R.E.D

reviewed by guest lecturer Will Tooke

Another month brings out another comic book adaption. The playful, immersive odyssey of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and the subversive, ultra violent thrill ride of Kick-Ass are still fresh in my mind, I went to see RED with high hopes – after all, with an incredible cast of Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and your Grans favourite, Helen Mirren, what could possibly go wrong? Err, well, quite a lot actually.

Based on the DC comic written by Warren Ellis and the unfortunately named Cully Hamner, this movie version of RED is similar in name only. A cursory Google (I hadn’t heard of RED before either…) revealed that the scriptwriters had changed quite a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a purist – one of the greatest things about good movie adaptation of novels or books is how the screenwriter handles the source material. Think of 2001s About A Boy based on Nick Hornby’s novel. Gone – thank God – is the heavy handed, zeitgeisty sub-plot to do with Kurt Kobain’s death, a reason why it stands as an example where the film is better than the book. Of course, film adaptations don’t always work out for the best – 2009s Watchmen suffered terribly from an overlong script, and the fact that for some reason it never quite managed to live up to the spirit of the dystopian epic that is Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1986 graphic novel. Yes, screenwriting – particularly adapting works – is a difficult game indeed, one that demands subtlety in approach if not content.

The fact then that screenwriters Jon and Erich Hoeber take great big blundering axe chops to the original is a bad sign. Bruce Willis’ character, ex-CIA agent Frank Moses, survives from the original lineup. The rest are all new additions. Whereas the comic is apparently a darker, straighter story of murky political intrigue and shady secret service dealings, on celluloid RED is a much lighter, family friendly affair. It is, after all a 12 A, and I can’t help wonder if somewhere in the ether floats a grittier, original script, more faithful to the original, before the studio talked it down from an 18 or a 15 to a 12 certificate. It’s a real shame actually, because the core idea is a good one – old spooks come out of retirement to kick some butt after someone or other tries to have them killed. The cheap and easy way to make this family friendly of course is to a) have curiously bloodless fight scenes and b) add some humour.

Oh sweet Jesus, the humour.

In a big loud dumb action movies, there is nothing wrong with a few jokes. Brucie’s own Die Hard quadrilogy is the stronger for them, and cheesy jokes and lazy innuendo pretty much substituted plot for much of Roger Moore’s stint as Bond. But in RED, the cheesy jokes are ladled on like fondue. And it just gets incredibly annoying, right up to a silly pre-credits scene that sees Brucie wheeling John Malkovich through a Moldovan minefield in a wheelbarrow, whilst the latter clutches a nuclear bomb. Typing that out, it sounds pretty funny, like something out of under rated Cold War farce Top Secret! (Seriously, you must see it before you die), but after a few hours of cutesy posturing, my sense of humour failure was borderline terminal.

And even if the awful jokes had been exorcised from RED, I’m not so sure it’d have worked, either. The plot has more flabby twists than Ann Widdecombe’s routines on Strictly Come Dancing: to the extent that it’s unforgivably hard to follow, which is why I haven’t mentioned what happens so much. ‘So wait, now that guy isn’t a baddie?’ one little boy sat near me in the cinema said out loud, to no one in particular. His guess is as good as mine, frankly.  The story circles around something about the covering up of something bad that the now Vice President of the United States (perhaps?) did in Guatemala in 1981 whilst he was in the army. Now bearing in mind said V.P is played by Nip Tuck’s Julian McMahon, this is particularly hard to swallow seeing as McMahon would have been 13 in 1981. Yup, that particular plot hole bugged me so much, I looked up an actor’s actual birthday, just to give me something else to complain about.

I suppose I should provide a bit of a balance by saying that parts of the film are OK – the sight of Helen Mirren firing a huge machine is funny for a bit, and the whole thing is filmed well, each shot framed like a comic book pane. Bruce Willis does his trusty trademark ‘McClane smirk’ – the same facial expression since the good old days of Die Hard, back when Brucey had hair. The same smirk Brucey has done in pretty much every film he’s been in since 1986. If Bella Lugosi was cinema’s Man of a Thousand Faces, then Willis has become cinema’s Man of Just One Smirk. I’m being harsh on Brucey, he does the hand-to-hand combat fights very well, and as a protagonist he’s hard not to like. It’s just I can’t remember the last time he was truly stretched in a role. Perhaps in The Sixth Sense? Which was also the last time M. Night Shyamalan made a decent film. And that was a long, long time ago. In any case, the few good points don’t make up for the whole – in the same way that the excellent German motorway system doesn’t excuse the regime that created them.

I suppose the biggest crime is that this is perhaps the greatest example of recent cinema of a truly brilliant cast who are truly wasted. In the opening credits, there is literally not one actors name that popped up that I didn’t recognize and who isn’t good. Alongside the main four stars are Brian Cox, Karl Urban – two veterans of the Bourne Trilogy, as well as James Remar from TVs Dexter, Mary-Louise Parker from Weeds, Richard Dreyfuss, and the 93 year old Ernest Borgnine. I can only presume they were very well paid or just don’t care anymore.

Degree-2.2 If you like your films with lots bullets that pass in slow motion making a

WOOOSH noise, explosions that seemingly compete with plot holes

to see which one can be the biggest, then you’ll love this.  Otherwise you should probably

just stay away.

It narrowly escaped a third solely because Helen Mirren fires a big loud machine gun.

(If you are confused about the rating system please click on the ‘About This Blog Page’ which will explain it all)

 

R.E.D-A few little clips

Here are some fun clips from R.E.D that I stumbled across. They are nothing particularly new, but you get to see Helen Mirren wield that machine gun again and many more things besides. I really think she will be the best bit of the movie-enjoy!

R.E.D

Dame Helen Mirren with a machine gun? This will spike anyone’s interest. When asked why she chose to do the film, Mirren’s first response was ‘It’s not the Queen’ and she is certainly right about that. With the great veteran cast Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis and John Malkovich Mirren is in very good company.