Red 2 (2013)

Starring: Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Byung-hun Lee, Neal McDonough, and Brian Cox
Grade: B+

This may be controversial but after watching the Red franchise over again, I think Red 2 beats the first one, albeit by a small margin.

Summary

Three years after the first Red, retired CIA black ops agent Frank Moses (Willis) is still dating Sarah Ross (Parker). Everything is going well, but Sarah seems to be visibly bored. She still loves Frank but feels like they are going through the motions. After they get separated in Costco for a bit to look for things, Frank sees his insane friend and fellow retired agent in Marvin Boggs (Malkovich) in the other aisle, with Marvin trying to coax him out of his monotonous life. Following Marvin questioning if Frank is okay because he hasn’t killed anyone in months, he mentions he has a feeling “they” are coming. He says he can bring Sarah if he wants and even though Frank continuously refuses, Sarah overhears and runs over excited. Frank refuses. Outside the store, Frank turns down Marvin again, despite Sarah’s obvious interest in the matter. As Frank and Sarah stand outside to discuss, Marvin’s car blows up in the parking lot.

Sometime later, Frank and Sarah go to Marvin’s funeral, even though Frank doesn’t believe for a second that he’s actually dead. He goes as far as stabbing Marvin’s body with a needle to try and wake him up. Realizing he’s not waking up, he eventually finds himself doing an awkward eulogy at the service. After leaving the church, some agents show up, so Frank tells Sarah to go to the safe house. They tell Frank that he’s been flagged “Retired Extremely Dangerous”, and they are taking him to an FBI Yankee White Facility. There, corrupt Agent Jack Horton (McDonough) shows up, masquerading as Frank’s lawyer to find out where they are holding him. After finding out he’s in interrogation, he kills the secretary and her superior that told him. In interrogation, Frank is being asked what he knows about “Project Nightshade” since a lot of his work happened in Russia during the Cold War. As Frank denies everything, Jack and his team start killing people left and right, and Frank and the guys in interrogation start to hear the chaos. Soon after, Jack kills everyone on the floor (including the two guys in interrogation with Frank) and demands government information from him. He antagonizes Frank further by bringing up what he will do to Sarah if he doesn’t get his info. This results in Frank breaking free, kicking major ass, and escaping into a room. Jack’s team goes after him, and he takes most of them out. However, he eventually finds himself on the ground and about to be killed himself until…

Marvin makes the save!

He faked his death! Marvin kills the other guy and helps Frank out of the building, escaping Jack’s clutches. They get to the car to find out Marvin brought Sarah too. Frank flips out for Sarah not listening to him and Marvin putting her in danger, but she doesn’t want to hear it because she’s tired of him being so overprotective. After Frank argues with Marvin and denies crying at his fake funeral, Marvin drives them as he explains what is going on.

Ninety-six hours ago, someone posted a document on the internet that him and Frank took part in an operation called “Nightshade” in 1979. This is why he faked his death. After he reveals he has the Senior Director of Military Intelligence (Titus Welliver) in his trunk, we then jump to the Pentagon. Jack Horton tells his superior, who’s quite angry over how the situation has been handled thus far, that Frank and Marvin have officially been labeled “domestic terrorists”. Though he adds that because the document resurfaced online, everyone who is involved with Nightshade will come after it. Because his superior argues they should go public, Jack’s actual boss gives him the go-ahead to kill the guy. Following this, Jack asks his real boss to approve of a specialist and former counterintelligence agent named Han Cho Bai (Lee) to go after Frank and he does. Elsewhere, Han Cho Bai is seen killing some guy because the guy’s target paid him better. Afterwards, he gets a call from Jack, giving him the job of killing Frank who is someone he has history with. At MI6 Headquarters in London, Director Phillips (Tim Pigott-Smith) is told about Nightshade resurfacing online, so he immediately calls to ask for Victoria Winslow (Mirren). He finds her at her most recent job and asks her to find Frank, threatening her life if she doesn’t.

In a field somewhere, the Senior Director of Military Intelligence that was in Marvin’s trunk finally tells Frank, Marvin, and Sarah all he knows. At the height of the Cold War, Nightshade was cooked up by a rogue U.S. general as a first strike capability against the Soviets. A megaton-yield device was smuggled into Moscow in diplomatic pouches piece by piece and then the weapon was lost. The scientist behind it was genius physicist Edward Bailey (Hopkins). Frank and Marvin were the security detail in charge of getting him in and out of Moscow safely. Unfortunately, the Soviets managed to still kill him with a car bomb once Frank and Marvin thought they were safe. They investigate the Wikileaks page at a diner and Frank comes to the conclusion that “The Frog” (David Thewlis) is behind it because of the wine stain on the document. Immediately after, they get a call from Victoria, and she admits to them that her most recent contract from MI6 is to kill them, giving them a head start. She also says that the Americans are sending Han after them too. Once they leave the diner with Frank relaying the news, we find out that the added danger is that Han is not only the best contract killer in the world, but he wants revenge on Frank for putting him in jail for years.

