RED (2010)

I had a surprisingly fun time watching this movie. As a so-called geriatric spy movie, there was a lot of good action and humor to impress all moviegoers.

Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is a former CIA agent who is living a quiet retired life. Whenever he feels lonely, he calls a pension customer service agent named Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker). When an agency hit squad tries to kill Frank, he travels to Sarah in order to protect her. Now the two of them are on the run and quickly realize someone in the CIA wants to terminate all the members of Frank's old black ops team. They track down Joe, Marvin and Victoria (Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren), and require their assistance in facing the killers. Thus begins a battle involving rouge agents, Russians, torpedoes, and the Vice President of the United States.

There really isn't a whole lot of plot to go around in this film. It's very simple and very easy to follow. But it's also a hell of a lot of fun. Bruce Willis basically played the same role he's played in other action flicks, but just a little more aware of his age. Helen Mirren was great as the killer with impeccable poise. The MVP of the movie was John Malkovich. He played a former agent with a screw loose, and it played right into his wheel house. Action fans will enjoy this, as will comedy fans. All are invited to watch. Grade: B+

Cop Out (2010)

There were a lot of problems with this movie. First, the script was just not good enough for a supposed "buddy cop" movie. Second, who decided to let Kevin Smith direct a movie he didn't write. Mistake!

Jimmy Monroe and Paul Hodges (Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan) are a veteran pair of cops who have been partners for over 7 years. Their cases go a little haywire and they let druglord slip through the cracks. Wallowing from that, Jimmy also needs to pay for his daughter's wedding and decides to sell his most prized baseball card. This card should net him somewhere around $80,000. Just randomly, a couple of no-goodniks rob the card some and take Jimmy's prized possession. Now, they have to find this card so his daughter's wedding can take place the way she wants. As it just so happens, the card soon comes into the hands of the very kingpin they've been trying to catch for years. How exactly can they get it back?

No need to read it again. That hokey plot is almost all there is to this movie. I wasn't expecting a lot from this movie, but I was expecting Tracy Morgan to be a bad choice. Admittedly, I was wrong about that. Morgan was funny and somewhat believable as a cop. The movie suffered because it's such a weak story. I can't recommend this, even for Kevin Smith fans.

What Just Happened (2008)

This movie tried to skewer the Hollywood process of making movies as opposed to making films. The Hollywood parts of this movie were good, not great, but the rest of the movie fell short and hard.

De Niro plays Ben, a Hollywood producer who is on the verge of falling down the movie ladder with a film by a turbulent director who doesn't want to give up his integrity, even after a test audience hated the movie. Ben needs to play every side to get everyone happy before the movie premieres in Cannes two weeks later. Some of this was fun, most was not.

I love Robert De Niro, I do, but I just did not believe him at all in this role. At the other end, I did like Bruce Willis as the hard-to-work-with movie star. But nothing in the middle seemed to work.