REVIEW - RED 2

Part of the charm of Red, in 2010, was that it had no apparent reason to exist. Part of the misfortune of Red 2, in 2013, is that is has no apparent reason to exist. What little is has to offer that its predecessor did not fails to account for the time and money that was invested in it by the production companies, nor for the hope that you or I may have invested in it. This frenetic action comedy mumbles stertorously along with infantile disregard. Its intention seems to be to maintain motion at all costs, zipping through swathes of its convoluted plot in order to get to the next scene, only to hit the ground running. It's like a two hour trailer, with the feeling that each shot has had several frames shaved off, and each scene several shots, and the entire film a great many scenes. Case in point (and spoiler alert): no sooner has a captive Anthony Hopkins murdered all but one other on board his flight to Washington than he appears inside the Iranian embassy in London, mooching around with terrorists! This wouldn't matter were it not for the fact that director Dean Parisot has the same irreverence toward the elements of his film which are supposed to matter: the action and the comedy. He leaves not a breath of air in which to rest and absorb what's just occurred, or what's just been said, perhaps as there's so much arbitrary globe-trotting to attend to. The cast makes a fair stab at it, doggedly toiling away at the humour in the off-chance that Parisot might wait long enough for us to notice any of it. Barmy Hopkins, wacky John Malkovich and exasperated Willis are a lot of fun (Lee Byung Hun, however, is treated rather differently, as is evident in his first scene: a Korean, in China, making a visit to a man who lives in Japanese surroundings, and where everybody speaks English... meh, it's all foreign, right?), but Red 2 is a woman's world. Catherine Zeta-Jones' task is to werk it like only CZJ can. Mary-Louise Parker is marvellously daffy, and has a delightfully apologetic way of kicking ass (making official state stationery a major part of the finale is a particularly quirky touch). But Dame Helen Mirren shuts the whole thing down. Her arrival at the Iranian embassy will go down as one of the best moments in a movie this year; her astrakhan-clad antics out the window of a cerulean sports car (as visible above) will go down in history herstory.