Red 2 (2013)

Is this summer of sequels nobody was expecting or asking for?  There was Grown Ups 2 a few week ago and now we have Red 2.  The difference is that I at least enjoyed Red.  I'm struggling trying to remember anything about it though.  I had to look up if Morgan Freeman was in it, and even then I still couldn't remember anything about his character or what he did in the film.

Sadly, Red 2 is even more forgettable than Red.  The way I feel about Red 2 is the way I feel about a lot of family oriented comedies or TV shows.  It's silly and harmless.  I'm actually at a loss as to why it was rated PG-13.  There's barely a drop of blood in it, and I don't recall any objectionable language.  I saw families bringing younger kids with them and nobody seemed to have any issues.  All I heard was laughter at the silly humor.

We pick up with Frank (Bruce Willis) and Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) as they are shopping at a Costco.  Frank is trying his hardest to have a normal life, but Sarah seems to be a little bored.  Marvin (John Malkovich) tracks them down and warns that people are after them again.  As they were leaving Costco, Marvin's car explodes, but there's no suspense to this as we're only five minutes into the film and know that Malkovich is in the movie more.  It just seemed like pointless misdirection and even in the film nobody is fooled by it.

Also, I had to call B.S. as Frank and Sarah leave Costco empty handed, despite seeing them load up a shopping cart in the previous scene.  Nobody leaves Costco empty handed.  NOBODY!  It's was nothing more than one of many examples of product placement throughout Red 2.  There's also Papa John's and probably the most creative use of Pringles I've ever seen on film.

Anyway, Frank is brought in for questioning in his relation to an operation called "Nightshade", but Frank has no recollection of this.  During the questioning, a group of people led by Neal McDonough, barge in killing everyone, before Frank gets away.  I was still invested at this point as I always seem to enjoy McDonough's performances.  He's become one of those delightfully creepy, scenery-chewing actors in the mold of William Fichtner.  I love it when you can tell an actor enjoys playing a villain.  Unfortunately, he's not given much else to do in the film beyond this point.

The trio hop from place to place trying to figure out what's going on.  Besides McDonough, a top contract killer is on their trail, as well as Victoria (Helen Mirren) who is hired by MI6.  The contract killer, Han (Byung-hun Lee), was previously screwed over by Frank, so he's extra motivated to kill.

Then, they run into a Russian agent that Frank used to have a relationship with (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and track down an information broker called "The Frog" (David Thewlis).  They eventually find out that Nightshade involved smuggling a nuclear bomb into Russia, and was related to a physicist named Dr. Bailey (Anthony Hopkins), who Frank and Marvin used to protect, but believed was killed.  Dr. Bailey is actually alive and has been locked away in an asylum for the last thirty years.  They break him out to find where the bomb has been hidden.  Are you still with me?

Besides the overall silliness, the main problem I had with Red 2 is that the plot is ridiculously convoluted.  There wasn't a real need to have a story this all over the place.  Simple is fine when you have this many characters and settings.  Maybe even trim a few of them to make it easier to follow.  This is compounded by having character allegiances that change on a whim, people with unclear motivation, and all kinds of backstabbing.  We finally learn that the bomb was actually made out of something called red mercury, which is supposed to be some kind of super weapon, but it's not clear why.  They said something about it having minimal fallout, but wouldn't that make it slightly less dangerous or minimize collateral damage?  SPOILER - They let the bomb explode at the end and nobody seems too concerned about it, so what was the big deal?

There's another moment at the end where something happens that makes absolutely no sense, and there was no explanation as to how.  Wanna know why there was no explanation?  Cause it couldn't have happened unless Frank had magical powers.  There's no Oceans Eleven type scene that clarified it after.  Here's another thing that bugged me.  How come bad guys never shoot at the ground?  When you start firing into a room at waist or chest level, you have to know the people inside are going to drop to the ground.  Maybe all the gunmen could alternate shooting high and low.

I think even the film was worried you might not be following along.  They show an establishing shot of The Pentagon and actually bothered to put "The Pentagon" on the screen, as if anyone watching the film wouldn't know that you're looking at The Pentagon or be unfamiliar with the general shape.  I kept expecting them to put up other obvious things like "Outside" or "Costco".

I have to blame the script more than the direction.  These are the guys (Erich and Jon Hoeber) that wrote the masterpiece that was Battleship, after all.  I don't get it, you write a piece of shit like Battleship and they hire you to write more movies?  I guess Kevin Smith was right when he said in Hollywood you fail upwards. I actually like director Dean Parisot, as I think he's done some fun movies and shows, and I think that's what he tried to do here.  Just keep it fun, and the cast seemed like they were having a good time and playing off each other well.  Even Bruce Willis seemed to be enjoying himself more here when compared to his performance in the last Die Hard.  There are a few fun action scenes, so it isn't all bad.  I didn't even realize this was based on a DC Comics series until I saw their logo at the beginning, and once I realized that I forgave a lot of the cartoony action.  I also liked how the scene transitions were done in a drawn, comic book style.

As I've said earlier, the humor of the film is very tame and silly.  There are a lot of repeated jokes and gags that weren't really funny in the first place.  I will admit that I laughed a few times overall, but I cringed at the bad jokes even more.

Red 2 is a bit of a mess and too silly at times, but it's harmless enough.  It tries to get by on a good cast and a few entertaining action scenes, but tonally it's all over the place and just kind of lazy.  You'll forget you saw this movie after a few days.  I didn't hate it, but I can't recommend it as anything other than a rental.

