Red, the action-comedy starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich and that chick from Weeds, is not very good. It's also not terrible. On a continuum with "Epic Movie" on one end and "Road to Perdition" on the other, I'd place it somewhere near "The Rundown"- A movie you'll watch on a Sunday if you catch it channel-surfing and you're too hungover to get off the couch. Except, "The Rundown" is a lot more fun.
When I first read the comic book "RED" by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner I thought it was mediocre. It was only three issues long and fairly decompressed, leaving me wishing that more time had been taken to flesh out the world and characters. In the book the main character is targeted for assassination, survives, sets out to figure out why, then kills everyone responsible. It was straightforward and direct. What was especially note-worthy about the comic, was the experimental way that Cully Hamner tackled "bullet-time" in sequential art. Interestingly, the weaknesses of the film have highlighted the strength of the comic in several ways.
1. Focus
The movie decided to expand the cast, and in order to do this, needed to expand the plot. Unfortunately the movie had nothing driving it forward. So, a problem would arise, which would lead to Bruce Willis deciding he needed to contact the next actor that needed to be shoehorned into the plot somehow. There was usually no logical reason for him to do so. He would then interact with them, solving the problem. A new problem would conveniently arise, time to bounce over to Helen Mirren! None of these problems serviced the plot except to shuffle the characters to the next place they needed to be. The final conflict did not feel like a culmination of everything that had come before it, but rather grew out of information introduced 15 minutes earlier in order to lend some gravitas to the final scenes.
Warren Ellis's comic, no matter what faults it had, was laser focused. This is because it knew what it was trying to say and wasn't trying to be cute (something which the movie failed at, miserably). This brings us to the...
2. Message
The message of the comic was that bureaucracies, especially government ones, do not care about you. They use people and spit them out. Despite years of loyal service, a combination of blind ambition and paperwork oversight can lead to you being the target of a wetworks team. To those in power, people are just a means to an end and numbers on a spreadsheet. It gets this across clearly and succinctly. 3 issues- setup, heighten, conclude, bloodbath.
As I mentioned before, the movie is all over the fucking place. The CIA is trying to kill them! No, wait it's the Vice-President, he's the bad guy! Actually, the weapons contractor is the real bad guy all along! The guy ruthlessly murdering people before grew a conscience for no reason! Now let's plant some evidence, frame some people, and call it a win for the good guys! Hurray!?!?!??
This movie has no idea what it is trying to say. A good twist re-contextualizes everything that came before and makes you re-evaluate character's actions and motivations. Think "The Usual Suspects" or "Memento." I think the people that wrote this script had seen these movies but were nowhere near as competent as Christopher Nolan or Bryan Singer (admittedly, a high standard). The whole thing just smacks of laziness. By which I am referring to the gaping...
They were huge! Infuriatingly huge! Ranging from continuity errors to central plot points.
There were several smaller things that bothered me. Such as a scene where they are being chased by FBI agents shown to be literally, ten feet behind them. They get through a tunnel, the agents hot on their heels, and stop to have a fucking 5 minute conversation. This is not how time works! It's just not! And what's worse the way they end the chase is by getting in a car and driving away. This would be fine, the people chasing them had no automobiles nearby, except that in a prior scene it had been established that the government can track you anywhere with extremely powerful spy satellites that can read over your shoulder. Did they just turn them off for this specific pursuit, despite utilizing them for the previous ones? Is this a subtle commentary on the quality of government work? No. It;s not. It's just lazy scripting.
What is more infuriating is the central flaw at the crux of the plot. What is revealed during the course of the movie is that all the Olds were targeted because they were involved in an operation in the 80's to cleanup after a massacre in Guatemala. A massacre, they discover, perpetrated by the current VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WHO NOW WANTS TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT OMGWTFBBQ!!
Here's the thing. None of the olds had any idea why they were there back in the day. None, whatsoever. And apparently no attempt was made to assess whether they had this knowledge or were planning to use it before performing highly public acts of murder. Murder which lead them to seek revenge and eventually attempt to KILL THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!! It is also unclear why, even if they had this knowledge they had not chosen to act when he was running for Vice President, but would suddenly be spurred to action during a president campaign. I guess the evil guy assumed that they would find nothing scary about having a psycho as the 2nd most powerful person in the world, but as soon as he moved to #1 WATCH OUT!!
