Red.

Starring: Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Mary Louise Parker, Helen Mirren

Boyfriend took me to go see this on Wednesday night. He had a job interview with Icon - an Australian film production and distribution company, and as this film is made by them we thought we'd check it out as "research".  I don't mind the odd action movie every now and again, and you can't really say no to the amazing cast - I love all of them!

The storyline was pretty solid - Willis as an ex-CSI agent named "retired, extremely dangerous" (RED)  forced out of retirement to stop an assassin from hunting him down.

There were explosions - as you would expect - but this wasn't the kind of movie where things blow up in almost every scene, and the main character ends up sleeping with the chick who's been following him throughout the entire film.

Don't get me wrong, there is elements of romance within the movie, namely between Willis and Parker, but it doesn't dominate the movie and it is sort of essential to the storyline, not just randomly thrown in somewhere towards the end. 

However, like boyfriend did point out - one criticism is that Parker's character does disappear for half the movie (which is explained but I'm trying not to give away too many details). We didn't really like this since we a) both love her, and b) thought her character was great.

Watching Mirren handle guns and be a ruthless killer was also kind of hilarious, and genius. 

What I did love about this movie was the comedic element - it was a genuine funny built up through character development and fantastic acting. Malkovich's performance is hilarious - I'd definitely pay to see it again.

Like I said - there were explosions (obviously as it's an action movie). But what made the film so strong and so well done (in my opinion, anyway) was that even in the most outrageous scenes (involving Malkovich shooting bullets so presciely that they blow up other bullets, and my favourite scene from the whole movie, where Willis just casually steps out of a car spinning out of control) the film never loses sight of the storyline, and the characters are all there for a reason. The dialogue is also great - generally, the character's don't just give away information for the sake of it, everything is linked pretty tightly.

Anyway, I know this review isn't written very well but that's because it's now 1am and I'm writing this as a break from studying about drug law.
The point is, I loved this movie, thought it was brilliant. It hasn't been marketed very well at all, and has kind of faded in the background behind "the social network", but I highly recommend you go see Red before you see that. Better actors, better story, just generally ... better.

(images all taken from imdb)