OK, so I was going to move straight onto the second book of the Losers (I even read the first chapter) but this afternoon I went with my family to see the movie version of Red and I thought I would read the comic and see how they compare. Wow, are they different!
The only thing retained for the movie is the retired CIA agent Paul (Frank in the movie) Moses who just wants to lead a peaceful life but has a kill team sent after him. And that’s it! Everything else in the movie is added on – the old team, the love interest, the ultimate reason that Moses ends up on the kill list – everything.
In the comic, an incoming director of the CIA is taken to a special room and shown material pertaining to Paul Moses. He comes out shaken and immediately orders that Moses be killed. An initial team go to his home but fail to kill him and Moses unleashes his vengeance upon the CIA.
In the UK, this movie is rated 12A (meaning that children under 12 can only enter when accompanied by an adult) the same rating as the Iron Man and Transformer movies. This means that the level of violence, while high, is toned down from the graphic violence in the original comic. We all enjoyed it and as an action/buddy movie it worked really well – with great performances from the four RED agents. But for me the star of the movie was Karl Urban as the CIA agent tasked with tracking down and arresting Moses. Urban was great in this and as a very much under utilised Bones in the recent Star Trek movie - I was going to say that I could watch him in anything but realised that he was in the Chronicles of Riddick which I hated.
So go and see the movie and go and read the comic they are very different but both entertaining in their own ways.
First published on RevolutionSF on Friday Oct 22, 2010
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