Really Excessive Destruction

I went to see the new movie Red this afternoon. (I suppose that should be "RED" since it is an acronym -- but that looks rather annoying to me.) On a certain level, this movie seems like it's meant to scratch the same itch as the recent film The Expendables: "let's watch some older people kick ass." But while The expendables and its epic cast of people who actually did kick ass on film in the 80s held no appeal to me, this movie populated mostly with actors known for very serious work did.

I mean, where else can you see the outstanding and classy Helen Mirren fire off a tripod-mounted machine gun non-stop for a minute without ever blinking at the recoil? Or revel in Morgan Freeman as an 80-year old killer? Or John Malkovich, plying his patented and entertaining brand of crazy... with heavy weaponry?

Make no mistake, the cast is the reason to see this movie. It's a pretty cotton candy and fluffy piece of nothing that begins to evaporate before you even make it across the parking lot and back to your car. But the cast -- including the not-old Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, and Karl Urban -- injects something into it that makes it worth your time.

In fact, their presence so elevates the proceedings that, for a while, I don't think I fully appreciated just how tongue-in-cheek and preposterous the whole thing is meant to be -- not until well past the point where I would have "gotten it" for any other action movie. But finally, somewhere around the point where I realized I was seeing more spent cartridge casings on screen at one time than most action movies must use in the entire film, it clicked. I mean, it is based on a comic book, and while it never really does have that giddy abandon of that genre, it's decidedly fantastical.

But, like I said, also kind of dumb and disposable. The one thing that really hung with me afterward was the musical score by Christophe Beck. It is this bonkers mix of broad orchestral action cues that you might expect in this kind of film, but also dances with strange bluesy jazz, and even riffs that feel lifted from a 70s blaxpoitation film.

I think I'll call it a B- overall. It's not one to rush out to the theaters for, but probably worth a rental later.