Retired, extremely dangerous :: New Age Xtra

This article was originally published in New Age Xtra on November 26, 2010

Retired, extremely dangerous

by Syed Tashfin Chowdhury

The title is the full form for the recent Bruce Willis- starrer spy-comedy thriller, ‘Red’. Willis finally hits a home run through his performance in this movie after lack-lustre performances in earlier releases this year like ‘Cop Out’ and last year’s ‘Surrogates’. Maybe his success in the movie could be due to the fact that the role fits his age in real life.

The movie begins with Willis character, Frank Moses, a retired CIA agent, living a lonely and monotonous life. The only excitement is when he calls up federal pension employee Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker), almost on a regular basis, for his cheque. In the process, they usually get into a conversation about each other’s lives, the books they have recently read and so on.

That is just the first ten minutes of the movie.

The action kicks in as a team of government agents are sent to assassinate Moses at his house. After taking them out, he realise that they also know about Sarah via phone tapping. He reaches Sarah, kidnaps her after failing to explain to her why her life is in danger and then seeks the help of former spies, also retired like him, at helping him find out why the government is intent at stubbing him.

The former spies also include the rest of the cast for the film including Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Brian Cox, Helen Mirren and others. Malkovich will possibly affirm the beliefs of most paranoids through his performance of the spy, Marvin Boggs while Mirren’s action sequences is probably a nuance to the British spy movies of the eighties.

Moses also tries to outthink CIA operative William Cooper (Karl Urban), who is high on his tail. Despite being cool and calculative, Urban’s character constantly tries to seek the truth and motives behind the orders he is being given by his superiors.

Freeman’s performance would definitely make you want to browse online for his upcoming movies while Brian Cox reveals a new dimension to the character type, ‘Russian agent’. Louise-Parker just seems left out in the midst of these veterans.

While the script is nothing unique to the already released spy thrillers, the humour, even during the most pensive moments, and the action sequences, will definitely entertain. Although some sequences may just seem illogical, you would need to accept these as the movie is after all adapted from a graphic novel.

The director, Robert Schwentke, needs to pat himself on the back for making a wholesomely entertaining movie whose script, despite being similar to most spy thrillers over the years, had ample to offer.