Better RED than Dead

Watching RED 2 (2013) was pretty much inevitable. I don't think I remembered to blog the first RED; I saw it around the same time as a bunch of similar movies, like the new Mechanic or From Paris with Love, and I guess it fell through the cracks. I kind of liked it - it had a lot of action, and silly love May-December love story, John Malkovich playing a psycho and Helen Mirren.

The new one has all the above. It seems little tired, but that makes sense, since they are theoretically retired. The gag here is that Bruce Willis wants to relax with his young girlfriend Mary Louise Parker, but she wants to do hired killer/spy stuff with the old crew. Adding to the fun are Catherine Zeta-Jones as a femme fatale from Willis' past and Byun Hung Lee as Willis' nemesis.

But I'm afraid it is all a little rote, with only Helen Mirren really cutting through. She brings an amazing amount of presence to the role, and has the best single moment in the movie: Shooting out of the left and right-hand windows of a spinning car. And that scene was in the trailer, so we'd already seen the best part.

Maybe I'm getting a little burned out on these actioners, or maybe this was a particularly uninspired number, but I feel like this is one of those movies that you should only watch if you feel like watching one of these movies. And you don't really care how good it is.