Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is a retired CIA agent whose biggest problem these days is boredom. The only highlight in his life is making daily phone calls to the government pension processing center where he talks to Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker), his case worker. Sarah is much younger, but equally bored. Her only excitement is reading spy novels and getting daily calls from Frank.
Frank's boring life suddenly changes when his house is invaded by a team of highly trained agents sent to assassinate him. After dispatching the assassins, Frank knows they will target Sarah due to their high frequency of phone calls. He kidnaps Sarah in order to save her and takes her on a wild ride like those she often read about in her spy novels. When the assassins go after the other members of Frank's old team, it becomes obvious that the entire team has been marked for extermination. Frank and his entire team are classified as RED: Retired, Extremely Dangerous.
Frank gets his old team back together. Their only chance for survival is to find out who wants them dead and take them out first. His team consists of Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich), weapons specialist who is not quite sane due to many years of experimental government testing with LSD; Victoria (Helen Mirren), sharpshooter and romantic; and Joe Matheson (Morgan Freeman), disguises/impersonation and oldest member of the team. Frank's specialty is hand-to-hand combat, and he trained the person that trained the agents trying to kill them.
Red has a truly stellar cast that doesn't disappoint. The acting is as great as you would expect with this line-up. To add to this incredible cast, minor roles are played by Richard Dreyfuss as Alexander Dunning, Brian Cox as Ivan Simanov (Frank's old rival from the former KGB), Ernest Borgnine as Henry (the old records keeper), and Karl Urban as Agent Cooper. Many of us will recall Karl Urban as Eomer in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King or as Vaako in The Chronicles of Riddick.
In addition to the great cast and acting, Red is a fast-paced movie with lots of over-the-top action. Gun fights, a great fight scene between Bruce Willis and Karl Urban, explosions, chases, lots of spy-movie staples, and more comedy than you expect for an action movie like this. Red is thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. After watching this movie on demand, I bought the DVD so I can watch it again and again. I give it a grade of 5/6.
Watch the trailer (not a spoiler):
