Okay, this was one movie I had to see right away because of the cast: Bruce Willis? John Malkovich. Morgan freaking Freeman....and Dame Helen Mirren? Mary Louise Parker and Karl Urban, who I last saw totally "being" Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy in Star Trek? In a spy movie based on a Warren Ellis graphic novel with the promise of things exploding and witty banter? It has Ernest Borgnine in it? Ernest Borgnine is still alive? (And he looks great! Yay, Ernest Borgnine!) And Richard Dreyfuss!
I was so very, very in. Looked quirky, action-y but fun.
And it was!
Willis plays Frank Moses, a retired CIA Black Ops superman who is so lonely he tears up his pension checks to have an excuse to call up Sarah Ross, a pensions bureau customer service cube-rat who is bored with her life, cynical about romance, and yet reads goofy awful romance/thriller novels. (I identified with this character just a little.) His life is depicted as being terribly normal, ensconced in a nice little not terribly fancy suburban home on a nice little suburban block, who pads downstairs one fateful night to have a wet works unit try to ammo the living hell out of him.
When he handles this in a "been there, done that" fashion, dispatching the first squad of "baddies" with smooth ruthlessness, and drawing in the assumed back-up team by "cooking off" some ammo on a skillet to simulate a firefight--all to kill their asses, whilst walking out with his reserve ID in a briefcase he had carefully set aside against the day?
It takes about ten minutes to recognize that whoever is after Frank Moses is about to catch hell. But then there's that matter of the girl he's been calling--
He totally doesn't want her to get caught up in his business. So he kidnaps her.
That bit was a little rough. But it laid out that this movie wasn't about survival, and it wasn't really about revenge, although those things fit in. I consider this kind of a romance. And it's also kind of about how do people navigate in a world that declares them outmoded? That might reject people of great skill for being "too old"? Where lovers make hard life and death decisions, where people really do embrace mayhem constructive, and where young snots seem to discount what the seasoned professional can do in his sleep? This movie is witty, pretty, has explosions and lots of gun play, but it also seems to say stuff.
There's a scene where Frank Moses wails on William Cooper (The Karl Urban character, whose mission is to kill Frank Moses). It seemed kind of like a fantasy-fulfillment: The old guy showing an upstart how it was really done. A lot of the movie is about how people can do surprising things. Helen Mirren is amazing as Victoria, a very feminine, petite, and cold-blooded highly trained assassin. Her character's romance/intrigue with Ivan Simanov (Brian Cox), a Russian, um, diplomat, unfolds in the background of the movie. And that is a story good enough to be a story on its own, too.
And then there's Morgan Freeman, as Joe Matheson, kind of the elder, the voice of wisdom--a seniors- home resident with late-stage cancer who is not interested in going gently into that good night. Being introduced to his last battle, he's ready to fight!
And then there's John Malkovich, as Marvin Boggs, a guy who was deep in "Men who Stare at Goats" or even MK-Ultra territory, who was dosed with LSD on a regular basis for 11 years and as such, is more than a little traumatised. His role is comic because of his oddness, but also tragic. You see a deadly competent professional who has paid with his mind.
I liked the heck out of this movie. The plot leads up to the question of just who is powerful enough to order hits against citizens--which might be a Macguffin for the plot of this movie, but isn't an unreasonable question altogether. Are Vice-Presidents or war-profiteers special people who get away with more? The movie just presents this idea of who the bad guy might be so innocently.
I hope it sinks in and spins around some brain-pans.
But long-story, short? Loved it. Fun. And I like Bruce Willis in things, unless they are Hudson Hawk, which I never could convince myself to like or even watch all the way through. Or Unbreakable, which is an M Night Shamalyan joint and I only watched one of them in theatre all the way through and didn't entirely like it even though by rights I should have thought it was teh awesomes. I think it's the bald head. I have a fetish. Him. Jason Statham. My hubboo, all sporting the Daddy Warbucks look. I dig the smooth. My fetish might go back to envisioning the full monty Sean Connery when I was a wee lass. A look he should have rocked straightaway. Like Patrick Stewart. Mmmmm. Patrick Stewart. But Willis is funny and physical and romantic in this ("gooey", even).
I thought it was a fun one. I recommend it.
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