RED 2
English (U/A) ¬¬¬½
Director: Dean Parisot
Cast: Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren
Some actors are timeless. They deliver performances which never fail to impress, even with age taking a toll on their once good-looking faces.
Bruce Willis returns in RED 2, completely immersed in the character of the much-loved Frank Moses.
Without failing to pack a punch, Frank takes down enemies by the dozen. Sarah (Mary Louise Parker), his adventure-hungry girlfriend, pushes Frank into this mission, saving him from a house-boy lifestyle and their relationship from being boringly ordinary.
With a plot more comical than RED, Frank and Sarah are on the run from the government, alongside Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich), their paranoid satellite-phobic friend, by killing enemies and stealing transport to get around the world.
With whimsical traits and hard-core ones, the trio stumble upon incredulous characters. Victoria (Helen Mirren), an MI6 agent and an old friend, has been hired to kill them.
Frank’s old nemesis, a contract-killer named Han (Lee Byung-Hun), has a 20-million dollar reason to kill him, besides a personal vendetta for landing him in jail. Katya (Catherine-Zeta Jones), a Russian spy, has a love-hate relationship with Frank, an ex-lover.
Anthony Hopkins plays Dr Bailey, an eccentric weapons-specialist kept in jail for 32 years, a character reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter. As the doctor would say, the character is “jolly good”.
The action is far less farfetched than most movies of the same genre, although a modicum of disbelief must be suspended.
In RED, Frank walks out of a moving car devoid of trouble, with his pistol aimed to take a perfect shot which became the most memorable scene of the movie. The sequel delivers equally entertaining and inertia-defying moments to the thrill of a viewer.
With riveting action sequences, there are few things to criticise. Perhaps, a few conversations in the movie to do with life and love could have been done without for maximum unadulterated action. Besides the emotional and unnecessary tirades and a bit of predictability, RED 2 checks all the right boxes and more.
Get popcorn to chew on when you watch it to avoid facial stiffness. Don’t forget to blink.