Red

It’s six a.m. Your grandfather climbs out of bed and pours himself a cup of coffee. Your grandmother, already awake, is engrossed in a cooking magazine, bifocals slightly crooked upon her nose. Now picture both of them wielding machine guns as dozens of CIA assassins converge on their house.

This is precisely the kind of imagery you will see in Red, the latest action-comedy to hit theaters. Based on the graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, Red—which refers to a supposed CIA acronym meaning “Retired and Extremely Dangerous”—follows a rag-tag group of retired CIA agents who are pulled from mundane senior-citizenship and plunged into the middle of a full-on government conspiracy. Forced to run for their lives, the retirees travel across the country, dodging bullets, explosions and the obligatory “old man” jokes along the way.

Although Red offers up plenty of James Bond-esque confrontations and some witty dialogue, the film relies more on the ability of its casting directors than of its writers. The all-star cast—including Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren and John Malkovich—is all that keeps the movie from becoming a boring burnout. Willis, as ex-CIA agent Frank Moses, is as audacious as ever, fighting off assassins with an air reminiscent of his Die Hard days. Malkovich elicits more than a few laughs with his role as an eccentric doomsayer. And what could be more entertaining than watching Mirren, dressed in a flowing white gown, take down a security guard with her handbag? Add Freeman into the mix, and you’ve got yourself an action film to please the masses.

So when you drop the cash on a ticket to Red, be prepared for the typical slow-motion fight scenes, the usual plot about some government scandal and the predictable twist at the end. At least the plot is more entertaining than a game of bingo at your local nursing home.