RED 2

Summit Entertainment

Rated PG-13

Running time: 116 Minutes



Click below to watch the Red 2 movie trailer.

In Summit Entertainment's Red 2, in association with DC Entertainment, ex-CIA agent Bruce Willis - who lives a nice domestic life by shopping at Costco - has been brought out of retirement by John Malkovich because a file of an operation that they were involved with back in the 70's in Moscow, Russia during the Cold War has been leaked onto the Internet - and now everyone wants them dead.

In this sequel to Red, based on the limited comic book series created by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner published by the DC Comics imprint Homage, Willis has settled down to a nice homey life with his girl - bored Mary-Louise Parker. Due to it's comic book origins, there were several art graphics of the characters and scenes in the movie.

While Red was great in introducing the characters, I think I like Red 2 better as a movie more for the story and the characters in Red 2 had more characterization to me than in the original Red.

Helen Mirren is still great as a two-gun toting assassin. Mirren's scenes with contract killer Byung-hun Lee were delightful to see. It is rather touching that Lee's late father Jong Kun Lee is listed in the end credits as one of the main cast in the movie for the use of his pictures as Lee's father, especially when he had dreamed of being an actor himself. I liked the rivalness between Parker and Russian agent Catherine Zeta-Jones, both women of Willis relationships with women. Of course Willis was very uncomfortable when they got together. My favorite scenes were the juxtaposition of the action and Willis's and Parker's domestic scenes, or at least of Willis trying to domesticate Parker's action lust. Neal McDonough, Lt. Hawk in Star Trek: First Contact, was great as the bad guy. It is curious to me in that another Star Trek actor, Karl Urban, was the bad guy in the original Red movie. I hope for that the next Red movie that we will have another Star Trek actor as the bad guy. McDonough was practically psychopathic in his zealousness of getting Willis. David Thewlis initially seemed like a great character, but in actuality he did not have much characterization. Thewlis seemed more like a MacGuffin instead of a major character. Anthony Hopkins was quite appropriate as an eccentric scientist who appears to fit right in with all the other eccentric characters.

All of the characters were rather ambiguous as to which side they were on, which is especially distressing when you consider the stakes of what was happening. So it was rather distressing to me when MI6 and the CIA were after Willis and the other Red agents.

I am looking forward to the next installment of Red.

Click below to watch another movie trailer of Red 2.



Rated PG-13 for violence and language. Running time: 116 Minutes.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.

Pancho's Movie Reviews

 

SKYFALL

Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer

Rated PG-13

Running time: 143 Minutes



Click below to watch the Skyfall trailer.



In Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer's Skyfall, based on Ian Fleming's James Bond series, Daniel Craig as James Bond must protect M, Judi Dench, from becoming the victim of blond terrorist Javier Bardem.

With 2012 as the Fiftieth Anniversary of James Bond films, the relocation of MI6 headquarters to The Churchill Bunker System, and adding several new characters to the movie like Naomie Harris as intelligence officers being introduced in Skyfall - the movie will take the James Bond films into a new generation.

After Craig/Bond has been injured on an assignment to retrieve a computer drive, Dench comes under fire politically from Ralph Fiennes and Parliament when the drive was lost - as the drive contains a list of undercover agents embedded into terrorist organizations around the world. Watching an ousted agent being executed because his identity was released was rather sad. It was fortunate Craig was not on the list. Dench is also pursued by Bardem from Dench's past and wants revenge against her, targeting her office in one attack.

Dench finally gets to act in a Bond film as half of the movie is about her, thus making Dench one of the Bond girls. I have always felt that the Bond movies were wasting Dench's talents and this movie more than makes up for it. In Skyfall, Dench acts more like a Mother/authority figure to Craig/Bond as the movie explores their relationship. Young Ben Whishaw as the new Quartermaster is appropriately young and geeky enough to be the new Q. With more and more of technology going into information technology, as well as being more of a realistic film, there seems to be less need for gadgets in the field. As is tradition, Bond's gadgets are basically only used once in the movie and these are basically essential gadgets - like Bond's traditional Walther PPK gun, this time a PPK/S gun with palm-print encoding is given to Craig/Bond. The move toward signals intelligence espionage is a major issue for MI6 amongst Dench's inquiry after the lost of several human agents - as well as MI6 being hacked. But to paraphrase Dench, human intelligence is needed to fight in the darkness. While there are typical action chase scenes, having the first responders respond to terrorist aspect in London - such as the London Tube - gave rise to that fact of terrorism. The terrorism gives a more realistic feel - especially with real life newscasters from CNN and the BBC reporting on it - to the movie than other films in the Bond series.

While Craig drove several cars and motorcycles in Skyfall - it was great to see Bond's Aston-Martin DB5 car again, referring to Bond's roots as well as hearing the Bond music sting when you see the Aston-Martin, just as Skyfall refers to Bond's roots. With the first James Bond played by Scotsman Sean Connery - and with Ian Fleming's family once owning a Scottish estate, and Fleming loving the countryside of Scotland - having orphan Bond having Scottish roots seemed quite appropriate for a United Kingdom series. It was also nice knowing the names of Bond's parents. Skyfall is the third film in the unofficial trilogy of Bond's ancestry. As a tribute to the late Bond music composer John Barry, Judi Dench's house in the movie was the home of John Barry. It is funny that Fiennes is now part of two big franchise films, Harry Potter and James Bond. It was also cool to see the Agusta Westland Merlin AW101 helicopter used during the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremonies with Daniel Craig and the Queen Elizabeth II of England and their Skyfall used in the movie Skyfall.

With Craig/Bond being injured, the movie plays up to the fact both medically and physically that he is not up to the role of being a 00 agent physically as he was before - with Fiennes questioning Craig's/Bond's fitness. This ties into Craig aging as Bond, in that he may not be able to physically play the role of Bond much longer. There is also a scene where Craig/Bond, recovering his health, is having a drinking contest with a scorpion. I could barely watch this scene because of the scorpion - especially when my mother was bitten by a scorpion when she was a teenager, and her leg is still swollen by it.

Skyfall is a non Ian Fleming James Bond title used for a James Bond film. As there are very few Bond titles left, I would not be surprised if the producers start using original titles for the start of the next 50 years of Bond movies. As it is, Skyfall does not connect to the previous Daniel Craig Bond films.

The film was influenced by the Batman Dark Knight series, and this was most obvious to me during some of the music score. Both films are very complicated films, although there were a couple of plot points in Skyfall that did not make sense. The Asian element of Skyfall is the most obvious element of being opposite of the English world, especially since Shanghai is basically on the opposite side of the world to London.

The opening title credits sequence, while connected to the themes and story of the movie, is perhaps the darkest Bond title sequence that I have ever seen. The title sequence was very macabre and made me think that Skyfall was going to be a voodoo movie like Live and Let Die.

As stated during the end credits -

Bond Will Return.

Rated PG-13 for violence, sexual situations, language. Running time: 143 Minutes.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

Pancho's Movie Reviews