I can has ammo naow? *Lots* of it?
Friday, October 22nd, 2010 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizvogelSaw Red the other day.
OMG that was fun! Pure, unapologetic OTT mayhem with a hefty seasoning of clever dialog. How does it push my buttons, let me count the ways: Spies of, erm, a certain age, who can still unreservedly kick ass because it's skill that matters, not youth. Dark doings at not-quite-the-highest levels, and no one naive enough to really be surprised. Getting the band back together, with camaraderie and teamwork based on years of experience. An innate recognition that the people doing the same work understand each other best, even if they work for different sides.
Bruce Willis's Frank is a fine old agent. I loved the little touches like adding Christmas decorations to his utterly bland, impersonal house when he realized the lack of them made it stand out. And finding out what book the girl he was interested in was reading, and then reading it himself -- classic asset-approach technique, and of course someone like that would use it for off-duty approaches, too.
Do I even need to mention that Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich were brilliant?
The character of Sarah was surprisingly great, too. The innocent with the boring life who longs for adventure is a classic trope -- but when she gets the adventure, she doesn't freak out and wish for her old, deadly dull life back. She isn't horrified when, the bad guys having proved they're definitely out for blood, her good-guy sort-of-boyfriend proves to be every bit as dangerous. Nor does she suddenly become as competent as the professionals. But once she gets into it, she's whole-heartedly in favor of seeing the thing through to the end. And the next thing, too. Instant adrenaline junkie; I love it!
I think it was Helen Mirren's character that really made the film for me, though. The baking, the flower arranging, the occasional contract job on the side because she gets restless.... I want to be Victoria when I grow up.
And I want a userpic of Victoria in the elegant white dress and the combat boots, manning the .50 cal machine gun. I want it like pie.
Oh, yes, and the naive junior agent who eventually realizes his own side is in the wrong -- is neither naive nor all that junior. And the realization comes completely believably with the accumulation of evidence, not in one great dawning moment. If there's an annoying spy-movie trope that this one didn't turn around and do right, I can't think what it is.
This, folks, is what good spy fiction is like. Not necessarily the OTT-ness; you can play this sort of thing silly or serious. But the attitude toward the business was perfect. Our heroes are professional killers, but that's not incompatible with being basically good people. They're not consumed with angst over their work; it's a job, it's a skill, and like anyone with a highly advanced, somewhat esoteric skill, there's a real satisfaction in using it. And those who have gotten out of the line of active fieldwork, whether by retirement or promotion, unapologetically miss it. Because you can bake cookies, and fall in love, and still have a loaded H&K MP5K submachine gun conveniently to hand.
OMG that was fun! Pure, unapologetic OTT mayhem with a hefty seasoning of clever dialog. How does it push my buttons, let me count the ways: Spies of, erm, a certain age, who can still unreservedly kick ass because it's skill that matters, not youth. Dark doings at not-quite-the-highest levels, and no one naive enough to really be surprised. Getting the band back together, with camaraderie and teamwork based on years of experience. An innate recognition that the people doing the same work understand each other best, even if they work for different sides.
Bruce Willis's Frank is a fine old agent. I loved the little touches like adding Christmas decorations to his utterly bland, impersonal house when he realized the lack of them made it stand out. And finding out what book the girl he was interested in was reading, and then reading it himself -- classic asset-approach technique, and of course someone like that would use it for off-duty approaches, too.
Do I even need to mention that Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich were brilliant?
The character of Sarah was surprisingly great, too. The innocent with the boring life who longs for adventure is a classic trope -- but when she gets the adventure, she doesn't freak out and wish for her old, deadly dull life back. She isn't horrified when, the bad guys having proved they're definitely out for blood, her good-guy sort-of-boyfriend proves to be every bit as dangerous. Nor does she suddenly become as competent as the professionals. But once she gets into it, she's whole-heartedly in favor of seeing the thing through to the end. And the next thing, too. Instant adrenaline junkie; I love it!
I think it was Helen Mirren's character that really made the film for me, though. The baking, the flower arranging, the occasional contract job on the side because she gets restless.... I want to be Victoria when I grow up.
And I want a userpic of Victoria in the elegant white dress and the combat boots, manning the .50 cal machine gun. I want it like pie.
Oh, yes, and the naive junior agent who eventually realizes his own side is in the wrong -- is neither naive nor all that junior. And the realization comes completely believably with the accumulation of evidence, not in one great dawning moment. If there's an annoying spy-movie trope that this one didn't turn around and do right, I can't think what it is.
This, folks, is what good spy fiction is like. Not necessarily the OTT-ness; you can play this sort of thing silly or serious. But the attitude toward the business was perfect. Our heroes are professional killers, but that's not incompatible with being basically good people. They're not consumed with angst over their work; it's a job, it's a skill, and like anyone with a highly advanced, somewhat esoteric skill, there's a real satisfaction in using it. And those who have gotten out of the line of active fieldwork, whether by retirement or promotion, unapologetically miss it. Because you can bake cookies, and fall in love, and still have a loaded H&K MP5K submachine gun conveniently to hand.
