Red 2 isn’t quite as much wicked fun as the original, but it’s very, very close. Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, John Malkovich, and rest of the cast returning from 2010’s Red clearly look like they’re enjoying reprising their roles, and that enjoyment goes a long way in lifting a script that can’t maintain its momentum consistently. Add new cast additions Catherine Zeta-Jones, Byung Hun Lee (G.I. Joe‘s Storm Shadow) and Sir Anthony Hopkins, and what you get in terms of action and laughs is more than enough to allow overlooking the film’s shortcomings.
R.E.D. (Retired Extremely Dangerous) super agent Frank Moses (Willis) and his action-and-adventure junkie girlfriend Sarah (Parker) are finding life together without the threat of bullets whizzing by their heads and bombs exploding all around them a bit challenging. Frank wants nothing more than a life filled with shopping at wholesale stores and grilling in the backyard, but Sarah’s getting a bit antsy with playing house.
Cue Marvin (Malkovich), Frank’s paranoid and kooky old partner, who keeps intruding on Frank’s attempts at normalcy while also trying to clue him in on Sarah’s growing boredom. Marvin’s gotten wind of a document that points the finger for the planting of a weapon of mass destruction called “Nightshade” somewhere in Moscow back in the Cold War squarely at he and Frank. A couple of capture and assassination attempts later, Frank, Sarah, and Marvin are off and running to find out who leaked the document and where Nightshade really is.
Meanwhile, the world’s intelligence agencies, believing Frank and Marvin to suddenly be nuclear terrorists, send their very best assassins after them. Britain’s MI-6 gives the contract on Frank and Marvin’s lives to their old friend Victoria (Helen Mirren), while the CIA hands the job to Han (Lee), the world’s deadliest contract killer and a guy who really, really doesn’t like Frank. Add to this mix Frank’s “kryptonite”, Katja (Zeta-Jones), who now holds a high post in Russian intelligence and still carries a torch for Frank, and Dr. Edward Bailey (Hopkins), Nightshade’s original designer kept drugged up and locked away for decades by MI-6, and you have a dizzying array of personalities all either helping or hindering our heroes as they try to save themselves and the world.
Amazingly, all those moving parts and plotlines don’t collapse upon themselves, and almost all of it works. Almost.
Director Dean Parisot (Fun with Dick and Jane, Galaxy Quest) keeps both the action and the running gags moving along as briskly as he can, working with a script from original Red screenwriters Jon and Erich Hoeber, who try to replicate the breezy fun of the first film in part by replacing departed characters with similar equivalents (Hopkins’ Bailey for Morgan Freeman’s Joe Matheson, Neal McDonough’s Agent Horton for Karl Urban’s Agent Cooper) and adding even more characters and complications. As it turns out, it’s one too many additions: Zeta-Jones’ Katja is woefully underwritten and thus comes off as an obligatory bit of stunt casting. As with most projects she takes supporting roles in, Zeta-Jones is game, but she’s simply not given much to work with. She’s there to vamp it up in outfits with plunging necklines (even her military uniform has one) and get on Sarah’s nerves, and that’s about it.
The other additions/replacements, thankfully, do work rather well. Hopkins is a hoot to watch as Bailey, while Lee gets more lines of dialogue to deliver here than he did in both of the G.I. Joe films he appeared in, and he delivers them well when he’s not delivering kicks and punches in frenetic flurries. Watch also for brief but memorable appearances by Ronny Cox, reprising his role from the first film, and Harry Potter series veteran David Thewlis as a character simply known as “The Frog.” The name alone should make you eager to see him appear and mix it up with Frank and company.
The real joy of the film, of course, comes from the principals involved, in particular Malkovich as the twitchy Marvin and Mirren as Victoria, still as elegant, refined, maternal, and casually homicidal as the last time out. Willis and Parker are cute together, but it’s Malkovich and Mirren who really sell it, who you want to see in every frame, as they just find a way to make espionage wetwork and mayhem look fun.
Maybe that’s not the message the filmmakers and Hollywood want to send to the PG-13 crowd who will pay at the box office to see Red 2, but it sure will leave that crowd feeling like they got their money’s worth.
Score: 3.5 out of 5
Red 2
Starring Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, with Anthony Hopkins, and Helen Mirren, Catherine Zeta Jones, Byung Hun Lee, Brian Cox, Neal McDonough. Directed by Dean Parisot
Running Time: 116 minutes
Rated PG-13 for pervasive action and violence including frenetic gunplay, and for some language and drug material.