First of all the action scenes where pretty stale. The enemies the protaganists where facing, instead of being the elite of the US government, seemed little more than bumbling thugs. A team sent to kill Bruce Willis is taken out one by one from behind, without any of them even firing a shot, despite there being three of them and one of him. The next squad's strategy revolves around firing fully automatic from the hip while walking slowly towards Willis' house, without even bothering to find a target. The assasins also never seem to need to change magazines, despite shooting fully automatic for a good couple minutes, with guns which fire 700 rounds a minute and only hold 30 bullets.
In most of the other scenes none of the characters actual seem to want to kill each other, only pointing their guns in the vague derection of the enemy and shooting without aiming. Helen Mirrens in one scene fires a .50 cal heavy machine gun, which is accurate to over a mile, solidly for an entire firefight, at enemies ten feet away, and doesn't hit anything. By far the worst firefight was at an airport. Previously you learn the CIA had a helicopter with a machine gun watching them at a secluded bayou. Instead of shooting them there, the CIA decides it would be a good idea to attack them at an airtraffic control tower in the middle of a commerical airport. Once again the CIA just shoot half-heartedly in the general direction of the heros, not actually aiming. Later in the airport scene, a CIA agent fires an RPG at one of the protaganists, even though A) she had to go through a lenghty reloading sequence when either one could have shoot each other B) the US does not use RPGs C) the range was so close the RPG would not have detonated anyways.
Many important plot points are not explained either. The one that annoyed me most was how some how explosives where planted on a get away car, without any of the characters being in a position to do so. And SPOILER ALERT why did they wait until the vice president was surrounded by body guards before assasinating him. And why are they even trying to assasinate him? Why don't they just bring the case to court. Deciding to go shoot-up every one seems to be the least logical option, despite other alternatives being presented.
Decent humor might have made the movie passable, but sadly there was none. The only joke I can even remember had something to do with a banjo, and I only remember it because it was really unfunny. Most of the laughter of the audience came from mocking the stupid scenes, not any intentional humor.
In conclusion, RED falls flat on its face. An action movie without decent action is nothing. If one makes a Bruce Willis movie, the body count needs to pile-up, and/or the enemies need to be at least worthy of fighting skill wise. The bodies, however, do not pile up and the enemies are also all fumbling idiots. Action sequences need to either believable, such as in Black Hawk Down and Green Zone, or completely over the top, like Die Hard or The Matrix. The violence is neither over the top nor credible, which makes the film kinda boring. Humor could have saved the movie, but was barely present. To wrap it up, the plot, almost never the strong point of a action movie, just left me confused to all the character's motives and led me to seriously question the basic decision making skills of all involved.
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