FEATURE FRIDAY | RED

FEATURE FRIDAY | RED

Welcome to another installment of Feature Friday, in which we share with you some of our favorite Movies & TV shows! When we were first dating, one of the things we bonded over was chatting about some of our favorite shows. We’ve found that it’s the same for a lot of our couples, too! So, every now and then, we will showcase a different movie or show and share some of the reasons why we recommend it and the things that we really like about it. So be sure to tune in, check out some of our favorites, and maybe even turn it into a date night with your fiance! Make dinner or order in and tune in to watch one of our favorites!

This week: Red

A movie starring Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Mary-Louise Parker, Brian Cox, and Richard Dreyfuss seems like a recipe for Oscar-season bait. You could see them anchoring a period drama. Perhaps less so when you add in Bruce Willis, Karl Urban, and Julian McMahon, but hey, actors stretch themselves occasionally.

But of course, that’s not what Red is. No, this is a stylized spy comedy about retired black-ops CIA agents who are being hunted down. Red is an acronym, meaning “Retired, Extremely Dangerous.” Willis plays Frank, who lives alone in Cleveland. His only contact with the outside world is with Sarah (Parker), who works at the pension office that sends him his checks. One night, a wetwork squad tries to kill him but, again, he’s Red, and he wipes them all out. Hijinks ensue when he realizes that his phone is probably tapped, meaning Sarah is probably in danger, and he abducts her to keep her safe, eventually enlisting the help of his mentor Joe (Freman), paranoid conspiracy theorist Marvin (Malkovich), former KGB agent Ivan (Cox), and former assassin Victoria (Mirren) to dig into who’s after him and why.

It’s a big, twisty, convoluted (in a good way) plot that is really just there as an excuse to put all of those great actors on screen together and let them have a good time cracking jokes and blowing stuff up. Malkovich, especially, is a highlight. He’s always at his best when he’s playing someone whose grip on sanity is tenuous at best, and Marvin let go of that rope a long time ago. Watching him be completely deranged is a delight. Also major kudos to Mirren for shedding her prim and proper persona and letting loose with wisecracks and gunplay. You can tell that she and the rest of the cast are just having a ball together.