While flying in his private plane, Han’s assistant is able to track Frank and the crew to see they’ll be flying out of Teterboro, New Jersey, to Paris, France. Once Han and his crew land in Teterboro and get to the hotel Frank, Marvin, and Sarah were staying at, they find out this was all part of the plan, as Frank and company hijack the plane. Sometime after landing in Paris, they run into Russian counterintelligence agent Katja Petrokovich (Zeta-Jones), Frank’s former lover and only known weakness. She greets them and immediately makes out with him in front of Sarah and Marvin. Following this, they have a sit-down meeting, with Katja noting she knows they’re here to find the weapon of mass destruction that may or may not be in Moscow. She wants to know everything. Otherwise, she promises to turn them in. After Frank admits they don’t have a choice, they team up with her to catch the Frog. Elsewhere, Jack catches wind of what’s going on with Frog.

During their stakeout outside of some restaurant, Katja says they call him “The Frog” because he poisoned the water supply at KGB headquarters with an Amazon tree frog’s poison. It incapacitated 1,600 people, and he left with “every secret we had”. He makes a ridiculous amount of money from selling information and knows so much that even the U.S. won’t touch him. After Marvin traces Frog’s purchases from his laptop and sees him buy some more wine, he confirms it’s the Frog. This sets the wheels into motion for Frank, Katja, and Sarah to walk in and somehow take him alive in the restaurant. Frank tells Sarah ahead of time to not make eye contact with the Frog. Otherwise, he’ll know something is up. This shouldn’t be too hard, right? Well for Sarah it is, and she looks directly at him, causing a gunfight to happen in the middle of the restaurant. It leads to the chase and eventual capture of the Frog by Frank and Katja. They interrogate and beat the hell out of him but before they could torture him, Sarah instead pleads with the Frog for his help and makes out with him in front of the others. He relents and gives him the key to his security box. They are one step closer to Edward Bailey, though the obstacles in front of them are non-stop.

My Thoughts:

I’ll admit that when Red 2 was announced, I was a little shocked. I could see sequel potential, but was it really necessary? Well, I was wrong in my suspicions. Not only did it recapture the zest of the first film, but it managed to make a sequel that didn’t seem like a cash-grab copy.

We start off by seeing the how far the characters have come since the first film, and it all makes sense. Frank Moses is now a few more years removed from retirement, and you can tell how much he’s calmed down since then, becoming more of an overprotective boyfriend just wanting what’s best for the girl he fought so hard to win over in the first Red. Obviously, I loved the serious Frank that was willing to turn it on when he needed to, but you have to keep in mind that this is a different man than the one we dealt with before. He has evolved as a person. His character progression is very logical. Though I’ll admit this becomes more of a Bruce Willis action comedy rather than a Frank Moses movie (the reverse was my biggest compliment of the first film), I still enjoyed Red 2 for what it was. This movie is a bit goofier than the first one and would’ve benefitted from those serious moments where we see our heroes become locked in, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the way things turned out. The biggest positive is how Sarah has evolved though. Seeing her start off as a customer service worker at a pension office in the first film to a wannabe secret agent willing to risk her life in this sequel, is a crazy turn of events when you think about it. However, it’s a nice change of pace for this type of character. Plus, we saw glimpses of her enjoying the excitement of being involved in the action in Red. In Red 2, this progresses to the point where she plays a vital role in each mission whether the others like it or not, giving us a lot of amusing moments.

As I noted in my review of the first film, it did cross my mind if it was absolutely necessary to have her on certain missions like when they took her to see the Frog. I’m not sure what the plan was before she fucked it up, but how useful would she have been there? They had to take him alive, and she already proved at that point that she couldn’t handle a gun, so why did she even walk in? On the other hand, she did prove her usefulness as time went on with the interrogation of the Frog, hilariously being a lookout to divert Russian soldiers when they sneak into the Kremlin and taking the Iranian ambassador hostage to find the safe. Marvin doesn’t care and encourages it, but Frank is still very protective of her, only agreeing in circumstances when he absolutely has to. It’s a fun dynamic, and it gives Sarah so much more to do with her newfound motivation. If they didn’t do something to her character, it would’ve been very easy for her to fade into the background amidst all the action, especially with the introduction of Katja to the crew, but Mary-Louise Parker makes this emphasized trait her own and milks every last bit of it to become a major part of what makes this sequel successful.

