Deadly Furniture

Sometimes studios get the wonderful idea to throw together some really talented, famous, and well-liked actors and have them say lines from a script that somebody wrote. In the case of Red, the script came from a graphic novel (which, if I remember correctly, fans claimed the film butchered. But I haven’t read it so…) and the actors are Bruce Willis (he was in Armageddon), Dame Helen Mirren (she’s cool), Morgan “Fox” Freeman, John Melkovich (stuffs), and Brian Cox (aka Agamemnon). The before-mentioned names all play retired agents who realize that they’re being hunted down and must therefore un-retire. Hijinks ensue.

Rounding out the cast is Karl “Eomer” Urban as the bad guy. Urban never feels like a big threat however because you don’t cast Karl “Bones” Urban to be the “I’m a twisted, unsaveable villain who must die before the end of this movie.” You cast him as the hot and sympathetic family man that makes the audience say, “Oh can’t these peeps just get along?” Then there’s Mr. Holland, a guest appearance by Jeffrey Spender, and, the real problem of the movie, Mary-Louise Parker. Oh Mary Louise, why do I dislike you so? Perhaps it’s because of your lack of expression, perhaps it’s because you ruined the perfection that was The West Wing season three, or perhaps it’s because you are just really unlikable. To be honest, as soon as I saw her name in the opening credits I was more than a little tempted to turn the thing off and therefore avoid the whole having to watch her not-act thing, but her name came after everyone else’s so I thought she would be a bit part.

She wasn’t. In fact, she get’s into some sort of chemistry-less relationship with Willis’s character which means that she gets a lot, a lot, a lot of screen time. By halfway through I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry until she left. And she did leave, actually, for the best twenty minutes of the entire film. I have to ask myself, because I do, if I would have liked the relationship better if it hadn’t been Mary-Louise Parker and I doubt it. In some strange, yet fundamental way, the relationship just doesn’t work (character inconsistency baring most of the blame). Fear not, however, because Dame Helen Mirren is here and her story is by far the more interesting and more sweet.

But all joking and Mary Louise hating aside, the film was somewhat of a let-down. I guess I was hoping that it would be another Oceans 11, a trilogy that I love even though apparently I’m not supposed to. Where George Clooney keeps his movie going at a quick pace, Red seems to take forever to introduce the main characters and get them all together. It took over an hour for Helen Mirren to grace the screen which is itself a crime. I wanted the film to deserve these big names and I wanted to feel like these lords and lady of filmmaking had to at least put a little effort into their roles. But it was obvious that they didn’t; that all of them could have done this in their sleep. Believe it or not, the person that may have had to do the most acting was Julian McMahon (that guy from Nip/Tuck and Charmed). I know. Shocker.

So I guess I don’t know what to tell you about this one. There’s nothing memorable about it, and it depends too much on its big names to carry the day. But they are still big names and they are still fun to watch on screen. For all the Mary-Louise Parker there is a little bit of Helen Mirren. Red is a distraction, a nice two-hours that you can talk over with friends, but I don’t think that it’s anything more.