Movie Review: R.E.D

Another long week passed, and I'm at the end of the week... Why time rolled so fast? Its like running to catch up a train... As if Monday was only yesterday...

On this fine Saturday, as usual I do my 'routine'. Watching movies on cinemas. My family and I, we all love movies... By 'love', I meant we could watched just any movie which is being played in theaters. Regardless of genres (except horror and gory movies, I have a problem with nightmares after watching those genres...), plot, actors and actresses starred in it (although I despise Jen Aniston and therefore refused to watch her movies), not to mention the directors.

This sunny Saturday is not much different from the usuals. I went straight to cinemas in the mall located far south of the city, and queueing. I'm not having a particular movie I interested in the theaters (actually I was in a 'yeah-whatever-sort-of-mood'  today... For that matter I have my own reasons... I was hoping for "Hello Stranger" in Blitz and instead, I ended up in XXI).

R.E.D. Maybe you wonder what does that mean? If you've watched the movie you'll know what it means. No, its not a colour. Yes, its the colour of the movie poster, and yes, there is a RED colour stamped on the file in one of the scene, but no its not what that means. Thats what I thought too. At the first glance of the movie poster, I saw that red is the dominant colour, this is a Bruce Willis movie, and RED as the title... It soon came into my mind that this must be a very serious movie with all gory violence where blood splotched and spilled everywhere (and I said this because I haven't seen the trailer so I do not know what to expect... I did check on the ratings by the way... The ratings were good, surprisingly...)

Maybe that's why the beginning scene really surprised me... This is definitely NOT the type of movie I've previously predicted... With an addition of 'Summit Ent' logo and DC Comics logo in the beginning, I predicted this to be an independent movie (you know, Summit usually brought independent movies like Twilight, for example...) Yet it turns out my predictions all wrong!

This is definitely NOT and indie movie, NOT a 'serious' movie...I'm not saying this is a funny, cheap story with incompetent leading role film, but I don't expect it to be so 'funny' either... I mean, I get rid off  'funny' when it comes to Bruce Willis, because he's a hero in Die Hard series, and recently Surrogates... In both movies he played a complicated person with all its intrigues and conflicts, and I relate this to his character in each of the film he starred in. I thought old Bruce was the 'same old Bruce'... I was wrong. Entirely.

Bruce Willis is an ex-CIA agent named Frank Moses who has retired due to his age. In his retirement he was bored and unsatisfied with his present life. His boring and lonely days were filled by phone calls to a woman named Sarah, whom he called to complain about his missing retirement check. Frank and Sarah finally arranged to meet with each other after a series of phone calls, in which Frank is delighted about. But the night before he met Sarah, his house is raided with bullets by a bunch of hitmen. Knowing their obvious motive is to kill him, he set off to meet Sarah the following day as planned, only to finally held her captive in order to safe her life. He then seek out help from his friends, fellow CIA retirement Joe (Morgan Freeman), Victoria (Helen Mirren), and Marvin (John Malkovich). Together they tried to find the reasons why they are being targeted by killers. In their search for the truth, a young and ambitious CIA agent William Cooper, tried to bring in Frank and his colleagues and won't stop until he does.

This movie really surprised me with its good humour, an action movie packed with comedy. Think for a good first date movie? Well, this is for you. The story is light, funny, and the fighting scenes are not bad. Don't expect it to have a twist-ending, mind-boggling type of movie. As long as you came into the theaters with little expectations, this will be a good movie. The actors and actresses, well, need I say more? Bruce Willis no question is a top action movie star; Dame Helen Mirren who experienced more to drama genre than action, gave an extraordinary performance; Morgan Freeman also gave a great performance; but I think the scene stealer is John Malkovich who played a loony *slash* paranoid theorist which given LSD every day when he was in CIA. He was awesome and incredibly funny. There is not a single scene of him that didn't make me laugh. Even Mary-Louise Parker who played Sarah can brightened up the mood of the viewers every time she's onscreen.

The pace of the story is kept in moderate to fast speed. With a spark of humour now and then, and lots of toying with words, the script is well written. The chemistry between Willis and Parker is also 'cute' if I might add. They made a perfect couple in the movie, with Willis as Frank a badass secret agent, whereas in an opposite, the light-hearted Sarah. The story itself is well maintained and balanced throughout the movie. The actors and actresses are all given the perfect portion of their roles, when usually action movies are not emphasizing on characters and background stories.

Overall, this movie is a very entertaining, good humoured, filled with great casts (and also great performances), and basics of action movies including kicking and punching. This movie also made me realized that Dame Helen Mirren actually can do action movies, carry those big guns, threatening and plowing bad guys as though she has experienced it in her entire life. Two thumbs up for Robert Schwenke! I really enjoyed the movie, from the beginning to the part where the credits rolled...

The rating? Do I have to mention it? Hmm, 4.5 out of 5 stars...