What a blast of an action film! Thanks to everyone who voted for it, it turned out fantastic.
If you care about details, here’s the IMDB page:
Basic synopsis is that Frank Moses is a Retired, Extremely Dangerous, blackops operative. The highlight of his life is tearing up his social security check each month so he can call and talk to Sarah, the bored, attractive woman who wants more than her cubicle job. Moses is attacked one night by a whole team of commandos and goes on the run. He ends up kidnapping Sara to keep her safe, as he knows his calls have been monitored and whoever his enemy is will come after her to get to him. Obviously, Sarah isn’t very happy about this, nor does she believe that Moses is anything more than a delusional nutjob stalker, until he rescues her from a fake police officer who tries to drug and kidnap her. Moses hooks up with various other RED operatives to figure out what is going on. It all comes down to the Vice President of the United States and a village being massacred many years ago. Sarah gets captured and during the exchange, the real villain is revealed and the CIA agent who has been legally tracking Moses down realizes what is going on, switches sides and the good guys win (well, except for the VP. That bugger still dies).
I have been a Bruce Willis fan ever since I first saw Diehard on tv many years ago so any movie that stars him at least gets a “hmmm, maybe I’ll watch that someday” instead of outright dismissal like most of the movies today. The rest of the cast is pretty great too. Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren all fit their roles and one never overshadowed the other. Mary-Louise Parker as Sarah the young woman (well, I say “young” but she’s gotta be in her early 30’s in the movie) seemed to be there to propel Moses onward and to show off her cleavage. Thankfully, after she gets onboard and realizes that Frank Moses is serious she becomes a good lense of “ordinary” while the others are all trained assassins.
I also really enjoyed Karl Urban as the up and coming Specialist who is tracking down Moses without knowing the full story. He is ruthless and completely competent but right from the get go we know he’s not a villain, as he’s talking to his wife on the phone about their son being bullied at school WHILE hanging a guy and making it look like a suicide. That was just awesome! Also, he was a bit more chiseled in his face than when I saw him in Thor: Ragnarok, where he looked like a fat little dumpling. Once he knows the full story at the end he does the right thing. He and Willis do a brutal fight scene inside the CIA and it captures the essence of this movie. Hard, brutal, awesome and totally unrealistic.
Make no mistake, if things being “real” is something you need in a movie, don’t bother with this. In the first scene where Urban and Willis meet each other, Willis steps out of a moving at 30mph, spinning car and times things so he can step out of the car, miss the backend hitting him and starts walking towards Urban and shooting at him. It is physically impossible to go from a moving car to a walk, as your body is moving 30mph as well. But my goodness, it looked so cool!
At the same time, this was not a grim movie, not by any means. John Malkovich provides enough lunacy as a lsd experiment by the CIA to make anyone laugh and the little subplot with Helen Mirren and her old flame, a Russian operative, is gold. Freeman, as an operative with cancer, brings some poignancy to the movie and Brian Cox, as Mirren’s old flame, almost makes me not want to kill communists (but only “almost”).
I immediately went on and watched RED 2 and enjoyed it too. Not quite so cool, but still fun. However, a 3rd movie was never made and I don’t know why. I suspect that the 25% drop in revenue between the two movies might have had something to do with it however. This was actually based on a series of comics published by DC but while I enjoyed the movies tremendously, I doubt I’ll ever check them out.
Overall, this was a fantastic movie that scratched that over the top action machoman guy itch I occasionally get.
Next month I’m letting Mrs B pick the movie and I think she’s already settled on one called Penelope. I guess I’ll find out what it is about when I watch it with her 🙂 I just LOVE surprises!
I stared at Karl Urban’s face for a full five minutes because he looked really familiar. And then I recognised him: he plays Eomer in LOTR! Wait, let me double check that…yep! He does!
Oh my goodness, “Penelope” used to be one of my favourite movies! Can’t wait for your review of it! I hope you enjoy it.
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When I did about 5min of research on Urban, I found out he’s been all over the place! Showed me I just don’t watch that much stuff to not really have recognized him 🙂
I hope I like Penelope too. I’m hesitant but at least I’ll get to watch a movie with Mrs B 🙂
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IIRC, Penelope is fantastic. Maybe just a lot of fun.
RED used to be a go-to for a lazy Saturday afternoon around here for my offspring and me. Mostly isn’t anymore because we don’t have those 🙂
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Good to know about Penelope. That gives me hope.
