First Full Reviews For RED 2 Hit

Red 2’s snappy dialogue and zippy pace suggest a ’60s-style globe-trotting caper comedy, albeit one with a lot more killing. Though Parker is the team’s civilian outsider, the movie wisely avoids turning her into an audience surrogate or straight man; Willis’ under-reactions and Malkovich’s aloof weirdness are the movie’s core, and counterposing them with a surprised voice of reason would rob the film of its transgressive kicks. Interestingly, Red 2 may be one of the few films improved—or at least refined—by its PG-13 rating; despite the high body count, violence is never lingered on, which reinforces the idea that it’s the characters’ nihilism and not the violence that’s supposed to be funny. [B-]

Overall, every member of this all-star cast has at least one moment to shine. The movie will take you on a good ride and the characters will surely put a smile on your face. Parker’s performance alone will make or break your enjoyment of this film. She had me laughing as hard as I laughed when Jonah Hill was raped by a demon or Michael Cera blowing cocaine in McLovin’s face in This is the End. Still, the film is only marginally better than the original. [3.5*]

RED 2 would still get a pass if the action scenes were in any way memorable, but other than the first set piece, the shootouts and fights are tepid. The ending is particularly lame and jingoistic, although to prevent any spoilers I won’t tell you why. Suffice to say, RED 2 is a sequel that should have never gotten made. It’s nothing but a pale imitation of the first movie. It’s so bad that if I had caught this on Blu-ray or TV instead of reviewing it in theaters, there’s no way I would have stuck it out until the end. [4/10]

Red 2 is an amusing enough time-passer if you can look past its litany of story problems and don't mind action set-pieces that are recycled and generic. Red 2's star-studded ensemble cast is the best reason to see this derivative, but dumb fun follow-up. [6.5/10]

With the concept of retired secret agents pressed back into service by imminent threats to their lives, 2010’s Red benefited from a wave of enthusiasm for high-octane baby boomer action comedies, now mostly either forgotten or entering their second or third iterations. By now the interest factor in a Red sequel is more in the execution than almost anything else, particularly since Red 2 doesn’t have a whole lot new to offer.

he action is across the board either uninterestingly or flat-out incompetently staged -- there are no stakes to any of the gun- or fistfights, any truly perilous situations are defused by hackwork one-liners and the film’s escalation to what should be a pretty significant event, a nuclear explosion, is at best dismissively handled. But the bickering romance between Frank and Sarah, which is cartoonishly complicated by Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Miranda, simply poisons everything else in the film. Ultimately, what feels more disappointing than the awfulness of “Red 2” is the sense that it didn’t need to be awful, even if it probably never needed to exist at all. Willis’ performances in “Looper” and “Moonrise Kingdom” last year proved that when he’s engaged, or maybe challenged, he can still give amazing performances.

More turns out to be less in “Red 2,” an obligatory sequel that can’t quite recapture the sly, laid-back pleasures of its cheerfully ridiculous predecessor. While Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, et al. are still good for a few chuckles as a gang of superannuated government assassins, this globe-trotting action-comedy diversion applies a bigger-is-better philosophy across the board, upping the stakes, the firepower and the travel budget, but keeping real thrills and laughs at a modest trickle. “Red” became a surprise hit in 2010 with nearly $200 million worldwide, a feat that this Summit release will be hard-pressed to match even with solid opening numbers.