The Big Guns

Red

Directed by Robert Schwentke

Runtime:111 min.

The acknowledged limits of comic book adaptations dictate that a movie based on a comic book is a property first, then, maybe, a self-sustained work of art. Within that sadly conciliatory realm of expectations, the new adaptation of Red, a wisp of a three-issue mini-series by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, is surprisingly sharp, though curiously sleepy. Director Robert Schwentke has no eye for spectacle: while many of the film’s action scenes are sufficiently cocky and well assembled, none of them are memorably explosive.

Red succeeds, however, in ways that many comic book movies usually don’t. Miraculously, what has survived on the screen of screenwriters Erich and Jon Hoeber’s (the half-cocked but fitfully satisfying recent White-Out adaptation) script appears to be mostly compromise-free. It is as wholly invested in its vision of older CIA assassins as it can be (meaning it's fairly sober when it comes to typically scatological geriatric humor and hence thankfully devoid of horny, rapping or pot-smoking grannies and fogies). As a character-driven action comedy, the Hoebers give priority to banter instead of plot. And thankfully, the film’s assembly of comedic talent is considerable enough to make that atypical emphasis work. If anything, Red works better as a comedy than as an action film, which automatically makes it better than most of its peers. If only that meant it was worth remembering in six months’ time.

Red’s plot is knowingly insubstantial: Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) ends his retirement from black ops assignments after a group of killers invade his home and tries to murder him. This also puts Sarah (Mary-Louse Parker), Frank’s dream girl and the office drone that handles his pension, at risk as Frank’s phone calls have been monitored. So Frank goes out of his way to abduct Sarah and bring her on a nation-wide trip to gather together his old posse—horny but trustworthy Joe (Morgan Freeman); psychotic, drug-addled Marvin (John Malkovich); and the stiff-upper-lip British lady killer Victoria (Helen Mirren)—to save their necks and clear their names.

Considering how badly butchered something like Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s script for Jonah Hex was when filmed, viewers should be grateful that the only noticeably unsatisfactory thing about Red is how visually unremarkable it is. True, within the film’s “I’m too old for this shit” logic, there should be a level of ordinariness to the film’s violence. But certainly not to the point that a scene where Malkovich lobs a grenade back to its sender using his gun as a tennis racket is completely over-shadowed by a later one in which he manically chases after a group of armed men with only a makeshift bomb strapped to his chest and a crazed look plastered on his face.

The fact that that this is the case, however, confirms that Red, above all, belongs to its cast. In other words: One should forgive Schwentke for hanging back to frame his accomplished actors’ reactions more often than actually givign them things to react to. Louise-Parker and Willis don’t have chemistry but Mirren and Malkovich certainly do in one scene where Malkovich feeds her clips of bullets for one of the several conspicuously large guns Mirren wields. Schwentke and the Hoebers have done their cast due diligence, even if there really ought to be more to it than there is.