The original Red banked off audience demand for John Malkovich: Action Star to become a modest hit. Unsurprisingly, Red 2 largely sticks to that winning formula. Now retired (again) CIA agent Bruce Willis rockets back into action when he and BFF Malkovich are framed for international nuclear terrorism. The two, with girlfriend Mary-Louise Parker, go on a globe-spanning hunt to track their foes, recover a fabled weapon and kill whole bunches o’folk. Numerous assassins hired to kill Willis could probably have been reduced—Neal McDonough, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Byung-hun Lee all takes turns being psychotic killers. God bless Parker, though. Her wide-eyed smile and shoot-em-up enthusiasm prove Red 2’s most adorably fun element. Grizzled vets stubbornly forced back into action with nihilistic detachment is fine, but it’s nice that someone on screen is as excited as the rest of us watching.
This article appears in Jul 18-24, 2013.