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

 

A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD

Twentieth Century Fox

Rated R

Running time: 97 minutes



Click below to watch the A Good Day to Die Hard trailer.



In Twentieth Century Fox's A Good Day to Die Hard, NYPD cop Bruce Willis leaves his home in American and travels to Russia to retrieve his wayward son Jai Courtney from a Moscow prison - and gets involved with Russian terrorist intrigue and the CIA.

In Moscow, high-ranking but corrupt Russian official Sergei Kolesnikov plans on incriminating political prisoner Sebastian Koch without a fair trail when Koch refuses to hand over a secret file believed to have evidence against Kolesnikov. Meanwhile, Courtney - who was arrested for an assasination - agrees to testify against Koch for a shorter sentence. Willis, arriving in Russia for his son arrives at the courthouse - just as Kolesnikov's men attempts their own explosive justice against Koch. Courtney and Koch escape into the streets of Moscow - with Willis and Kolesnikov's men, who are led by Radivoje Bukvic, now after them.

In this fifth installment of the Die Hard movies, this is perhaps the most dramatic Die Hard movie that I have seen, as well as the most dysfunctional family oriented movie in the series. Don't get me wrong - there is still a lot of action in the movie, especially with the car chase and the helicopters. It is a shame that Willis's wife Bonnie Bedelia is not in the movie. I would hope that in the next Die Hard film that Bedelia will be in the movie so that they can have the entire Willis family of Courtney, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Bedelia in a Die Hard film before Willis retires the character. Willis has expressed a desire to do a sixth installment in the franchise and it would be great to see the entire family. My favorite line of dialog in this movie was "the things we do for our kids."

The dysfunctional family dynamics between Willis and Courtney in partnership together, as well as with Koch and his daughter Yuliya Snigir working together were quite interesting - especially when all these characters all interacted with each other. That made these characters much more interesting than bad guy Kolesnikov. Even Kolesnikov's henchman Bukvic was more interesting than Kolesnikov. What happens to Kolesnikov was something out of The Godfather.

There are subtitles when the characters speak Russian, which added to the James Bond-like worldliness feel to the movie. It is interesting to see the evolution of the Die Hard series, from destruction in a claustrophobic building - and going beyond to a world wide scenario with MAD implications. Despite the americanization of taxi cab driver Pasha D. Lychnikoff, Russian security was pretty professional and the use of the military helicopter was intense. It is too bad that you did not see any official Russian response to the situations in the movie, you just saw the terrorist response.

I liked the scenes with the helicopter, the Mi-24 HIND. They actually shot the movie with the HIND firing live ammunition to get the most realistic action. This reminded me of Act of Valor and their live fire use of the Navy SEALs riverine warboats. While the car chase was a great car chase, especially with the Cougar HEV armored truck used by the terrorists, Willis did not care about what he was doing to other people with his cars that seemed very reckless and uncaring to me. What if I was in the cars that he was hitting?

This is the first Die Hard movie that was actually written as a Die Hard movie. The others were actually written as different movies and turned into a Die Hard movie. This is also the first Die Hard film released in the IMAX format.

Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 97 Minutes.

Pancho 
All people smile in the same language.

 Pancho's Movie Reviews