This was my main issue with the Romancing the Stone franchise, a similar film in terms of the way the two lead characters are and who they become. In my review of its sequel, The Jewel of the Nile, my biggest gripe with their characterizations was that Jack T. Colton evolved immensely as a character and though he calmed down, it made sense for his character to become this based off the six-month vacation period when the first film ended and the second began. The problem was that Joan Wilder regressed and became exactly what she was in the first film, having to work her way back to the confident and strong-minded person she should’ve already been in the sequel. Here in Red 2, Sarah has evolved and doesn’t look back. In fact, she’s looking for more action. She, like Wilder, is annoyed with the state of their dreary relationship with the man that saved them. Sarah says it herself that “things were getting a little stale”. Life has become too easy, and they need something to put them back on track. Frank, just like Jack Colton was, is perfectly fine with the state of their relationship. They’re having a good time and don’t see the issue. It’s cool to see Sarah come off the hinges as they try something new with her, completely knocking the potential Joan Wilder-like retread that she could’ve been, out of the water. Sarah accompanies them on all the missions, she tries to have bigger and bigger jobs because she desperately wants to be a part of the team, show Frank she can do this thing too, and she wants to show Katja that she’s her replacement for a good reason.

The added jealousy of Katja also makes for some fun moments and an equally entertaining detail to the story and its characters.

John Malkovich is great once again in his role, showing he’s as equally funny as he was in the first film and how it wasn’t a flash in the pan. In my review of the first film, I argued Red could’ve been a buddy comedy with just him and Bruce Willis, and we play with this idea for the first act of this film, along with Mary-Louise Parker’s inclusion, and it proves me right.

Honestly, these two could’ve been cast in a remake of Midnight Run.

It’s a lot of fun watching Willis play the straight role to Malkovich’s lunacy. Marvin is great to have around and with three years passing, you can tell he’s improved on his crazy state. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still nuts, but it’s almost as if this sequel is telling us that he’s doing much better than where he was at years ago. As a fan of the character, I was on board. Sure, seeing him freak out in public is still hilarious to me because of Malkovich’s delivery in the role, but it’s just as funny to see him give advice to Frank on the fun activities him and Sarah can do as a couple, or how Frank needs to share his feelings to “evolve their relationship”. Furthermore, he encourages Sarah in her wanting to be in on the action, despite Frank’s annoyance. When he gives her a gun and Frank asks whether he did it or not, and Marvin responds with the straightest (and almost confused) face, “It is America Frank”, I cackled. As ridiculous as Marvin can be, once again he proves his usefulness on multiple occasions, continuously making me appreciate the entertainment and importance of the character to the film and franchise. Despite him “caramelizing” the Senior Director of Military Intelligence’s “onions” with “three tabs of acid and a lot of rats” and keeping the dude in the trunk, his methods work because they are able to get the basis of the plot out of the guy that sets the wheels into motion. When Katja steals the key to the security deposit box from Frank, Marvin saw it coming and gave him the wrong key because he knew Frank would fuck it up too.

With just two movies, Marvin has become one of my favorite supporting characters in any action comedy. I’m not even a huge John Malkovich fan, but he’s vital to these two films, and it’s obvious. I do wish that he still had his haircut from the first film though. It was much more “Marvin” than the shaved head look.

Another major part of this film’s success was Frank’s kryptonite in Katja. When you think about the first film, the only thing that got to Frank was Sarah getting captured. If she wasn’t in the picture, he would’ve been unstoppable. Here, they add an extra hurdle for our heroes to cross in Katja. Though part of the story is where her allegiance lies, she’s described as Frank’s “kryptonite”, the only thing that can bring him down. It takes two movies, but we finally have learned that women are Frank’s only weakness.

Join the club buddy.

