Advance Review: RED

I was lucky enough to catch a free screening of this flick earlier this week. Filled with action, laughs, and some romance thrown in, I really think everyone would enjoy this comic book adaptation.

DC Comics does not have the film track record that marvel does. They have some shining examples like the Batman series, but when it comes to bringing lesser known characters to life they just haven't had much success. Just look at Jonah Hex for a perfect example of this.

The story revolves around Frank (Bruce Willis) after he's been tagged RED: Retired Extremely Dangerous. While he's out of the business, someone deemed him too dangerous and knowledgable of US secrets to stick around. His crush, played hilariously by Mary Louis Parker, gets swept into the madness as she soon becomes a target too. Frank then uncovers a conspiracy that puts all his old cohorts in danger. He reunites the old team, consisting of Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren, to keep them alive and take out whoever it was that tagged them all RED.

I loved the humor they were able to infuse throughout the film. Helen Mirren got some good laughs, but the biggest were for Mary Louis Parker and John Malkovich. Mary Louis was the fish out of water, the civilian swept into the spy madness, and she handled the shock and awe supremely well. And no one does crazy as well as John Malkovich! He had the most gags but also had some of the best gun action.

The action was huge and oftentimes hilarious. Given the age of the cast, you may think they couldn't pull of fight scenes, but you'd be mistaken. There's a rough and violent fist fight between Bruce Willis and Karl Urban that elicited applause from the audience. There were a few scenes, like the fist fight and the bazooka gun fight seen in the commercials, that had the audience clapping for the awesome action and exploding people.

It was a nice change of pace to see senior citizens kicking butt. While I don't know how many people in that age bracket will see this movie, I think it's got a nice unintentional anti-agist message within it.

If you're going to the movies this weekend, skip Jackass 3D with it's juvenile, gross-out humor and check out RED instead.

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