Bruce Willis’ new movie is pretty kick ass. The basic premise, the CIA suddenly starts killing off retired CIA agents who are codenamed “RED”. (Retired: Extremely Dangerous) Morgan Freeman is in it, but he’s kind of wasted.
Willis, who plays Frank Moses, falls in love with a woman he calls for his government checks. Of course, she’s beautiful and Frank ends up traveling halfway across the country to save her from CIA guys who would kill her just for knowing him. (Spoiler) Turns out, the whole thing is being coordinated by the Vice President of the United States. (Crazy! The Vice President assassinating people?! I know!)
If you don’t think about it too hard, it’s really a fun movie. Now, because I think too hard, let me ruin it.
First, the movie does not seem to follow the comic book AT ALL. The Red Comic is about a CIA agent who is switched from “Green” to “Red”. It’s also a serious story of survival and, in the movie’s defense, probably much shorter than the story in the movie. The producers turn the story into a comedy, add four other characters and change the main character from a current CIA agent to a retired one.
Now here’s what gets me, even though I’ve personally been through the horrible process of talking about turning your comic into a movie: They changed the main character’s first name from “Paul” to “Frank”.
Now think about that for a minute. Granted, you might argue, the studio didn’t want to do a serious movie and since they had Bruce Willis and all these older actors, making them retired is a good explanation of why they are older. Plus a comedy, again, with all these veterans, would be fun. And it was a pretty decent script and all.
But why the Hell would you change his name from “Paul” to “Frank”? At what point do Hollywood producers or writers or directors or whoever made the change go, “Ya know, this movie would be better, somehow, if his name was Frank.” What goes through that mind? Is someone that desperate just to sit at the premiere and go, “Ya know, they were going to call the main character Paul until I stepped in and fixed it.” Are people in Hollywood that fragile? Are their egos that easily satisfied?
Pretty much from what I’ve seen, yeah.
Much like our system of government is broke, so too is (but not quite as far along) our Hollywood system of making movies. This movie was okay, watchable, even good, but that’s probably despite people who had to go, “No, not Paul, let’s call him, Frank.” Who knows? Maybe Bruce Willis just like the name Frank. I mean, he played him and he is Bruce Willis, so no biggie. But still, considering the utter and complete gutting on the original concept, why even buy and option the comic? I mean, they even changed the name of the meaning of the title. What’s left other than the character’s last name?
Okay, rant over. Anyhow, RED is still pretty fun. I give it 7 out of 10 keggers. It’s not a bad movie to go see and definitely one to rent if you missed it. Just don’t think too much.