You can see it in his face as soon as she enters the room. When she kisses him, he kisses back (in front of Sarah I might add). Some women just have “it”, don’t they? She’s that “ex” who no matter how far you’ve come in life, can bring you back down in a matter of seconds with her return. I loved this. It humanized Frank on a level needed to make his arc interesting. He can still be a badass you wouldn’t want to cross, but seeing Frank be beaten with ease because of his weakness in falling for a girl, makes for an intriguing subplot and another exciting layer in the development of Frank Moses as a character, as well as the relationship of Frank and Sarah. Think about all the bullshit Frank has been able to pull off in two films without a second thought. He continues this here but somehow, he manages to get drugged by his ex at dinner, knowing there’s a shot she has ulterior motives. She has him by the balls and there’s no way around it, showing us that Frank Moses is capable of losing. It gives us some humor for Parker to play with (where she finds a way to make out with so many targets and suspects on their missions that it becomes her trademark), but it’s also to show the audience he’s not Superman, which was needed to add a little more conflict and danger to the plot. It seems like such a simple thing to add to the story, but it worked, and Catherine Zeta-Jones was a solid choice for the role.

Where has she been at by the way?

Anthony Hopkins was extraordinary as Edward Bailey, easily surpassing both villains of the first film. He embodied the role of a mad, Cold War-era genius. His transformation in this film was exactly what the film needed to push it past the first Red. Right from his introduction in the asylum, I was locked in, becoming completely invested in this deteriorating scientist. As they enter, we see written words, symbols, and everything under the sun all over the walls of his cells as he listens to classical music. Basically, it shows us how he’s in his own world inside his cell, completely disconnected from time and reality itself. He has to be told he’s been there for 32 years, and he responds in such a positive manner, you can’t help but like the guy. He’s got so much enthusiasm and love for life that he just goes with the flow when Frank and Victoria come to save him. He doesn’t think anything of it. Hopkins gives the character such a likable flare. He talks at a wickedly fast pace and considering he hasn’t had much interaction with the outside world, it makes sense he would be a bit jittery. The drugs that the asylum forced on him didn’t help either. However, he’s so good-spirited and wonderfully polite that he becomes the most likable crackpot we’ve seen in a movie in quite some time.

As the film goes on, his racing mind starts to slow down a bit, getting back to normal, and this is where the real fun begins. Marvin describes him as a “rockstar of conceptual mass killing” and “The DaVinci of Death” but when we first meet him, I’m thinking, “This sweet old bastard?”. When the time comes though, Hopkins flips it like a switch, and he plays the role of a mad scientist like a professional violinist at a sold-out concert. Bailey starts to remember his own intentions with the red mercury bomb he created, and at that point, he’s too damn smart to stop. It’s enough to rope Han in for a moment because humanity needs all the help it can get, giving us a very entertaining third act that is a great payoff to the buildup. As I said before, now that we’ve established the characters and everything, Red 2 succeeds where the first film doesn’t in that it has a much better, larger-scale plot for the characters to fight their way through. It’s the sequel the first film deserved.

As I watched the very funny scene of Marvin and Han both giving Frank advice about his relationship in the third act, one thing that popped into my head was that this sequel didn’t lose a beat cast-wise. A big part of the success of Red was its cast and though Byung-hun Lee doesn’t have the name value of Morgan Freeman (or he’s not as known to American audiences as Karl Urban is), the character of Han fit in with the main cast like butter once we got to flesh out his personality more. Of course, we don’t get to know him well until he is forced to join Frank but once he does, he was actually a lot more fun than I thought he was going to be. He injected new life into Frank’s team of all-stars and if a Red 3 ever happened, I would not have minded if Han was included as a permanent member of the team.

I don’t understand at all how Frank and Marvin crash a helicopter straight into the ground and get out like they flipped a golf cart, and I still don’t understand (SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS) how Frank was able to hide Nightshade on the plane when Bailey beat him there. There was no visible way of hiding it because Bailey was RIGHT THERE, but I’ll let it go because of the unrelated, hilarious call back to the end of the first film in the fake funeral scene at the beginning of this movie. During the eulogy, Frank says, “The good people of Moldova will always be in Marvin’s debt”. That ending was one of the best parts of Red and for them to bring it up in that line actually had me laughing, especially once they pan over to some Moldovan citizens that attended. Additionally, the explosion of Nightshade was really cool visually, as was the over-the-top scene of Frank managing to sit down in the driver’s seat of Katja’s car when she drifted towards him and opened the door.

Red 2 is a highly underrated sequel. Not only does it develop our characters even further and logically, but it brings back exactly what made the first film so much fun, doing the action better and arguably the humor as well (You’re lying if you didn’t find the Papa John’s scene funny). Moreover, we also get new and exciting characters and a whole new mission, surpassing its predecessor in entertainment value. The first film still does some elements better but as a whole, I think Red 2 beats it in a close one.