Red

Classy Dames on .50 cal machine guns. Wet dreams ahoy!

This one goes out to my main man Jimbo (who probably hates me calling him Jimbo), who puts up with my childish squeeming and whinging, even if he is a big mean jerkface

Holy shitpoop in a nun’s hat. This movie almost gave me a coronary.

2010’s Red is to film what Donald Trump’s hair is to ridiculousness. It is the very definition of maximum. Before watching this film I’d only really heard one thing about it, which was “It has Bruce Willis.” And that, of course, was enough for me. But when I sat down to watch it my mind almost exploded with the unlimited possibilities of the words appearing onscreen before me: Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Karl Urban and Brian Cox. Every movie needs more Cox, if you want my opinion, which you do, because you’re here. There is also that moderately hot woman from Weeds, but if the previous list doesn’t get your mouth watering then you are either Helen Keller or an Amish person with a massive beard. Either way I don’t like you because you have no taste in movies, and you dress funny.

There is also an appearance by Ernest Borgnine, who I’m sure wasn’t actually cast in the movie, but just showed up on set one day and refused to leave. In my mind the conversation between the director and stage manager went something like this. “Who’s that?” “Ernest Borgnine.” “He’s in this movie?” “No. He just showed up for the free coffee and biscuits.” “Can we get him out of here?” “Already tried, he just grumbled and threw his refuse at me.” “OK guys; let’s just shoot around the crazy old bastard.”

The story revolves around Willis, who is retired Black-Ops agent Frank Moses (branded R.E.D – Retired, Extremely Dangerous) and who has a crush for the quasi-hippy woman that sends him his cheques. It’s retiree-romance. So the first 10 minutes is spent watching Bruce call her up, talk, drink coffee, listen to her talk about shitty romance novels... it’s all pretty gay. But then, KAPOW! He kills like 10 people in about 60 seconds.

Why? Because he’s Bruce motherfucking Willis. Don’t ask stupid questions. Bruce Willis kills people like my mum cries while watching 'Always' on VHS. Uncontrollably. Christ mum, that movie is 20 years old, like you don't know Richard Dreyfuss is going to die every time you watch it, you emotional, menopausal mess.

So he goes to talk to Morgan ‘best supporting actor’ Freeman to find out who they were and is told that the people he killed were a South African wet-work team sent in to ‘formally retire’ Willis. Amateurs. Back to the point, Moses decides to go put his old team of 60+’s back together to get to the bottom of this case. This is where we get Malkovich, playing the crazed and paranoid type that he probably is in real life, Brian Cox playing a KGB officer who’s about as stereotypically Russian as Graham Norton is gay, and Helen Mirren who, despite being 65, carries an M16 sniper rifle with the same familiar ease that a woman from Logan with eight teeth carries her fifth child through the queue at Centrelink and has a rack that not only seems to defy the very laws of gravity, but makes me want to dive head first into her soft bosom (Helen Mirren that is, not the bogan minger with a clown car for a vagina). She plays a great role, which is basically Martha Stewart with a machine gun. I find this worryingly desirable.

 I’d totally butter her scone, if she had a scone and had asked me to butter it, and I had access to said condiment (and in the case of a spread, butter is considered a condiment, not an additive). And by butter her scone I mean I would... well, let’s just say I’d be bragging that I’d ‘taken tea with the Queen’.

Red also stars Julian McMahon, who for whatever reason annoys the shit out of me, as Vice President Stanton, and James Remar who has seemed played the same the cranky police detective since some point in the mid 1980’s. There’s a career to be proud of Mr Remar.

OK, so the story goes that Willis and his gang of bingo playing Senior Citizen Xs band together to try to figure out who wants them all dead, and the conspiracy behind it all. There is plenty of action, explosions, light hearted comedy, bad Russian accents and just a whisper of romance to keep the woman you dragged along to the cinema happy (as long as you also promised you’d have dinner with Greg and Stacey next Tuesday, and also to take her to that thing that she likes next weekend, even though you’d rather go have a vasectomy than sit through 2 hours of interpretive dance). It’s kind of like a meal with the whole food pyramid, but on polyester film instead of a plate, and a gun-toting Bruce Willis instead of a gun-toting side of lamb.

Although I hear rosemary goes great with Bruce Willis. It had better, if it knows what’s good for it.

If you were to ask me whether or not you should see Red right now I would tell you, “If you haven’t seen it already then you’re probably a communist, or you prefer movies with Bill Paxton – which is arguably worse than your red loyalist habits."

Once again I must apologise to my mother, just as she has been apologising for me for the last 25 years.