The Near Midnight Meanderings On A Movie With A Microwave Meal Part 13: Red (2010)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today,

As a fifty five year old man I should look at an action movie where old people kick butt  and think "Yes!" But hey it's nearly midnight. I want a snooze.

And for me this is the movie's problem from the beginning. Bruce Willis (along with Morgan Freeman, John Malkovitch and Helen Mirren later) is an ex CIA agent (RED Retired Extremely Dangerous) face up to trained baddies young enough to be his grandchildren and don't say "Oh my back!" or "My knee's playing up".

(Though how he deals with Christmas decorations has my vote)

He also seems to tag a much younger girlfriend by a method I'm sure would not have e-harmony approval...yeah right.

In fact probably the closest depiction of what life would really be like is for someone that age is when we first see Morgan Freeman in a care home getting his kicks from admiring the backside of a nurse and watching TV.

So Willis with the girl in tow travel across America trying to work out why people are trying to kill him and have killed others. Thing is for a secret agent Willis is not so secret. Take the scene in New Orleans. Armed with an array of guns and smirks Willis shoots his way along a street in broad daylight. Yet there are no residents prepared to give a description of the gun toting baldy to the police and the local media? Apparently not.

Not only do geriatrics face off against younger opponents, they also do it stylistically (presumably from it's comic book roots) when in reality they'd have just got a round of if capable of just hitting them.

Red is a film not as clever or as funny as it thinks it is. Essentially it's well packaged rubbish. It's that packaging that makes it better than the Steven Segal movies in this series.

But only just.

Until the next time