Loose cannons - old but not rusty

Film review: RED

MANILA, Philippines - In a business that worships the youth like god because they comprise the majority of the movie market, RED is welcome entertainment even if it’s a slambang non-stop action movie, for the principal characters belong to the 50-and-above age group. This is the action movie for senior citizens and retirees, the sector that ageists would call “gurang” or “Jurassic,” people who should be taking it easy after a lifetime of hard work.

RED is about a man (spy, mercenary, criminal) who’s giving the old job another try. It is not a movie for critics, though the accomplished cast seems to have been assembled to lure them. Still, whatever one’s profession or dispensation, it is fun in a deadly way. The source is what we would call comicbook. The more appropriate — rather, correct — term is graphic novel.

The title RED does not refer to commie, anger, or intense sexual passion; rather it’s acronym for “retired and extremely dangerous.” How action-loving seniors in real life now have a new word for themselves or each other. In the movie, the term belies the concept of “permanent retirement.”

The action which moves all over America, is fast-paced, but not so fast as to, well, you blink and you miss the scene. The filmmakers have the good sense to eschew MTV editing speed. One more proof this is meant for the elderly.

And if the “heroes” are past their prime, their adversaries are young and meaner — badder. In an earlier time, the good guys were good guys, even if they toppled regimes and plotted assassinations. Here, the good guys were once the bad guys but are more sympathetic maybe because of their age or the circumstances they are in.

The new ruthless bad guys are led by 38-year-old Karl Urban (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 2002, The Return of the King, 2003, The Bourne Supremacy, 2004). He cares for his wife and kid but he and his cohorts are not as well-delineated as the grayer, machinegun-toting gang. They are just villains.

Throughout the movie, you wonder if Urban would emerge as wayward or just plain psycho, or a power-grabbing, devious government agent (that notoriety belongs to this dastardly guy who wants to be president. Hollywood movies are careful and reluctant about portraying US presidents and other officials as true evil. In Urban’s case, he has no personal agenda. He is simply being professional and dedicated.

As for the gang of Reds, they have Bruce Willis to lead them, ready to die hard and kill hard. The warriors are former CIA agents who are being pursued and eliminated for the extremely dangerous secrets they know. Bruce enlists and reactivates the career of colleagues otherwise enjoying the peace and contentment of retirement.

The actors who play these ex-agents on the run are of different ages but they are all made to look old. John Malkovich, the paranoiac, looks older than the actor’s real-life 57. Brian Cox, the Russian guy, is 64. James Remar, a Hollywood heavy in the ‘70s and ‘80s, is still deadly and nasty.

Four former Oscar Best Actor winners grace the marquee: Helen Mirren (The Queen, 2006) letting down her hair in a classy turn as action dame; she’s 64. Morgan Freeman (Driving Miss Daisy, 1989, and in supporting role, Million Dollar Baby 2004), cancer-stricken but still given to prurience, is supposedly only 49 in real life but looks two decades older. Richard Dreyfuss (The Goodbye Girl, 1977), turns 63 on Oct. 29 (he looks his age). And most awesome of them all, Ernest Borgnine (the small drama Marty, 1955), is a whopping 92.

 Willis, whose career-defining movie Die Hard was released 22 years ago, is the baby at 55.

Opposite Willis is the young, pretty, and kooky Mary Louise Parker as his willing captive. She is tied down in bed and sustains bruises and wounds, and is carried around on a man’s shoulders. Then she bounces back like a Merrie Melody toon. In the history of feminism, Parker’s character can only be prehistoric. She’s the cave woman being dragged around by her Neanderthal conquistador swinging a club.

So ostensibly “Reds” isn’t kiddie stuff. The blood bath and body count are not appropriate to children. The pacing and action and violence recall the recent Knight and Day with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz but that movie is pure cartoon compared to “Reds” and not only because “Reds” is chiefly populated by old fogies. The script takes pains to present the odd amalgam of Reds as real people.

Some scenes you see them loving or wanting to love, acting crazy, and generally motivated by some fear or desire; they are not just predators and prey. Other times, they flee foes and decimate them like figures in a video game but that’s all right. It helps that the actors are so good that the movie does not degenerate into a mere acted video game. Gray has never been redder.