Red 2 brings the fun but that’s about it

If it’s a universal truth that everyone grows up, it’s also one that everyone grows old. Barring tragedy, of course, there’s an interesting parallel trick of “coming-of-age” with “facing-the-inevitable” that life plays on us. It’s a bit different; people don’t like feeling useless or pointless, they don’t want to be left out as the world keeps going, although it often tends to do that. Naturally, coming-of-age stories are a dime a dozen because we can all relate to that. But not everyone can relate to the “twilight of life” movies, because not everyone is there yet. Of course, there are more audience members of a certain age in affluent countries than there have been in years past, and it’s no surprise that they can strike a chord. The first RED movie played on this idea, measuring a full life of competence and occasional mistakes against the worry that there are no good days left. Naturally, the point there was that it’s really up to you. If you’re Bruce Willis or Helen Mirren, of course.

RED 2 is the sequel to the original RED action movie, based on the comic book where the acronym stood for Retired and Extremely Dangerous. Bruce Willis got to play Frank Moses, a kickass grizzled older guy with a girlfriend, Sarah, who’s only ten years younger (Mary-Louise Parker), and in movie math, that’s practically the same age. John Malkovich played Marvin, a crazed and hyper-competent former spook while Helen Mirren played Victoria, an elegant older lady who also happens to be a deadly spy. They had great fun in their “if this wasn’t these folks, it’d be boring” movie, while also slightly touching on the subject of how older people’s lives can be boring and stale. Naturally the sequel is more of the same; Frank and Sarah are married now, but neither one is entirely happy. Bored with mundanity. Luckily it turns out everyone’s about to try to kill them. So it’s a bit of a classic sort of spy romp, with a few supporting roles that are entirely spoiled by the previews and movie posters. The only relevant ones are Catherine-Zeta Jones as an older Russian femme fatale and Anthony Hopkins as a crackpot scientist who may hold the secret to averting nuclear war. You know, the usual. As might be expected, things get even more international when Han, “the greatest assassin in the world” (played by Korean superstar Lee Byung-hun) is hired to kill them also. Typical. But again, the story isn’t really the point.

In any spy movie, you want some twists and turns you don’t see coming. RED 2 is ultimately extremely predictable in its plot, but this is only annoying when it thinks it’s being clever; it only happens a few times. But the other draw of a movie like this are the characters. And the comic book-styled heroes of RED 2 are enormous fun, although the best performance is by Malkovich. Marvin is a bit nuts, but he knows what he’s doing, and he’s a true friend to both Frank and Sarah in different ways. His support is both the most endearing and the funniest parts of the movie. Neal McDonough as the “villain” is decent, although the story gets a bit odd trying to replicate the magic of Karl Urban’s character from the first movie. There’s far too much of trying to show the “grey” sides of things when people are just murdering each other without a care. As for the others, Helen Mirren doesn’t do much, but she always does it with style, while Catherine Zeta-Jones vamps it up in a very campy performance. Anthony Hopkins does the best he can with weak material, sometimes even elevating it at times.

It’s the action and heroes that make this movie fun, but it’s the writing and “winking” attempts at cleverness that make it forgettable. The movie can be light and funny at times, although any time it tries to get remotely serious it tends to fail at it. Still, it’s decent summer popcorn fun. The concept remains more interesting than the execution, but that’s sort of the way things go.