Red - review

Schwentke's poorly scripted comedy thriller asks us to believe that RED is a CIA acronym for "Retired Extremely Dangerous", applied here to a former "black ops" assassin, a characteristically smug Bruce Willis who finds himself on the run from his middle-American retirement. To help him turn the tables on his mysterious pursuers, he recruits fellow CIA retirees, among them Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman and a crazy John Malkovich, who's either blasting the scenery or eating it. They're joined by their onetime KGB enemy, the lovable Ivan (Brian Cox), and a sentimental orgy of nostalgia for the good old days of the cold war ensues. This is painting by numbers for people who have trouble with mental arithmetic.