Bruce Willis, as retired, suburban secret agent Frank Moses, still looks too young to be adjusting to a dull routine on Maple Street, where the biggest thrill he gets is tearing up his paycheck so he has a reason to call up his caseworker Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) and find out what romance novel she's reading this week. But when a strike team tries to kill him, he assumes it's because he was flirting with her and finds and abducts her to keep her safe. The wacky kidnapping storyline tapers out quickly, as Sarah quickly realizes he's telling the truth and stops trying to escape, and Frank reconnects with other ex-operatives (Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, Ernest Borgnine) to find out what the hell's going on. And while the situation is mostly played for laughs, the combination of talented actors and brutal action is a constant reminder that the stakes are real, even if the players have gambled them too many times to count.

It's hard to look good against a cast of that caliber, but Karl Urban holds his own as a black-ops assassin who's tasked with finishing the Moses job and finds himself outclassed at every turn, and Julian McMahon has what basically amounts to a cameo later on in the film. The big action scenes are all teased in the commercials -- Mirren machine-gunning, Willis car-dodging, Malkovich rocket-shooting -- but there's plenty more to go around. It may not be enough to satisfy the fans of the original comic-book mini-series, which was played straight and had Frank working solo, but imagining that version of the film, with no witty banter and tension-relieving laughter, makes me bored out of my mind. I like this one much better.

Check out an interview with the stars of RED and see which other non-superhero comics should become movies.

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See what our Trailers Without Pity crew thought of the movie in this video:

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