for about the first ten minutes, then it is pretty standard spy caper action movie fare.  Sure the spies are old, but they still do the same stuff.  Drive fast cars, blow stuff up, and shoot people.  There was the occasional joke about elderly life, but it was pretty standard stuff.  Not that that is always a bad thing.  The standard stuff was pretty exciting, and there are some exciting shoot outs, and the final caper scenes are exhilarating.  I was just hoping for a little bit more...

    The cast is definitely the best thing about this movie.  You'll be hard-pressed to see a better cast than Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, and John Malkovich.  Unfortunately, the movie squanders the talents of its cast.  Morgan Freeman is barely in the movie, and his character lacks the depth that Morgan Freeman is  masterful at showing on screen.  John Malkovich is the comic relief character, as this senile "crazy" ex-agent. but his shenanigans grow tiresome after awhile.  In short, the filmmakers could have put its cast to much better use then they did.  These are master thespians, but here they are little more than line readers.

   I went into Red with low expectations, and I was mildly entertaining.  This isn't a rush-to-see movie, but it wasn't bad, and is by no means a bad movie.  If you like action movies, than you will like this movie.  If you like the cast, you'll probably like it.  It's a great rental, but not worth buying.  Red is typical spy action movie fare, but it could have been much better, due to its splendid cast and intriguing premise. 3/5.