MOVIE REVIEWS: RED
October 15, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
Want to know whether RED is worth seeing? Well, you’re not going to get much help from the critics, most of whom are clearly ambivalent about it. For example, Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times concludes: “RED is neither a good movie nor a bad one. It features actors we like doing things we wish were more interesting.” Then there’s this conclusion from A.O. Scott in the New York Times: “It is possible to have a good time at RED, but it is not a very good movie. It doesn’t really try to be, and given the present state of the Hollywood economy, this may be a wise choice.” Or consider this description of the movie by Peter Howell of the Toronto Star: “RED, which refers to a supposed CIA acronym meaning ‘retired and extremely dangerous, has few pretensions beyond showcasing some skilled mature actors at their deadpan best.” That’s about as close to an endorsement of the movie that most critics are willing to come about yet another film featuring aging action stars, headed by Bruce Willis and including John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Richard Dreyfus, and even 93-year-old Oscar winner Ernest Borgnine. “The best part of RED is the spectacle of terrific actors being terrific in novel ways,” comments Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal. And Kyle Smith remarks in the New York Post: “I look forward to a sequel in which, I hope, the RED gang will school those humorless old dopes from The Expendables. The losing team buys the winners dinner — at 4:30.”
