FILMRed 2
(12A) 116mins
★★✩✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
The excellent cast have fun with the quips and the thrills in this espionage sequel but their enjoyment is rarely contagious.
REVIEW
Much like Han Cho Bai, the Korean assassin seated behind a mega-machine gun, this film fires bullets in such quantities that it would seem impossible to miss the target - but does.
The first Red, which saw greying (or balding) spies revived for one last gig, was a sleeper hit of 2010. Evidently surprised that the saggy-skinned assassins were box office gold, a second was ordered up - and it proves a step too far.
While there is plenty to enjoy here - car chases are dramatic, the black hats and white hats are easily delineated in that big Bond fashion and the cast enjoys their wry quipping.
And who can tire of Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, Anthony Hopkins? And on the yank side, Bruce Willis is in fine self-deprecating form aided by mad-eyed John Malkovich alongside the charming Mary-Louise Parker.
But there is a jump the shark moment, which will, one hopes, bring the whole enterprise to a close. Helen Mirren has to break into an insane asylum next to Tower Bridge (yes, I know - and that isn't even it).
To do so, in Scooby Doo fashion, she feigns mental illness, barking and deranged and claiming that she is, er, Queen Elizabeth I, complete with crown. Gedditt? That Mirren woman off that Queen movie playing a mad queen. See what they did there?
Aside from that, here's the story. Domesticated Frank (Willis) is buying barbecues and bantering at CostCo with wife Sarah (Parker), both of them going insane in the suburbs.
Then Marvin (Malkovich) shows up and says that the existence of Nightshade, a weapons system from back in the day, has been exposed and all the nefarious powers are on the trail.
For reasons that aren't entirely apparent, they all want Frank - freelance Brit killer Victoria (Mirren), Han Cho Bai (Byung-hun Lee) under contract to the US and the Russian's femme fatale and Frank's Kryptonite Katja (Catherine Zeta Jones).
Meanwhile the weapon's inventor Bailey (Anthony Hopkins) who knows the location of said weapon is either mad, dead or dangerous to know.
The chase is set across multiple locations a lot of them in London, although Tobacco Dock in Wapping doubles for the Kremlin catacombs.
Director Dean Parisot, one kindly assumes, recognises when that oldsters quickly overstay their welcome and figures that the plot ran out a reel ago so attempts to compensate with some bravura setpieces.
But even for the most moist-eyed cinephile the plotholes are amateurish and nagging.
For a start, cold-eyed assassins who think nothing of dispatching innocent bystanders in the most fiendish of ways have to undergo changes of heart simply on receipt of the Bruce Willis trademark perplexed half-stare.
Red 2? Red faces.
