RED (2010)

55, 73, 46, 64, 56, 65. These aren’t lottery numbers, people. These are the ages of the stars of the action comedy RED which stands for Retired, Extremely Dangerous. Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Mary-Louise Parker, Brian Cox, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren join forces to bring us a unique action film with the main focus on a group of older than your average badasses kicking ass! There’s nothing elderly about the way these actors kick ass!

RED is based on a short comic book series about a group of retired black ops CIA agents going on a mission to find out who is trying to kill them. During the San Diego Comic Con 2010, Willis told us at first he thought the film was a romantic comedy. Well, I’m glad his first impressions were wrong, ’cause Willis should always be kicking at least some baddie butt. This film could, however, fit into that rare category of action rom com. It had all the elements there, with the action being the best. The film had me laughing throughout, with a healthy smattering of romance that was just enough to be nice but not so much that you get sick of all the foofy-shmoofy love crap.

All of the actors got in on the action. Willis did what he does best, and that’s being the main kicker of ass, followed by Freeman and Mirren. It’s not every day that you see a film starring people over 50 handling huge machine guns or beating someone into a bloody pulp, so this is a nice change of pace and the actors pulled it off beautifully. It was well paced and had some very awesome, badass moments mixed in throughout.

I loved RED. It goes to show that not everyone in Hollywood has to be 30 years old to look good and beat someone up.

Beware Spoilers Below!!

Time Until Action Starts: ~ 8 minutes

Best Line: “I miss all of this. I haven’t killed anyone in years.”

Best Kill: Frank (Bruce Willis) and Marvin (John Malkovich) are being attacked by some baddies. Frank casually grabs a grenade launcher, turns and arches the grenade perfectly towards the baddie. It hits, exploding the baddie into several different pieces. You can see half of the baddie go one way, and the other half fly off in the opposite direction.

Best Explosion: Marvin (Malkovich) and a baddie have a faceoff. The baddie pulls out a rocket launcher and shoots a massive missile towards Malkcovich. He calmly pulls out his tiny pistol and fires back. The bullet hits the missile midway, causing it to explode! It explodes upwards and backwards engulfing the baddie. KABOOM!

Action Rating: 3 ½ Super Badass Pension Checks, out of 5.

Picture coming soon!

Illustration by Alex Langley. Rocket Llama World Headquarters.

This is the Action Flick Chick, and you’ve just been kicked in the ass!