By Brett Mejia ’13
THE ROUNDUP

“RED” is an explosive, gun-crazy, and action packed film that brings together four movie on one screen.

Oh yes, and did I mention comedy?

“RED”—“Retired, Extremely Dangerous”—is a film directed by Robert Schwentke who is known for movies such as “Flightplan” and “The Time Traveler’s Wife”. He brings together movie legends and turns them into super-soldiers.

“RED” is about four retired CIA agents who have been framed for an assassination that makes them the CIA’s biggest targets. So the four must band together to do all of what they can to stay alive and stop the operation that is going on within the government.

Bruce Willis (Frank Moses), John Malkovich (Marvin Boggs), Helen Mirren (Victoria) and Morgan Freeman (Joe Matheson) together make the best team of retired assassins. Along with Brian Cox and Mary-Louise Parker, the cast brings the movie to life.

“RED” to me seemed, at first, like a shoot-em up movie with bullets flying and tactical teams infiltrating buildings, but that wasn’t the case for the rest of the movie.

The movie has a great storyline along with enough action scenes to keep you holding onto your seats.

In the opening scene, “RED” focuses on Frank Moses (Willis) who is a retired black-ops CIA agent.

Frank is then introduced to Sarah who works for Frank’s pension. After he is done talking to her, a group of soldiers surround Franks house, but Frank manages to escape and goes to Kansas City to pick up Sarah because they have become targets on the Agency’s list.

Frank and Sarah go across the country to pick up Matheson, Boggs and Victoria because they too are on the Agency’s list.

Once the four retirees and Sarah are together, they plan to put a stop on to the Agency’s list and end up having to break into the CIA’s headquarters in order to uncover the conspiracies and one of the biggest cover-ups in the government’s history.

The movie is filled with comical comments and well preformed fight scenes. Although some incidents are predictable, “RED” still captures the viewer’s attention.

The explosion scenes were well done, but I think that the opening scene where the tactical team was firing bullets on Frank’s house was a bit much.

Twenty-five soldiers just opening fire on one house for more than a minute seemed too long and a bit annoying.

Also some of the camera angles seemed to be a little grainy so at some points of the movie it was hard to see what was going on in great detail.

Then again when there is a lot of action going on it is hard to capture all of what is happening.

The film surprised me with how good it turned out.  I thought that it was going to contain a lot of old humor and a couple of action sequences, but I was wrong.

I recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys action and comedy.

4 out of 5 horseshoes