Schwentke has signed on to The Poison Kitchen, a story that centers on the Muenchener Post, aka Hitler‘s least favorite newspaper. Set in the early days of the Nazi party, the film will cover the paper’s criticism of Hitler that lead to his destruction of the paper, its offices, and the arrests of its staff. However, it’s being written by the writer of Ninja Assassin with the intention being to make it more of a thriller than a political drama. Take that historical accuracy! (Variety)

The film will be directed by Robert Schwentke, which is a name so awesome it makes me want to chuck an orphan off an overpass. It’s based on a comic book series of the same name, written by Peter Lenkov.

Bacon has played a lot of roles in his day (Flatliner, Tremor-killer, Sleeper-raper), but he’ll always be The Woodsman to me. (Variety)

I loves me some badass, bald Bruce. He’s my hero and Red had all the makings of the kind of crazy action movie I like. In some ways it kind of delivered but I’m still disappointed by it. The comedy works and making that the context for the action totally works, but it’s more "Moonlighting" than Die Hard.

Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) goes about his daily routines, flirting with Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) by phone as she handles his pension check. When ski masked guys come to his house, he takes them all out, goes after Sarah and gets the old gang back together. He was a CIA operative with Joe Matheson (Morgan Freeman), Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich) and Victoria (Helen Mirren). Now agent Cooper (Karl Urban) is on their tail.

More after the jump…

All the shenanigans are played as comedy, in fact as romantic comedy between Frank and Sarah. That’s fine. I always say action is an inherently comedic genre anyway. The stunts and payoffs are punch lines. It still has to cohere like an action movie though. Red feels like just a collection of stunts with no flow.

Action sequences are just poorly shot. It feels like they took a few comic panels from the book, but you don’t see the effects of a given action. It’s hard to see how Frank takes out the intruders, but he looks cool doing it. Those trailer moments like getting out of the spinning car or shooting rockets at bad guys are cool, but they only play as stunts that somebody filmed, not actions the characters performed in the scene. You barely see Mirren with the machinegun at all.

Romantic comedies could take a cue from Red though. How many stupid movies have we seen where a woman hates the difficult guy until she learns he’s really not all bad? Well, Sarah has every right to feel that way, dragged on the run by a sketchy guy she’s only spoken to by phone, so she doesn’t even know that he’s the good guy. It works largely because Parker is so adorable.

The team is great together and they’ve got an all star cast of supporting actors to play opposite too. Every scene feels like a bunch of old pros reminiscing, whether they’re colleagues or villains. There’s some nifty caper as they orchestrate their mission, everyone gets some badass moments and they have outrageous sets for the characters to play in.

That’s a lot to be happy about in Red but it failed me on the most important aspect. I could just accept that it’s an all star comedy with great characters, but that would be wrong. The action scenes left me cold and that’s no good in an action movie.
 

_{Reynolds will do your damn scene in a minute.}

Robert Schwentke has officially signed on to tell Ryan Reynolds how to hold his gun in R.I.P.D. The director is taking advantage of the buzz he’s generated with the upcoming Red starring Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren. He’s decided to try the whole action movie thing with a cast that’s currently ineligable for a AARP discount.

Reynolds will get right into the role of police officer for the dead after he completes the 20,000 other projects he has lined up. Change-Up is first on the docket, followed by Safe House with Denzel Washington. Shooting will start late next summer on R.I.P.D. Until that time, Schwentke will be following Reynolds around, tapping his foot impatiently and staring at his watch. (Deadline)