One film, two film, red film, bad film-----Bruce Willis and Catherine Zeta Jones as an agent out of retirement and his old flame in Red 2
It actually makes sense that a film about retired CIA agents would get old really fast. It also makes sense considering that this is a sequel. Between Red 2 and Grown Ups 2...I honestly can't decide which of the last two opening weekends had a more unnecessary sequel. While Red 2 is not half as bad as the latter....it's still one of the laziest, most tedious films I will ever have to sit through. Bruce Willis got a lot of hate for coasting in A Good Day To Die Hard. I, however, will be surprised if he doesn't get more hate for coasting in Red 2. It's not even that Willis is coasting. It gets to the point where I was willing to bet money that writers Jon and Erich Hoeber and director Dean Parisot just found Willis sleepwalking in the middle of the night and worked the whole production around what he said and did. Yet.....it's not even that Red 2 is a particularly bad film. More so...it's that it's a really, really, really boring one.
The film "stars" Willis as Frank Moses....a retired CIA agent who is brought back in by one of his old partners...the undeniably cuckoo Marvin (John Malkovich.) Frank's wife, Sarah (Mary Louise Parker) wants to be brought in on the action while Frank just wants to avoid it. The plot then involves some kind of bomb involving a scientist (Anthony Hopkins), old partner of Frank and Marvin's Victoria (Helen Mirren), an evil military specialist (Neal McDonough) and a killer for hire (Byung Hun-Lee.)
This is an impressive array of people they brought in. Mirren, Malkovich, Parker, McDonough, Hopkins, Hun-Lee and Willis have all been great in better films. However, here...they seem to be just going through the motions until that paycheck comes along. The writing is egregious and the direction is pretty bad itself. Every joke falls flat and the action scenes are filmed in such a cartoony manner...it's hard to enjoy them.
Look...I'm well aware that this is based on a graphic novel and that it SHOULD be cartoony. However, when you have great actors phoning it in and a plot that is dumb but not even enjoyably so...that's where I cross the line. Also...Hun-Lee---great action star that he is---partially ruins the fun of the first film. The fun of the first film was the fact that it showed old people kicking butt first and asking questions later. Now...Hun-Lee comes in and it completely contradicts that whole joke. Even the bad guy in the first one was an old guy (Richard Dreyfuss precisely.) I'm not saying Red 2 is an unmitigated disaster...I'm just saying there's better things to do with your time and money this weekend.
(2 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated PG-13 for pervasive action and violence including frenetic gunplay, and for some language and drug material)
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