In other words by literally doing nothing, the CIA/Vice President/Weapons manufacturer that was pulling all the strings, could have saved millions of dollars, dozens of soldiers lives and limbs, and (spoiler alert) the VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES FROM GETTING SHOT IN THE CHEST AAAAARRRGGHH!! And, furthermore, his vaguely defined super-evil Manchurian candidate plot would have succeeded! Has he learned nothing from dealing with AARP in Washington? Don't fuck with the Olds!! They always win!
The thing is, I'm willing to forgive shit like this, I really am. I love movies with plot holes much larger than this. But the thing is they are...
And the movie RED is not.
The comic is! Each action scenes continue to top the one before it and the art is gorgeous. The book is far more grim in tone but you cannot stop flipping the pages because it is compelling as fuck and WHOA, did you see how that guys head just exploded!!! In the movie, I could not stop checking my watch.
It's clear the movie wants to be fun. There are dozens of attempted jokes, 3 of which I laughed at. There's a lot of travelling and each scene transition consists of a SUPER-WACKY postcard that becomes animated and then fades into the scene. There are also "hilarious" touches, like using super-racist chinese music when they go to Chinatown. All those Chinese immigrants and their MSG, AMIRITE!!
The problem is the content doesn't match the intent. It's clear that Bruce Willis and that chick from Weeds are trying but they just don't have anything to work with, so they fall flat. John Malkovich was supposed to be offputting, and he was (he always is), but it wasn't in a charming way. blahblahHelen Mirren was greatblahblahblahThe Queen blahblahGMILF. The worst performance of the movie was Morgan Freeman. If you are being paid millions to play an assassin, you need to be able to pretend you have ever punched anyone before ever. And also that you want to be there.
The movie was chock-full of lines like "Looks like we're getting the band back together" which only work if you are invested in the characters or have a working knowledge of their history and can attribute historical significance to their reunion. I could not have cared less for these characters making much of the dialogue cringe-worthy.
That being said Karl Urban is going to be an awesome Judge Dredd.
5. Action
There were two good action scenes in this movie and you saw them both in the trailer. The first is the scene where John Malkovich shoots a rocket as it's being launched at him with a revolver and hit's it right on the nose. The other is the scene where Bruce Willis gets out of the cop car as it's spinning and calmly walks forward as the rear bumper just misses hitting him. That was it. In a two-hour action comedy, there was very little of either. Blegh.
This was the strength of the comic. Balls-to-the-wall action from start to finish. Also it was cooler. Also, it was prettier. Speaking of action, this brings me to my final point...
6. Morality
The main characters, the "good guys" refrain from shooting the weapons manufacturer mid way through the movie because he is "not worth the bullet," even though this would have almost certainly ended the conflict with far less bloodshed and difficulty. It is clear he is a bad person at this point, as he has confessed to several crimes and literally referred to himself as "the bad guy." YET, they have no problem with cold murdering soldiers and policeman who are just following orders and have every reason to legitimately believe that they are doing the right thing to protect their country. What the fuck!
In the comic, this happens too. However, Ellis make no attempt to paint him as a person that is particularly moral or cares who he kills. He is a machine. Bruce Willis, on the other hand is supposed to be a "good guy." oops.
Final Thoughts
This movie basically defines mediocrity. This probably means it will be uber-successful and spawn at least one sequel in theaters before going to Direct to DVD spin-offs with lesser known aging actors whose careers are on the decline. Also, they will be made by National Lampoon and feature cameos by Betty White, who I'm pretty sure does not have action star on her resume (yet).
On one hand this makes me really sad- why the hell can't the American media consumer reward quality with more frequency? For every successful Inception, we have 5 Scott Pilgrim's that are awesome but don't make their money back. And Jackass 3D was the #1 movie in America this week. COME ON!! #thisiswhytheyhateus
On the other hand, I really like the creative team on this book. If this movie does well, maybe we will see more Warren Ellis stories turned into movies. He is one of the best writers in fiction today, so assuming future movies don't pivot 180 degrees from the source material like this one did, we are bound to see something good come out of it.
Verdict
If you were intrigued by the premise, you should buy the comic. If you are hungover on a Sunday and it's on FX, why not I guess.
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