RED

In the near future we are in for a wave of Movies about retirees who regroup to perform one last mission, see that all is well and decide to continue to show the younger generation what's what (see "Space Cowboys", see "The Expendables" 1, 2 and 3). This Movie is the next on the list.

So first of all, RED is not exactly what you think, but an acronym for Retired Extremely Dangerous (Is there really such a classification?…)

Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is a bored retiree (we find out soon enough what exactly from) who tries to alleviate his boredom by having an affair on the phone with the Social Security case officer who handles his pension payments and uses every opportunity to call her, ostensibly on work-related business. The day he gathers the courage to inform her that he is coming to meet her face to face, his home is invaded by a well-trained hit squad. After he kills thall, he puts on his dress uniform (or rather brings down the weapons, passports and money he had hidden in the attic for a rainy day) and goes to meet his Social Security paramour, gathering on the way his former partners for hush-hush missions, who have all been targeted for elimination. Why? That's what everyone, especially Frank, is asking...

This very distinguished party includes Bruce Willis, John Malkovich (who for some reason reminds me very much of Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future, celebrating its 25th anniversary as we speak, and another less known actor, Max Headroom's Matt Frewer), Morgan Freeman (well, not exactly a retiree...), James Remar, and Englishmen Brian Cox (as the only real Red in the bunch) and Dame Helen Mirren (hey, Dame Helen, feel like doing an action Movie? Enough already with the heavy English dramas, come on, it'll be a hoot...), Richard Dreyfuss in the role of the evil businessman, and one real retiree - Ernest Borgnine (over 90 years old, unbelievable!) as the archive keeper. The truth? He still looks like someone you do not want to run into in a dark alley.

The problem is that the Movie has two levels - the comic/cartoonist one depicting the dynamic within the REDs group, and the "serious" one, dealing with conspiracy they uncover (the more absurd the better) in their attempts to escape those who try to kill them and get to the person behind them. The only one who never crosses over between the two planes is the FBI agent trying to catch Moses (actor Karl Urban), and he remains faithful and true until he realizes that he too was duped, and he switched sides just as faithfully. The transitions are somewhat confusing (how can you be serious when John Malkovich, the paranoid who is really being chased, destroys with a single gunshot a missile launched by an assassin he was prevented from killing half a second earlier?) Perhaps if they stuck to one of the levels, the Movie would have been better, and that's too bad. But it's still a light and entertaining Movie, full of special effects, explosions and humor, perfectly suitable for passing two hours in a late summer afternoon.