Sorry to hear that Saturdays are no longer lazy off days. That’s a real crime in my books…
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I can still manage them fairly regularly — the difficulty is getting my teens/young adults to be home long enough on one to watch a flick with their Old Man…
(cue “Sunrise, Sunset” in the background…)
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Ahh, sounds like you need to clamp down and possibly tie them down to the couch 😀
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I loved that movie too! Can’t really remember the second one though. I especially enjoyed John Malkovich’s role. The subject is pretty sad actually (what to do after you retired when your job was 100 % of your time? And can spies really retire?) but it was dealt with in a funny way ^^
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I absolutely Malkovich. He did a fantastic job of playing the paranoid nut job, who just happened to be right all the time 😀
As for the retired spy thing, I figure the reality is that they have a limited life span with an expiration date. The same, but more so, for special forces people 😦
Thankfully, this did handle it deftly and with humor. I heard the comic was pretty grim though…
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Yeah I guess they are not supposed to live after 40. Thus why it is so hard and gloomy when they do. I haven’t read the comic but I feel like spy comics are hard to adapt without changing their atmosphere, the same thing happened to Human Target.
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I’m glad you enjoyed this so much! My husband and I like to watch this when we’re in the mood for a fun and funny action movie. I haven’t seen Penelope but look forward to seeing your thoughts on it!
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I have to admit I was (kind of am) dreading Penelope. But Irresponsible’s little bit that he enjoyed it has given me hope 🙂
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Glad it worked for you, honestly this sounds way better than I thought it would be. I should put it on my list, plus I haven’t seen a Willis movie in years.
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This is why I haven’t regularly reviewed movies before. Books I feel confidant about saying yay or nay but a movie? Too many variables as far as I’m concerned 🙂
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I love RED! It is hilarious! You hit on all the good parts – the characters really make this movie. It’s more than a little ridiculous, but it’s still good, clean fun. (It started life as a DC comic series?! 😯)
“Penelope” is a good movie – I actually reviewed it either last year or the year before. I’m looking forward to reading your opinion of it! 😃
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According to Wikipedia it started life as a grim dc comic. So depending on how much you believe Wiki….
Thanks for the nod to Penelope. That’s two “it’s good” comments, so I’m hopeful now 🙂
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I had so much fun with this movie! I remember seeing it in a theater with friends and how much we laughed at the over-the-top craziness of it.
Mmmm… a rewatch might be in order…. 🙂
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Definitely worth a bluray buy for me…
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This was a great fun movie. One of the last willis movies me and my dad got to see together. Diehard for the win always jipee kaay jeey
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Yep, Diehard IS the gold standard for Willis, that is for sure.
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Yay, RED was my vote! I’ve seen it but I forget what happens …. I tend to do that with movies. :-Z
I loved Karl Urban in LOTR. He’s a surprisingly versatile actor.
“fat little dumpling” What a description. I hope that’s never aimed at me!
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He was in LotR? Man, that guy IS everywhere.
I’ve already taken the title FLD for myself, so no worries 🙂
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This is probably the only film I’ve seen Willis do a decent acting job in for about 15 years or more. Fantastic and fun film. The comic is not comedic, but very dark.
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So you’ve read the comic? How did you run across it? I’d never even heard of it…
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I’m not ashamed to admit I only read it because I’d enjoyed the movie. I saw it mentioned in the Wiki page that it was based upon a comic, so I tracked the comic down.
So many movies and TV shows are based upon books and comics. Most you’d never know unless you went looking in the Wiki or production notes.
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Glad this was such fun- gotta admit I didn’t know this film existed, but I’ve also been a bruce willis fan since I saw diehard on tv (probably around Christmas 😉 ) I really liked Penelope- so I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it!
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Thankfully our library has Penelope so getting a hold of it is not going to be a problem. Finding time with Mrs B where we both are in a movie mood is going to be the hardest. Probably just going to schedule it and watch it whether we “feel” like it or now 😀
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That’s great! 🙂 Hehe understandable! That happens in my home all the time
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Something tells me that your review for Penelope will be a blast. 😛 I haven’t seen or read Red but I couldn’t tell if I’d ever be in the mood for it with so many movies out there nowadays that has the whole action-comedy-lacking-in-realism story. By the way, have you heard of John Malkovich’s 100 Years movie that won’t be released till 2115? Hahaha
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I’m a big fan of non-stop action movies (as seen by my love of John Wick) so this was a no brainer since my brother recommended it. Not sure I’d have watched it just from the cover though.
So many movies, so little time. Just glad I don’t particularly care about movies in general 🙂
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Yeah!! I’m glad you watched it AND liked it 🙂 I will now take all the credit as I voted for the movie 😛
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Good job! Way to make up for all those horrific Hairyhashi pix 😉
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