RED (2010) - Schwentke's utterly hollow comic book adaptation

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This poster for Robert Schwentke's RED manages to make it look like some low-on-brains, very hot action fun

 

A former CIA agent, who is now deemed 'Retired, Extremely Dangerous' [hence the film's title], is attempted murdered. Along with 3 other similar old-timers, a Russian and a sweet girl, he will now try to reverse the conspiracy.

RED is an adaptation of the same-titled 2003-04 comic book miniseries by Warren Ellis (Thor #491-494 (1995-96)) and Cully Hamner (Green Lantern #58 (1995)), written by Jon and Erich Hoeber (Battleship (2012)) and directed by Robert Schwentke (Flightplan (2005)).

Bruce Willis (Die Hard (1988)) has a bland romance with a mousy pension office lady (Mary-Louise Parker (R.I.P.D. (2013)); John Malkovich (Beowolf (2007)) is an LSD-addled paranoid, and Helen Mirren (The Pledge (2001)) just looks good. Morgan Freeman (Along Came a Spider (2001)), Brian Cox (Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)), Richard Dreyfuss (The Big Fix (1978)) and a few others lend the film their integrity but don't make it any more interesting.

The very easygoing style is punctuated with an endless stream of perfunctory score music (created by Christophe Beck (Get Hard (2015))). There is no dramatic core or any exciting characters at play in RED, a movie which seems to want to live solely on the apparently (thought to be) top-entertaining ingredient of watching old people use weapons.

No one in the talented cast get any opportunity to show their real skills in this overly polished, comic book flat abomination of a film. - A project that reeks of being strictly a paycheck movie for its many stars. Ugh!

Here's an interview with Mirren and Willis, talking about the sequel, RED 2

Cost: 58 mil. $

Box office: 199 mil. $

= Box office success

[RED premiered September 29 (Austin Fantastic Fest) and runs 111 minutes. It was the first DC Comics adaptation not produced by Warner Bros. Filming took place in and around Toronto, Canada, LA and New Orleans for 9 weeks from January - March 2010, with reshoots in August 2010. The film opened #2 (behind Jackass 3D) to a 21.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for three more weeks  and grossed 90.3 mil. $ (45.4 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Japan with 14.2 mil. $ (7.1 %) and the UK with 10.9 mil. $ (5.5 %). Roger Ebert gave the film 2 stars, equal to a notch better than this review. The film got nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Film - Musical or Comedy. A sequel, RED 2, was released in 2013, and another sequel is now in development. RED is certified fresh at 71 % with a 6.3 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of RED?