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Non-Required Reading: Seeing 'Red'

Courtesy Summit Entertainment.
Courtesy Summit Entertainment.

So I saw the Bruce Willis-John Malkovich-Helen Mirren-Morgan Freeman-Ernest Borgnine-Richard Dreyfuss epic "Red" yesterday. And it was okay. But here I go on another rant about misusing the source material. Let’s do this.

Quick explanation for those of you uninformed. "Red" is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner. It actually first came out in single comics form, but whatever. It’s very good, but sat in development as a movie for quite a while.

To start it all off, I did enjoy "Red." It was a doofy action movie with plenty of cool fight scenes. It’s not gonna win any awards any time soon, but it doesn’t expect to. A lot of the fights are pretty sweet too watch. It’s a testosterone fest, and it works to accomplish its mission.

Basic Plot Summary! (And an Exclamation Point means it’s important). Bruce Willis plays Frank Moses, a retired CIA agent. He is currently living the retired life, and not especially enjoying it. Then the CIA decides to take care of Moses, for undisclosed reason, and he has to get his group back together to figure out what’s going on.

Now this movie wasn’t as crazy different as something like "Wanted." In the case of "Wanted," they literally ditched everything the comic was all about — super villains taking over the world and the crazy shenanigans when some of them try to take over.

That’s right, no curving bullets, no assassins guild, no giant spindle to tell you whom to kill, but there was a monster made out of poop. Worth checking out, I promise.

Back to "Red." I was a little hesitant when I realized he was going to have a crew. In the book Moses works alone, single-handedly taking down the entire CIA, and that makes things much more interesting.

However, this old crew works out. I think it’s because of the casting (Mirren, Freeman, and Malkovich). They’re all a little crazy in their own way. The writers of the movie created a series of interesting characters that are fun to watch.

Malkovich is especially fun as the paranoid druggie Marvin. He provides the right amount of crazy (big surprise) and has most of the funny lines in the movie.

I also liked how they expanded Mary Louise-Parker’s role as Sarah. In the book she’s kind of a throw away character. She talks to Moses over the phone, but they never really get together. He finally snaps when he can’t talk to her anymore.

In this case they create the dynamic between the two characters and expand it into something fun.

Red is a pretty enjoyable movie. It also has Karl Urban in it, which is a serious improvement over the original source material. Man that guy is a badass.


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