Colour Me Stupid: A Chastising of 'Red'

Okay, Hollywood.

Sit down.

We need to have a talk.

No, by “we need to have a talk”, I mean, you sit there and listen, okay?

Good.

I honestly don’t know where to begin. You’ve let me down. You’ve let the viewing public down. And most of all, you’ve let yourself down.

Don’t sit there and shrug like you don’t know what you did.

You know.

Really? You want me to spell it out?

Fine. We’re here to talk about Red.

Yes, I know you thought what you were doing was, what do the kids say these days, cool? But it wasn’t. Just because it stars a bunch of ageing popular actors like Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich, is based on a graphic novel, and has a fast-moving nonsensical plot, doesn’t make it acceptable, let alone “cool”. Don’t give me that “but Helen Mirren shoots an Uzi” defence. The people at E! might buy that, but you’ll get no sale from me. Helen Mirren firing a gun is just as lame as Jason Statham firing a gun if the film around them is lame – that’s basic movie maths.

Speaking of the plot: I know it’s only trashy fun and all that, but nonetheless, if you’re going to use the massacre of a Guatemalan village as the instigator of your torturous narrative, then treat it with some respect. You’ve no idea what I’m talking about do you? If your heroes are CIA killers, then you need to be quite careful about how you portray them.

Let’s look at Grosse Pointe Blank. Quiet, I know it’s old, but I’m trying to teach you something. There’s Martin Blank, right, and he’s an assassin. He kills people for a living. But the film is a comedy. It’s light-hearted.

Yes, I know so is Red, let me finish.

So Martin Blank kills some people in the film. Mostly these are anonymous thugs or out-and-out weirdoes. Martin is also afflicted with a terrible ennui, brought about by his job. He comes out at the other side of all the gunfights with a newfound respect for human life. This journey helps us associate with him as a protagonist. The tone of the film also lessens the unpleasantness of his character: other people each have a pithy, unbelieving remark when he says he’s a contract killer (“do you get dental with that?”/”can I join up?”/”good for you, it’s a growth industry”), and the reason he has been marked for death himself is a bizarre accident involving a stick of dynamite and a millionaire’s pet retriever.

Compare this catalyst with the one in Red: the massacre of a Guatemalan village. This, like the exploded dog, is an unseen event and one which is way, way down the list of narrative priorities. A dog being detonated is funny, if morbid. The slaughter of a native population, especially one seemingly based on true events in Salvador in 1981, is less of a laugh riot.

I’m not against using real occurrences to spin out a fictional narrative, even one as fanciful as this. But to do so without the least bit of explication, respect, or even basic interest … that’s just unnecessary. Then to do so without suggesting any culpability on the part of the central “sympathetic” characters (who covered the murders up for the CIA without any trace of conscience) and not even having the decency to explain the compartmentalised blame (on an American politician, of course) is bordering on corrosive.

Fine, no one watches these things for the plot.

Yes, The A-Team featured successful US adventurism in Iraq (as did Iron Man), and The Losers began with the hilarious sight of the death of several dozen children before ditching all mention of them. I know.

That doesn’t make what you did in Red okay.

Nor is it the most annoying thing about the film.

Everyone enjoyed the sight of black ops teams and submachine guns in suburbia in Mr & Mrs Smith, but let’s not call that film a masterpiece. Let’s also note that whatever spark the Brangelina vehicle had (beyond the stars) came from the (over)awareness of the absurd disconnect between the action and the setting.

In Red, pretty much everyone’s a spy and a killer, and people show up with grenade launchers and no-one bats an eye. Remember Star Wars, and how Han Solo was always bursting the pomposity with his cavalier, blue-collar wisecracks? And remember how George Lucas’s recent prequels sucked so, so much, in part because they lacked this outsider perspective to all the nonsense?

No, Mary Louise-Parker’s office-worker-along-for-the-ride does not count. Why? Because she becomes normalised to the violence almost instantly (compare that, if you will, to Jason Bourne’s companion Marie vomiting when she sees her first dead body), and is excised entirely from the drama in the third act.

And don’t get me started on the troublingly reductive attitude towards women, all of whom either need to be saved by men (even gun-toting Helen Mirren) or take their cues from them at every turn.

What else? Stealing music cues from the Bourne films, Mr and Mrs Smith, and The International is a fine way of confirming that your movie has no original ideas. I know Kick-Ass did the same thing. But you know what? Kick-Ass was lazy, crass filmmaking too.

I have more to complain about, but I think our time here is almost up.

It doesn’t matter that those guys on rotten tomatoes mostly thought it was “alright”. If they thought making Paul Bettany into a post-apocalyptic action-hero was “alright” would you do that too? Point taken. But then these are the people who thought Salt was “alright”. Jurassic Park 3 was “alright”. Give them a press-pack with a complimentary key ring and they’ll rave about The Expendables, and that thing was like an etch-a-sketch of a crayon drawing of a trailer for an action film a six-year-old heard about one time.

Yes, I could have been more forgiving.

But you’re spending a lot of money. More than that, you’re spending my good will.

And I think we’re both running perilously low on both.

Now get out of here and don’t do it again.