We watched Red again, last night. A big part of the movie’s charm is the cast–the notably older cast. It trades on the same idea as The Expendables. That older doesn’t mean useless, not even with action heros.
Watching it for a second time, I realized that Red has a lot in common with the uninspired Knight and Day.
Both movies utilize the same premise. An ordinary woman gets drugged and kidnapped by a super spy/rogue CIA agent who is on the run from his own government/agency. Super Spy Guy kidnaps the woman under the auspices of saving her life. Both share the same vague sense of Stockholm Syndrome when the woman gets the hots for Super Spy Guy.
The difference is that, in Red, it works. And in Knight and Day, not so much.
In Knight and Day, June, the damsel in distress (played by Cameron Diaz), is a 2D cliché. She’s ditzy and overwhelmed by the situation. Stupid, predictable physical gaffs ensue. For example, when Roy (Tom Cruise) gives her a machine gun, she proceeds to squeeze the trigger and spray bullets hither and yon, accidentally hitting a target or two. When Jamie Lee Curtis’s character did this in True Lies, it was kind of cute. But flogging the same tired sight gag, movie after movie, isn’t cute or funny. June never really grows beyond the baffled, every woman trope.
(Of course, the hero is a moron for handing someone an automatic weapon without bothering to offer a few basic safety tips.)
Red takes a different tack. Here Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) is a bored bureaucrat working in a pensions office. She loves cheesy romantic suspense novels (even though she knows they’re cheesy), and dreams of adventure. Frank (Bruce Willis) is a retired CIA operative, who rips up his pension checks every month, so he can call Sarah and ask for another. When he is targeted by a corrupted government official for elimination, he realizes his ongoing conversations with Sarah have made her a target, as well.
She thinks he’s nuts. Since she isn’t going to cooperate with her rescue, Frank kidnaps her. After an escape attempt, Sarah settles into the role of accomplice. Unlike, June, Sarah doesn’t spend most of the movie in wide-eyed, “Gee-whiz” mode. Also unlike June, Sarah is funny in a delightful, acerbic sort of a manner. She’s strong and unfazed by the situation, even in the face of threats from elegant and murderous Victoria, the hit woman (Helen Mirrim). Early scenes set Sarah up as someone who longs for excitement, and rather than regret it, Sarah is up for the adventure.
The romantic aspect works because it isn’t overplayed, as it is in Knight and Day. In the latter, June is drooling over Roy from the beginning. Even though he’s a lunatic who never gives a suggestion of respecting her. (He thinks she’s cute, which isn’t the same as respect. I think puppies are cute; I don’t respect puppies.)
Frank, in contrast, is quick to let Sarah take the lead in some situations. Their relationship builds slowly, dare I say, from friendship.
I wanted Frank and Sarah to end up together. I needed to see how their love story played out.
And besides, who can resist the sight of Helen Mirrim behind the scope of a big ass sniper rifle?
