Red (which I saw at the dollar theater this previous Monday) is a lot like the boy who took you to Homecoming: likable, occasionally enjoyable, but ultimately rather forgettable.  It’s a movie that you enjoy for what it is but, at the same time, it’s hardly a film I could ever imagine watching twice.  I never went out with Taylor again after Homecoming either. 

Anyway, the movie itself is about a retired CIA agent (Bruce Willis) who spends all of his time flirting on the phone with Sarah (Mary Louise Parker) who works for the company that sends Willis his pension checks.  (Willis always rips the checks up so he’ll have an excuse to call Parker.)  As the Christmas season approaches, Willis is paid a visit by a bunch of men dressed in black who proceed to blow up his house.  Willis escapes death, kidnaps Parker (under the pretense that her life is in danger because of how much they talk but mostly just so he can date her), and sets about getting all of his fellow retired spies (Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren) together.  Meanwhile, a determined, young, and hot CIA agent (Karl Urban) has been assigned to track Willis down and kill him.

The plot is really pretty standard but director Robert Schwentke keep things interesting by both playing up and acknowledging just how ludicrous the standard action movie is.  If nothing else, this is a film that respect its audience.  It undesrstand that we understand that we’re watching an action movie and it assumes that we’ve seen enough action movies that we know how the genre is supposed to work.  And while Schwentke pulls off all of the standard action moves like a pro, what makes the movie memorable are the small moments where he plays with and subverts our expectations. 

He’s helped by his cast, a solid group of professionals who could play these roles in their sleep but yet, to their credit, still appear to invest themselves in the film.  All of the performers make strong individual impressions yet still manage to gel perfectly as an ensemble.  As opposed to most films of this sort, you really believe that these characters are old friends and that they do have a shared history.  One of the film’s main strengths comes from observing how all the different characters respond to each other — nobody has the exact same reaction.  This is kind of what Sylvester Stallone tried to pull off with The Expendables.  The difference here, I suppose, is that Red features John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, and Bruce Willis while Stallone had to work with Jason Stathan and Terry Crewes.

Among the cast, Malkovich is probably the real crowd pleaser as a former MK-Ultra experiment.  He is convincingly insane in his role and he gets almost all of the film’s best one liners.  He also has a scene where he deflects an incoming rocket in a way that made the audience cheer.  However, for me, the best part of the film was the unexpected chemistry between Parker and Willis.  Through all of the action sequences and self-referential humor, you really do hope they end up together.

That said, there’s still something missing from the film.  It never quite goes as far as you would like in embracing the inherent absurdity of the action genre and, after a strong start, the film does have some trouble maintaining its frantic pace.  Add to that, Richard Dreyfuss shows up and and throws the whole ensemble out of whack by attempting to chew any piece of scenery he can get his teeth on.  Still, for what it is, Red is an enjoyable little movie and sometimes, that’s enough.