Review of RED 2 (2013) by Clarisesamuels — 15 Jan 2014

Red 2 continues to be the romp that began with the original Red, with the incomparable Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Mary-Louise Parker—and with this second round, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Anthony Hopkins. The plot is convoluted and a little confusing, but there is a weapon of mass destruction out there called Nightshade, and the CIA wants to kill its very own Frank Moses (Willis) and his cohorts because they were vaguely associated with the secret project. The inventor of the secret bomb is a slightly senile professor named Bailey (Hopkins) who has been kept safely locked up in a sanitarium for over thirty years, Stalin-style, until he is rescued by the aging agents Moses and Victoria (Mirren). Although the ex-agents try to pretend they are retired, you can't keep a good spy down, and when called, they serve. And they serve with skill, talent, and dry humor in spite of their gray hair (or no hair) and wrinkles. They're more fun than James Bond.

Frank Moses' best friend Marvin Boggs (Malkovich) stages his own death in the beginning but resurrects himself just in time to save his friend. Malkovich struts through the film with his signature blase attitude, his Zen-like calm, and that mesmerizing lilt in his voice. Frank Moses has already rebelled against his age by taking on a new girlfriend, Sarah Ross (Parker), who wants to be an agent just like her boyfriend Frank, but he only wants to protect Sarah from herself, for he is convinced that she's too weak and vulnerable to be a real player. Not since Diane Keaton la-dee-dahed us in Annie Hall have we seen such charming naivete and spontaneity in the archetypal role of the presumably helpless girlfriend. Parker as Sarah Ross is 49 but looks like she's 29, so she may appear to be a midlife crisis for boyfriend Frank, but she is in fact age-appropriate.

The dynamic pack of senior spies have to face impossible obstacles, such as rescuing Bailey from the asylum for the criminally insane, which looks like a fortress, and then having to penetrate the Kremlin, which is truly a fortress. The plot would not be a comic book (the film is not trying to be overly realistic) if there were not an evil Asian contract killer (Lee Byung-hun) who has sworn to kill Moses. And then Moses's ex-girlfriend Katya (Zeta-Jones) appears, and she is a suave, sophisticated Russian KGB type who is also after Nightshade, and she teams up with her former beau Frank while swapping mild insults with his girlfriend Sarah, who is slightly threatened by Katya's charisma. “She's cute,” says Katya to Moses while glancing over at Sarah. “Where did you find her...Nebraska?” she asks. “Kansas,” chirps Sarah who is listening in with interest. Katya is described as “Frank Moses's kryptonite,” and Zeta-Jones delivers the goods in the role of an exquisite rhymes-with-rich. Willis does a variation of his unperturbed yippee-ki-yay character from Die Hard but with a new sense of resignation and eternal patience that only a senior citizen could have. Mirren continues to play the role of an omnipotent spy-genius—there is nothing she cannot do while making caustic remarks through it all. Hopkins fools us by playing a role within a role, as he pretends to be the bumbling and harmless professor.

Although completely zany and unrealistic, the film is irresistibly beguiling because of the megawatts of charm generated by the actors. The theme is perhaps not quite as fresh as it was in the first Red, but hopefully there will be a Red 3 where the producers will work a little harder on the plot.