Thursday, August 08, 2013

Red

Since Red 2 was coming out in theaters, I thought it might be time for me to finally watch the first film. I had been interested in it because the original trailers were rather funny and it was a movie full of actors that I always enjoy. Just having Bruce Willis usually means I'll at least give it a try.

I'm also a pretty big fan of action films, in general, though there are some tropes of the genre that I'm getting more than a bit tired of. Excessive chase sequences being one of them (just wait until I review Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, I'll rant about it then). But I was really pleased to see that Red didn't really fall into very many of those cliches. It was pretty refreshing, and made it a really enjoyable evening.

The story gets going quickly, and while some of the action sequences are really not at all believable, at the same time I was willing to let them get away with it because the characters were so much fun and the actors are really into it and giving it their best.

Pretty much everything comes together well, from the direction to the cinematography, and the special effects are especially well done. The plot itself is almost secondary, it's kind of a standard "the secret agents have been betrayed by somebody taking over the government behind the scenes." It's sometimes pretty predictable actually, but there's a great sense of sarcasm and fun to everything that happens. The writing isn't good because of the action things that happen, but the clever dialogue and excellent characters, it makes me wonder how much of that came from the original comic and how much was the screenwriter or even the actors.

I don't have too many specific things to day because so many things worked well. It's a great film, anybody who likes action films should give it a shot. I'll definitely be watching the sequel, though I wonder if it's possible for the next movie to even approach this kind of experience. It seems like the first one was a great contained piece, so I don't know that I even wanted a sequel, but I'm not unhappy that it exists.