James Bond doesn’t misfire his gun at his desk. He doesn’t
stutter his way through an interrogation. He definitely doesn’t awkwardly
eyeball potential suspects in chic French cafés. For all these reasons and many
more, James Bond is a capable spy, but this isn’t a story about James Bond.
It’s about Sarah, a super spy’s clueless girlfriend.
Sarah is played by Mary-Louise Parker in one of those roles
that’s too refreshing for the movie that contains it. Sarah is still coming to
grips with the events of the original Red,
in which her boyfriend Frank Moses (Bruce Willis), a retired government assassin,
kidnapped her in an overly complicated, yet whimsical, plot concerning lots of
government secrets. Here, Sarah is again bound into an even more complex plot,
with even more whimsy. If you liked the first Red, you’ll find this sequel’s delivery enjoyably familiar.
Red 2’s rambunctious
spirit, darting from one high-octane encounter to another, is a strange mixture
of grim government paranoia — with lots of murder — and trivial slapstick at
its goofiest. These competing tonal shifts frequently work against each other,
even as scenes of contract killers executing secretaries with silenced pistols
transition into mid-gunfight lovers’ quarrels. I didn’t like these opposing
forces, mostly because I preferred Red 2’s
sillier side over its bloody other half.
And by silly, I mean Sarah kissing her captives because … “well,
it works in the movies.” Or Sarah begging for Frank to take a new spy contract
from the baked beans aisle at the nearby Costco. Or Sarah launching a European
car down a narrowing alley until it’s so wedged in that the scene sent
claustrophobia-induced shivers up my arms. I like Sarah, and I love how Parker
plays her: flighty, ditzy, maniacally eager to use a gun and jealous of Frank’s
spy conquests, especially that curvy KGB spy with hipster bangs (Catherine
Zeta-Jones). Willis, for his part, plays into Parker’s manic giddiness. They
often reminded me of the cheery-fun Rock Hudson and Doris Day movies, except
with lots more guns and murder.
Once again joining the RED team — “retired, extremely dangerous”
— are Marvin (John Malkovich), the LSD-bred yahoo, and Victoria (Helen Mirren),
the ice queen whose sexualized prowess with guns and killing machines seems to
contradict her polished, queen-like nature. Yes, the joke here is that Helen
Mirren, a frequent film queen, is a plucky killer. Red 2 beats this motif over your head, but I couldn’t help but
smile as another spy (Brian Cox) finds titillating amusement out of Victoria ’s sniper
stance: flat on her belly with a stocking’d foot raised, arched and twinkling
like a ballerina’s.
Between Willis, Parker, Malkovich and Mirren, Red 2 is a full house. But then it feels
compelled to add a bunch more stuff, including the Zeta-Jones character and
other double-, triple- and quadruple-crossing spy agents. Neal McDonough turns
up as a hired gun, as does a mini-gun totin’ Byung-hun Lee, who never forgives
the theft of his private jet. Anthony Hopkins turns up as a crazy scientist who
was locked up in an insane asylum decades earlier. There is a government oversight
committee, CIA, FBI, NSA, senators, generals, competing hitmen, the KGB, MI6 …
it all gets very convoluted very fast. Making matters worse is director Dean
Parisot’s noticeable lack of coverage; in some sequences, it’s as if there were
shots missing, or maybe the editing was a rush job. This small detail has a
noticeable effect on the action, but also on the jokes. If the camera could
only linger a little longer on punch lines, their payoffs would get bigger
reactions. Instead, the film is in too much of a hurry to appreciate the more
subtle and priceless gags.
Mostly, though, the movie has too much going on, especially
considering that its core components — Willis and Parker, and Malkovich and
Mirren — mix so well together. Why dilute that down?
I like silly spy capers like this. Red 2 joins a long list semi-serious comedy capers, from North by Northwest to Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the Brad Pitt and
Angelina Jolie version about an unbelievably compatible spy couple brought
closer together by their competing espionage gigs. Red 2 reminds me most of True
Lies, another movie about a bland woman dating a Bond figure. True Lies is a better movie, and forever
in the pantheon of great action extravaganzas, but Red 2 is no slouch in comparison. And it succeeds in exactly the
same way True Lies did: it gives its
female hero a reason to be heroic and she bravely lives up to the challenge.
