{"id":2269,"date":"2011-01-29T15:00:31","date_gmt":"2011-01-29T20:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2269"},"modified":"2011-01-29T15:00:31","modified_gmt":"2011-01-29T20:00:31","slug":"dvd-red-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2269","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Red (2010)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>P to R<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: very Good \/ DVD Transfer: Excellent \/ DVD Extras: Very Good<\/p>\n

Label: Summit\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: January 25, 2011<\/p>\n

Genre: Action \/ Comic Book<\/p>\n

Synopsis: A band of retired CIA agents fight back when someone hunts them down with seemingly no logic besides a found list.<\/p>\n

Special Features:\u00a0CIA Exposed: Audio Commentary with retired CIA Field Officer Robert Baer \/ Deleted and Extended Scenes \/ Access Red: Immersive 6-part interactive feature including pop up trivia, videos, interviews and more<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

After a promising debut with the noir \/ Se7en<\/strong> riff Tattoo<\/strong> (2002), German director Robert Schwentke did what most foreign directors are compelled to do at least once in their career: come to Hollywood, which he did, and his first venture was Flightplan<\/strong> (2005), the morose tale of a widow losing her daughter on the new mega-Airbus plane with no one believing she boarded as mother + daughter.<\/p>\n

That drama\u2019s second act became a tedious thriller whose villains were easily identified within the first hour. Schwentke\u2019s next American film had him trying to make sense of Bruce Jay Rubin\u2019s terrible adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger\u2019s novel The Time Traveler\u2019s Wife<\/strong> (2009), which needed reshoots in Toronto that failed to make the film nothing more than manipulative romantic crap with plot holes bigger than the CN Tower.<\/p>\n

Red<\/strong>, based on Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner\u2019s graphic novel<\/a> and adapted by Jon and Erich Hoeber (Whiteout<\/strong>), was a substantive improvement over Schwentke\u2019s prior English language work, and while mood and a great visual style are present in his films, Red<\/strong> has a plot that\u2019s very simple: retired CIA operatives find themselves being hunted down by younger agents, and when the culprit is finally revealed, they turn the tables.<\/p>\n

Nothing in Red<\/strong> is serious, but its lightness as an action-comedy comic book movie is also its downfall. Unlike The Losers<\/strong> \u2013 which contains a similar plot of covert operatives using their skills to track down and unmask the villain(s) responsible for a grand assassination attempt \u2013 Red<\/strong> is mostly all fluff, and for a while it\u2019s giddy fun to watch its superb living legends cast bouncing off each other and having fun, but little by little, it\u2019s clear that without its action scenes, Red<\/strong> isn\u2019t sufficiently witty or original, and the dialogue lacks the wryness that made Kick-Ass<\/strong> and The Losers<\/strong> much more fun.<\/p>\n

Red<\/strong> does have fine moments of absurdity, but they\u2019re infrequent. One highlight worth mentioning is a single shot where Bruce Willis makes use of \u201cthe pig\u201d (a RPG launcher) and we follow the path as the rocket leaves the launcher, arcs in the sky, drops down on its target, and blows the shit out of a villainous thug. It\u2019s a superb Road Runner moment, and more would\u2019ve helped between the bridge scenes that generally have Willis and Mary-Louise Parker doing road trips in stolen vehicles.<\/p>\n

Willis effectively downplays his role as kind of a humble bureaucrat who happens to be in love with the phone operator he snatched (Parker), Karl Urban keeps the nasty bruises of his fights instead of getting little Hollywood scars that heal magically over hours, Ernest Borgnine steals our attention in his two scenes as a benevolent records keeper, Brian Cox is marvelous as an ex-KGB spy who wants just one more kill because he\u2019s in \u2018assassination withdrawal,\u2019 and Helen Mirren is the sexiest over 50 CIA agent, firing an awesome sub-machine gun and doing great stuntwork with automatic weapons in a white evening dress.<\/p>\n

Unlike his prior dour and gloomy films, Red<\/strong> proves Schwentke has a sense of humour, and he\u2019s quite capable of finding and milking lightness in otherwise tightly-choreographed action and fight scenes. Willis and Urban beating the crap out of each other is memorable, as is Mirren\u2019s gunplay in a parking garage \u2013 both sharply edited by veteran Thom Noble (Thelma and Louise<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

Composer Christophe Beck (Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/strong>, Waiting for Superman<\/strong>) provides a strangely effective blend of blues, funk, and electronica, and Florian Ballhaus\u2019 cinematography is lush in colour and detail. There are many practical effects, and the production made good use of the brief New Orleans and Toronto locations, with the latter substituting for many major U.S. cities. (Torontonians will easily pick out the Toronto Reference Library<\/a>, The Royal York Hotel<\/a>, the Hearne Generating Station<\/a>, and Chinatown by Spadina<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Summit Entertainment\u2019s DVD includes a handful of decent extras, and among the deleted scenes the only shorn material that should\u2019ve been retained are two scenes between Urban and Michelle Nolden as his wife, which humanize Urban\u2019s character as a decent guy doing a job and struggling to find emotional intimacy with his family when he\u2019s always on call. The rest are just scene extensions that add little more than dialogue, or a slightly longer (but inferior) end scene prior to the credit roll.<\/p>\n

Red is amiable comic book fluff leavened by a fantastic cast, but hardly the beginning of a potential franchise.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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Related external links (MAIN SITE):<\/em><\/p>\n

CD: Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/a> <\/strong>(2008) — <\/strong>Waiting for Superman<\/a> <\/strong>(2010)<\/p>\n

DVD \/ Film: \u00a0Kick-Ass<\/a><\/strong> (2010) —\u00a0Losers, The<\/a><\/strong> (2010) —\u00a0Whiteout<\/a> <\/strong>(2009)<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Official Website<\/a> — \u00a0Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Buy from:<\/em><\/p>\n

Amazon.com<\/strong> \u2013 Red (Special Edition)<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/strong> – Red<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon.co.uk <\/strong> – Red [DVD] [2010]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em><\/em><\/em>\/\u00a0P to R<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ P to R . Film: very Good \/ DVD Transfer: Excellent \/ DVD Extras: Very Good Label: Summit\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: January 25, 2011 Genre: Action \/ Comic Book Synopsis: A band of retired CIA agents fight back when someone hunts them down with seemingly no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[215,281],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-AB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2272,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions\/2272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}