Red (2010)

We enjoyed this silly geezer action romp that was #4 at the box office last weekend, three weeks after release. With cartoonish violence, spectacular locations, and great wardrobe, especially Dame Helen Mirren's, the movie, based on a graphic novel, will entertain anyone who doesn't cringe at a shoot-'em-up for shooting's sake. Jack and I sometimes call ourselves geezers, though we're not quite old enough to qualify for senior prices at the mutliplex. The stars Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mirren, Morgan Freeman, and Mary-Louise Parker are, at this time, 55, 56, 65, 73, and 46, respectively. Parker isn't supposed to be a geezer, but Willis's character, like the other three, is RED (retired, extremely dangerous). And for geezers of our age and above, Ernest Borgnine (he is 93 years old! Doesn't look a day over 90. He won his Oscar for Marty in 1955, and Jack and I both remember him in McHale's Navy on TV in the mid 1960s and more. See what you remember from his resumé) has a cameo.

Willis (my faves: Die Hard (1988, 1990, 1995), Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Twelve Monkeys (1995), Alpha Dog (2006), What Just Happened) is so clearly able to laugh at himself (watch this!) that we can easily do so when he's onscreen. I wrote about Malkovich (who can also laugh at himself) in The Great Buck Howard, Mirren in The Last Station, Freeman in Invictus, Parker in A Solitary Man, and they all add to the comedy, as does Brian Cox (I loved Running with Scissors (2006), and he was in Fantastic Mr. Fox and much more, including another movie called Red in 2008--I didn't see it), who is 64, as the Russian. Playing it straight are Karl Urban and Rebecca Pidgeon (Mrs. David Mamet--she annoys me every time with her wooden demeanor, including in the excellent The Spanish Prisoner (1997) and the hilarious State and Main (2000), and this is no exception). I'm not familiar with director Robert Schwentke, nor brothers Jon and Erich Hoeber, who adapted the graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, but obviously they've got some chops.

Prolific composer Christophe Beck (here, you may read it yourself) provides James Bond-like music, and the songs are listed on imdb. We didn't see The Expendables earlier this year, and I haven't seen a review that doesn't mention it in comparison to this one, so I am unqualified to compare. Still, we had fun.