Red

Pension-age suburbanite Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) wakes up to a volley of fire from masked hitmen, and as he deals with them one by one, realises his retirement is going to take a violent detour. The title stands for ‘retired, extremely dangerous’, and this knockabout action comedy is a boisterous, getting-the-band-back-together movie as Frank assembles a crew of trigger-happy oldsters (John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox) to uncover why his distinguished, black-ops past is coming back to haunt him. It’s a charming mess, rescued by the knowing gusto of the acting. Beneath its light exterior is not only a neat, if unsubtle, political undercurrent but a rebellious streak about how the allure of firing an RPG outweighs the prospect of retirement.