Aging A-Listers Have a Blast in Red

A bunch of aging Hollywood icons team up for a graphic novel adaptation—Red sounds fun, right? Some critics thought this movie about retired CIA operatives forced to get back in the game was a blast, others thought it was trying too hard. Perhaps it depends on how much you love comic books. And old people. And guns.

• "This is fast-paced, high octane entertainment for the AARP crowd," writes James Berardinelli at Reelviews. Because of the high-quality cast—which includes Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and even 93-year-old Ernest Borgnine—"there's no need to feel guilty about praising such an inherently silly motion picture," he writes.

• The cast does the best it can with what it's got, but the "uneven humor, half-baked plot and generic action scenes keep Red from being much fun," complains Claudia Puig at USA Today.
• "Red isn't a great movie, but it's great fun," decides Bill Goodykoontz at the Arizona Republic. "And if that sounds like damning with faint praise, you take things too seriously," he writes.
• "This is not exactly Shakespeare or even David Mamet. It’s more like Mad magazine’s 'Spy vs. Spy' on crystal meth, or a geriatric Kick-Ass," writes James Verniere at the Boston Herald. It's also the only movie where you can see "Malkovich in a plastic body-bib and the sexy Mirren in a clingy evening gown firing a 50-caliber machine gun."

(More Ernest Borgnine stories.)