RED (2010) – Can it be?
A comic book movie whose source material I’ve never read? But the premise of the film – Hollywood’s
finest senior citizens (a cast of all-stars, including Bruce Willis, Morgan
Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, and Brian Cox) portraying “retired”
intelligence agents – was too good to resist.
And on this, my second viewing, I realized that the plot is really
ancillary. What gets these agents out of
retirement is a series of assassinations which eventually finds them in the crosshairs,
but very few moviegoers are going to latch onto that in the way that they’ll latch
onto the character types. Ringo Starr thought
he might win an Oscar if he acted naturally, but while you won’t see any
Oscar-winning performances here you will
see actors playing to their strengths:
in essence, the aged Avengers. Willis
is the strong, silent type; Freeman is the jovial elder with a voice of gold;
Malkovich is the nutty and unstable one; and Mirren and Cox are the romancing agents
from opposite ends of the Cold War. The
chemistry – and extreme sense of fun – flies off the screen and will leave you
with a big smile on your face. It’s not
the deepest spy film you’ll see all year, but it’s probably the most fun.
That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the
Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!
No comments:
Post a Comment