RED 2

 

2010's RED (an acronym for Retired, Extremely Dangerous) was a surprisingly entertaining little film that worked thanks to its mixture of action, comedy, and the sight of Helen Mirren kicking ass.  It didn't set the world on fire, but it didn't need to.  Now here is RED 2, and while it still has all the elements that made the first entertaining, it doesn't feel as satisfying of a movie.  Maybe the formula's just not as fresh the second time around.  Or maybe this is yet another sequel that we didn't need.  The cast is up there on the screen, giving it their all, but it just doesn't feel as fun as before.

Bruce Willis is back as retired CIA agent, Frank Moses.  He's still trying to lead a quiet life with his new girlfriend, Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), but is forced back into action when his old friend from the agency, Marvin (John Malkovich), approaches him and informs Frank that someone has set him up, and now people are coming to kill him.  It seems someone has leaked plans to a top secret nuclear weapon on line, and Frank has been pinned with the blame.  Now he has to go on a globe-spanning mission to not only clear his name, but also find out who is in control of the dangerous weapon.  Also back from the first movie, and aiding Frank in his mission, is ice-cold MI6 killer, Victoria (Helen Mirren).  There are some new faces joining the cast this time around, including a crazed scientist who helped invent the weapon years ago (Anthony Hopkins), a Russian femme fatalle (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and a Korean contract killer (Byung-hun Lee).

The storyline makes little sense as it sends the characters careening from one location to the next (Russia, London, Kansas, Paris...) with little rhyme or reason.  But hey, the plot for the first movie didn't make all that much sense, either.  What made that film work was its sense of humor, and how everyone in the cast seemed to be in on the joke.  This time around, there's still fun to be had, but also some long stretches where the audience grows restless.  I think a big part of this is outside of Frank and Sarah (who all but steals the movie, thanks to Parker's expert comic timing), a lot of the returning characters are given little to do, or anything that's all that memorable.  And the new characters introduced in this film do little to impress.  At first, Hopkins' character seems like he'll be a lot of fun, but a plot twist I will not reveal (it's predictable to begin with) changes him from being interesting to a generic type.

There are also way too many moments in RED 2 that left me scratching my head.  A character appears to die in one scene, but comes back a couple scenes later, as it turns out they faked their own death.  Okay, this is fine and good.  But the movie never explains exactly how they did it, or how they survived the murder attempt in the first place.  It feels like the screenwriters couldn't come up with a valid explanation as to how the character survives, so they just skim right over the obvious question, hoping the audience doesn't notice.  In another instance, a helicopter carrying some of the main characters is shot down and it crashes, yet the characters simply walk away without a single mark on them.  The movie could have easily had fun with this, or maybe made a joke out of it, but once again, it feels like the writers just have them survive out of desperation.  And since the movie is PG-13, the violence has a heavily edited and largely bloodless quality to it, where it feels like certain scenes were toned down in post-production.

That's not to say that the movie is a total disappointment, as there are some laughs to be had here.  As I mentioned earlier, Mary-Louise Parker gets to really stand out this time around with some funny back-and-forth dialogue with Willis, as well as a couple individual moments where she tries to prove she has what it takes to stand out in her boyfriend's former field of work.  John Malkovich also gets some sharp one liners, even if he does seem to be sitting on the sidelines a bit more than the last movie.  Heck, everybody who walks into this movie seems to be having a great time.  It just doesn't carry over to the audience as strongly as it did before.  That's because the convoluted and nonsensical plot keeps on getting in the way.  The actors were able to rise above the material last time, but this time, they get beaten down just a little.

 

RED 2 is not a terrible sequel, but it definitely kills any desire I may have had to see a third installment (which, I must admit, was very small to begin with).  It obviously understands what made the original work, but it doesn't implement these elements as well.  What we get is a movie with brief flashes of comic inspiration, and a lot of action that feels like warmed-over summer leftovers.

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