Red/The Town

Red is a moderately entertaining film that falls into that zone where it doesn't suck, but I'm not sure its good enough to merit more than a tepid endorsement. The film follows retired CIA agent Bruce Willis, who is engaging in a flirtatious relationship with a government pension agent played by Mary Louise Parker. His idyll is interupted by a hit squad and he decides he needs to Kidnap parker since she may also be a target. He proceeds to get his old squad back together (Morgan freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malchovich, Brian Cox) as they try to figure out who's after him. Anyway when the film just coasts on the charm of its leads and lets them riff its actually pretty enjoyable, when it tries to be a hardcore action film everything falters. The film desperately wants to be both a humorous character piece, and a Zach Snyder-esque stylized action thriller. While it does passably well at the former, it fails at the second, and any time there's a big set piece the momentum grinds to a halt. Like I said its not horrible, and it is fun seeing a cast with as much history as this do an action comedy. Also I really liked that Mary Louise Parker didn't complain for the whole time about being kidnapped and taken on a mission. In fact she embraces it to an almost sociopathic degree in contrast to most Adrian Balboa-types we get who just whine whenever something cool happens.

One more thing, the only other people in theatre besides us were four middle aged single guys who sat in opposite ends of the theatre forming a square around us. It was kind of depressing actually. Maybe they're big Helen Mirren fans?

The Town

I'm writing this about a week after originally seeing the film and not much has really stuck with me. Oh its reasonably entertaining (even if the Boston accents are comically thick) and Ben Afleck does a decent job staging the action sequences, but everything about the plot is completely nonsensical and it becomes impossible to suspend disbelief. Really my brother and I were the only people in the theatre and we spent most of the climax wondering how stupid all the characters could be and didn't really care what happened to them. Also if you're going to cast Don Draper make sure you change his haircut, its way to distracting otherwise.

Whatever, its watchable but over all pretty disposable.