RED 2 *** (2013, Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Brian Cox) – Film Review

It’s easy to get a kick out of RED 2. It is not a great movie but still it is really quite fast and furious and funny.

At 58, Bruce Willis has found himself a new action franchise, as retired and extremely dangerous ex-CIA operative Frank Moses, in this welcome sequel to the surprise 2010 hit RED. He is back in action to protect the life of his girlfriend Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker) and tackle Bailey (Anthony Hopkins, no less), the mad inventor of a missing portable nuclear bomb device placed in Russia during the Cold War.

The bizarre trail leads him to his crazy old buddy Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich), who fakes his own death, gun-toting English agent Victoria (Helen Mirren), who has accepted a contract to kill him (what’s a little matter like that among friends?). Then it is on to Paris, Moscow (where Catherine Zeta-Jones sexy Russian Katja and Brian Cox’s crazy Russian Ivan Simonov reappears) and finally London. Somewhere along the trail, dogged nemesis Han Cho Bai (played by Byung-hun Lee) also pops up, someone in his first flush, weirdly.

Willis, Mirren and Malkovich are all excellent, proving great value in both the outrageous action and witty quips departments, and Mary-Louise Parker is outstanding, giving the movie’s best performance. She is extremely likeable and credible.

Some of the stars of the first film are sorely lacking, Karl Urban, Rebecca Pigeon, Morgan Freeman and Ernest Borgnine among them. But, never mind, the cast’s even more starry this time, with Hopkins giving a wild and wayward portrait of a man as mad as a box of monkeys. It is not the best thing he has ever done, but it is not the worst either. Anyway, it fills the bill. Zeta-Jones scores well in a camp display of villainy and Cox gets his silly laughs, if all too briefly.

All the stars make it look so easy that it doesn’t look like work at all. Frankly, it is all so easy that they should deduct the cost of their fares to the various sets and locations from their no doubt huge fees, then give the rest to charity. Maybe they should be doing classier work?

There is fast-paced, fiery direction by Dean Parisot too, despite not having directed a movie since Fun with Dick and Jane in 2005 or a good one since Galaxy Quest in 1999. Original writers Jon and Erich Hoeber carve out a fairly sensible, coherent and amusing script based on the characters from the graphic novel series by DC.

© Derek Winnert 2013 derekwinnert.com