2 (out of 5) Death Stars

R.I.P.D. (2013)

It's natural when seeing the trailer for R.I.P.D. to compare this to something like Men in Black, and I'm sure that's what the makers were counting on.  The problem is that R.I.P.D. is missing all humor, fun, and chemistry of M.I.B.  It's a shame because with a few script tweaks and punch up, this might have been a fun watch.

Nick Walker (Ryan Reynolds) is a Boston detective that's killed in the line of duty.  In the afterlife, the head of the Rest In Peace Department, Proctor (Mary-Louise Parker), gives him the choice to either face judgement or join the force.  While not a dirty cop, Walker hadn't exactly been keeping his nose clean, so he takes the deal.  Plus, he hopes this will allow him to contact his wife (Stephanie Szostak).  Walker is paired with a veteran R.I.P.D. officer, Roy Pulsipher (Jeff Bridges), to show him the ropes.

I appreciated the fact that they don't take a long time to get the story going.  Everything mentioned previously takes place in the first 5-10 minutes.  The problem is they rush through it so fast that they don't really establish their own mythology that well.  The rules regarding the dead are just glossed over.  There's a whole thing involving how the dead react to spicy food and Cumin that is used several times, but never really explained well.  The dead have all kinds of effects on the outside world that aren't fully explored in any kind of fun way.

Even the powers the R.I.P.D. lawmen are just kind of waved off as they happen.  The biggest gag regarding the lawmen is that they appear differently to the outside world.  We find (and this is shown in the trailer) that Pulsipher is seen to outsiders as a hot blond (played by model Marisa Miller) and Walker is an old, Chinese man (James Hong).  I'm kind of shocked to see this was Marisa Miller's first movie role.  You'd think she would have been in a ton of films by now, even if she was just cast as eye candy.  Anyway, I would have liked to see a little more of her (and I don't mean in the flesh) and James Hong together, just to play on how the outside world perceives them, and to have to gags where Miller and Hong are doing Bridges and Reynolds impressions.  There's a lot they could have done with this, but they only use it to show people either staring at Marisa Miller or whistle at her.

The R.I.P.D. is comprised of the greatest lawmen in history.  That they don't take advantage of this at all is one of the biggest wasted opportunities of the story.  There's not a single reference to any historical lawmen.  No Wyatt Earp, Eliot Ness,Wild Bill Hickok, etc.  Hell, you could have tried to get Timothy Olyphant to reprise his role as Seth Bullock from Deadwood.  Just a small cameo would have been great.  Even if the makers of the film had said this is fantasy world, they could have had fun referencing fictional lawmen instead.  Wouldn't it have been cute to hear references to detectives and cops from old TV shows and movies, like Dirty Harry or Joe Friday?  The fact that there aren't even fictional references is all the more noticeable by the fact that Jeff Bridges is basically doing his Rooster Cogburn act from True Grit.  Why didn't they just make his character be Rooster instead of "Roy Pulsipher".

As much as I love Jeff Bridges, I really wish he had gone a different direction with his performance.  Again, I'm sure this is something the makers of the film thought would have a big appeal.  We'll get Bridges and have him do Rooster again and people will eat it up.  It didn't feel original, and then half the time you can't understand his dialog because it sounded like he's got a big wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth.  Ryan Reynolds, on the other hand, didn't appear to even want to be there.  That's likely because there's very little to his character.  He doesn't have any good lines, and he doesn't get a chance to showcase any of his normal, fast-talking delivery.  I didn't get any chemistry at all between the two.  Kevin Bacon tries to have some fun with his character, but again, he's not given much to do either.

Most of the attempts at humor fall so flat that I wasn't even sure if that's what they were going for.  It was frustrating to sit through this waiting for something to make me laugh, or anything interesting or clever to happen.  Characters and relationships are so poorly developed that they just become a series of repeated lines.  Pulsipher makes constant references to how he died, and there wasn't any point to it.  His character oscillated from weirdly sensitive to gruff, and you could never get a handle on what he was about.  There's also a strained relationship between him and Proctor that seems like they are setting it up for some kind of payoff, but it never does.

Director Robert Schwentke seemed to have difficulty finding a tone for the film.  It's never silly enough to be campy, but it's still difficult to take seriously.  I'm sure it didn't help that the script was brought to you by the writers of other smash hits such as Aeon Flux and the Clash of the Titans remake (Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi).  This was based on a comic book by Peter M. Lenkov, which I haven't read, so I'm really curious as to what the tone of the source material was.

It's interesting to note that they had originally cast Zach Galifianakis in the role, but he pulled out due to scheduling conflicts.  I think that would have been an interesting way to go, but it's a shame that we'll never see what could have been.  At least with Galifianakis in the role, it would have been a given that it was going to be a comedy.

The special effects weren't very good.  Most of the dead characters looked rubbery or computer game looking.  It actually looked like a film made 5-10 years ago.  Due to available showtimes, I got stuck seeing this in 3D, and it was totally useless 3D so you can skip that.  The action itself was pretty uninteresting as well.  It's just a series of ho-hum chases and shootouts.

R.I.P.D. is an interesting enough premise and could have been a fun film, but it ends up being a total bore.  There's no charm, wit or anything memorable about it.  It's a totally unremarkable and forgettable film.  I'm really surprised this came out in mid-July is this is something better suited for a late August or early September release.  If you have to watch it, save it for cable or cheap rental.

1.5 (out of 5) Death Stars