Movie Review - RED 2

RED 2 is the sequel to, funnily enough, 2010s RED which was quite an entertaining movie about retired secret agents getting reluctantly dragged back into action and doing what they do best.  So is this a case of sequelitis or does RED 2 stand up as its own experience.

RED 2 sees Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) trying to settle down with girlfriend Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) and most importantly keep her safe.  When one of his friends from the first movie, Marvin (John Malkovich) tries to warn him that trouble is coming Frank again has to fight for his life.

For those who don't know RED stands for "Retired, Extremely Dangerous", a term coined for the most deadly secret agents who have ever been, and when these agents are being played by the likes of Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Anthony Hopkins well it makes it hard for this to be that bad of a movie.  At the beginning it really feels like it's trying too hard to top the original and some of the early sequences do suffer a little, but after a short time it starts to find it's feet and heads into rather silly international intrigue.  A lot of what happens is pretty far fetched and the characters themselves get a little contradictory at times, like Han Cho Bai (Byung-hun Lee) originally being shown as a subtle and very intelligent character in his first seen yet ends up being one of the most casually violent characters in the movie.   But this movie is really about taking you on a rollercoaster ride.  Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren really add a lot of class to proceedings and the twists and turns are occasionally surprising.

It's also refreshing that Willis doesn't do any "I'm too old for this" gags anywhere in the entire movie.  It seems that worn out cliche is being left in the travesty of Die Hard 5, thank goodness.

RED 2 may raise concerns at the very start, but soon settles down into an enjoyable, and often funny, action romp.  The two leads don't add much but with a supporting casts full of fantastic actors taking up the slack it really ends up being better than the sum of it's parts.  Just don't think too much about it.

In a word - BOOM!

A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD

Being a fan of the Die Hard franchise, yes even number four, I did hold some hope for the fifth installment and was wondering how they were going to complete the following pattern:

Building, Airport, New York City, USA, ?

Unfortunately it is not clear exactly what John McClane is meant to be saving this time.  In fact I really find it difficult to accept that this even is a Die Hard movie.

If you want to avoid the following rant the summarised version is...  this movie is awful.

Without doing any research it seems very clear that this started out as a completely separate story and subsequently had the "Die Hard" bits forced in with a crowbar.  It completely lacks any of the sense of urgency or purpose in the previous films and every idea put forward is only used to justify the lead character's intention to "go kill the bad guys".  Remember this duo consists of a Police officer and his CIA agent son.

To rub salt into this already open wound of a film the repeated "I'm on vacation" and "I'm too old for this shit" gags start to grate very early on then continue to fester, then decompose, as the movie drags on.

As for the action sequences, they obligatory car chase is dragged out and dull, the two compulsory "battle the chopper" scenes culminate in near identical escapes and the shoot outs offer very little tension or excitement.

I understand that John McClane is meant to be estranged from his son but there is virtually no chemistry in the interchanges between Bruce Willis and Jai Courtney.  Even when they are meant to be berating each other it comes off as little more than a couple of casual acquaintances having a minor disagreement.  And as for the bad guys, I've think the movie posters have more character and depth than what is displayed on screen.

This is a very poor action movie to begin with, made worse by the adding of the Die Hard label which invites comparisons with much better films of this genre.

Avoid.