RED 2

With the immense popularity of comic book movies in recent years, there have been some oddball titles picked up by various studios.  One of those titles was RED, the story of several, well-aged covert agents coming out of retirement to fight for their lives. 

 

RED was immensely successful.  It has great action.  It's super funny.  And the cast is really impressive.  It also had the benefit of coming out shortly after The Expendables and was able to ride the wave of action nostalgia that people were enjoying.  A sequel was inevitable.

 

Luckily for all of us, RED 2 is just about as good as the first.  It has problems, but it also has some added awesomeness.  If you've seen the original, you know whether or not you'll like the sequel (the plot is practically the same).  So, I'm just going to break down the things that set RED 2 apart from its predecessor:

 

1) John Malkovich steals the whole movie.  In the first movie, he just steals his scenes.  Bruce Willis almost feels like the sidekick.  Willis just sleepwalks through action movies anymore and Malkovich is chewing scenery like he hasn't eaten in a month.  Willis shouldn't even be in the third movie.  It should just be the Malkovich show.

 

2) Byung-Hun Lee is in this movie!  American audiences (who don't watch a lot of Korean films) will recognize him as Storm Shadow in the dreadful G.I. Joe movies.  But if you seek out the films he stars in back in South Korea, you'll be introduced to an amazing actor with some amazing movies throughout his career.  His English is also getting really good which hopefully will help him appear in more American action films.  By the way, his two best films (The Good, The Bad, and the Weird and I Saw the Devil) are currently "Play Instant" on Netflix.

 

3) Helen Mirren.  She has a much larger part to play in the sequel and more Mirren equals better movie.

 

4) In the first movie, Karl Urban was cast as a younger man who hunts (and is bested) by the wiley old-timers.  In RED 2, Neal McDonaugh takes that role, but he's used much better.  McDonaugh has a naturally sinister feel that suits this type of role.  Is he being type-cast?  Absolutely!  But he's being type-cast perfectly.

 

5) David Thewlis!  An unexpected casting decision.  He's one of England's great screen actors and he channels that into a weasely, wine-loving assassin.  He makes a throw away role one of the more memorable of the movie.

 

Now comes some bad stuff...

 

6) Mary-Louise Parker has this awful jealousy subplot that stops being a subplot and starts to take over the whole movie.  She is reduced to being a whiny, obnoxious brat.  I found myself hoping that the movie would throw a curveball and kill her off.  No such luck.  I wouldn't be shocked if in the third movie, her clingy psycho-girlfriend behavior drove her to become the new person who's trying to kill Bruce Willis and his friends.  It's that bad.

 

7) Papa John's.  The pizza chain is given a ridiculous amount of screen time.  It's super distracting.  And I refuse to believe that secret agents would take the time during an important mission to eat a couple slices of Papa John's pizza.  I don't care how much they claim to like it, getting diarrhea in the middle of an operation is a bad idea.

 

8) Too many heroes.  Sequels tend to be bigger than the original, but the amount of heroes on the roster here hurt the film a bit.  The bad guys don't stand a chance and that removes a lot of tension from the movie.  Also, trying to give all these stars adequate screen time results in a diluted film.  For further examples of this see Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen.

 

9) They attack the Iranian Embassy without provocation.  And when the fight is over, they offer no explanation (top secret, of course).  Yet, there are no consequences to this course of action.  I was on the edge of my seat wondering how they were going to get out of this situation.  Turns out that a budding nuclear power headed by a madman just laughed the whole thing off.  You can't do something in a movie that would have such intense real-world repercussions and not address it.  It's very off putting.

 

10) This last one is both good and bad.  RED 2 has some great practical effects.  A lot of real stunts and explosions are on display.  I love practical effects.  Even when they don't look all that good, practical effects feel real, because they are real.  The problem in RED 2 is that they also use a lot of CGI.  When CGI is put next to real things, it looks cartoony.

 

But RED 2 ends up being a crazy, fun movie.  It's a bunch of actors you know and love having a great time blowing things up and shooting people.  It's got enough comedy and kick-ass ladies to placate most girlfriends/wives.  It's got enough old people kicking ass to make your dad happy (and leave him feeling like he could still take you in a fight).  This is just a great action flick that most anyone can enjoy.  So, rub some Ben-Gay on your joints and sprinkle some Metamucil on your popcorn, because RED 2 is going to rock your night.

 

7.5 out of 10