Wick's Review

Summary - Good 3.0

Sixty percent genial fun, forty percent tedious mess. On the 60% side, four charismatic stars led by action-comedy master Bruce Willis deliver enough laconicism to cool off a prison uprising. We’re talking serious cool. Plus, the ridiculous story avoids jumping the shark till about 60% thru, after which its bilious absurdity becomes rather wearisome.

On the 40% side, many in the all-star cast disappoint, including the generally redoubtable John Malkovich and Richard Dreyfuss. The latter simply isn’t up to being the King Hell bad guy in a movie like this. Plus the story depends on the libelous mythos of endemic American war crimes, a hackneyed notion if nothing else.

Still, fun is fun. And 60% fun is more than enough to make Red a good time at the movies.

Acting - Very Good 3.5

Attention: Movie stars at work.

Bruce Willis has become a national treasure, his smirk deserving enshrinement in the Smithsonian. Action-Comedy stars get no better.

Mary-Louise Parker matches him in the ability to deliver deft irony. Her asides about bad dates and other Miss Lonelyheart disappointments provide a regular tickle. For we fellows, it doesn’t hurt that she spends much of the movie in a push-up bra.

Morgan Freeman does laconicism as well as any movie star, and doesn’t disappoint here. Neither does Helen Mirren, as elegant and witty an actress as ever seen on the silver screen.

Disappointments abound however.

• Richard Dreyfuss is fairly lame as the Mr. Big bad guy. An action movie without a great bad guy is an ultimately lame action movie.
• John Malkovich plays crazed as well as it can be done, but came across closer to insipid here.
• Karl Urban seemed bland as Willis’ primary opponent. Where’s the jaunty spark that Urban brought to Dr. Bones McCoy in Star Trek last year?
• Rebecca Pidgeon comes across as strident, not as powerful.

Film - Good 3.0

Edge - Risqué 2.2

Extreme comik violence, which is to say no gore where there would be mountains of it in a less sanitized production.

Reality - Surreal 2.4

More than 50 stuntmen assure the surrealism.

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