Film review: Red 2 (12A)

You can teach old dogs new tricks, or so it seems in RED 2, the action-packed sequel to the uproarious 2010 comedy about a team of retired assassins, who merrily kick butt and run rings around highly trained agents 30 years their junior.
Undated Film Still Handout from Red 2. Pictured: MARY-LOUISE PARKER as Sarah, BRUCE WILLIS as Frank and JOHN MALKOVICH a Marvin. See PA Feature FILM Willis. Picture credit should read: PA Photo/Entertainment One. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature FILM Willis.Undated Film Still Handout from Red 2. Pictured: MARY-LOUISE PARKER as Sarah, BRUCE WILLIS as Frank and JOHN MALKOVICH a Marvin. See PA Feature FILM Willis. Picture credit should read: PA Photo/Entertainment One. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature FILM Willis.
Undated Film Still Handout from Red 2. Pictured: MARY-LOUISE PARKER as Sarah, BRUCE WILLIS as Frank and JOHN MALKOVICH a Marvin. See PA Feature FILM Willis. Picture credit should read: PA Photo/Entertainment One. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature FILM Willis.

Dean Parisot’s testosterone-fuelled caper is a hugely entertaining and polished piece of nonsense, which ramps up the action sequences as the lean and preposterous plot ricochets between Paris, London and Moscow at dizzying speed.

The dream team of Bruce Willis, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren lock and load once again with giddy abandon, also welcoming celebrated Korean actor Lee Byung-hun to the fray, whose martial arts skills allow for some terrific sequences of hand-to-hand combat in bone-crunching close-up.

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Screenwriter Jon and Erich Hoeber, who penned the original, mix comedy and explosions with a dash of romance, garnished with Sir Anthony Hopkins reliving his Hannibal Lecter glory days as a mentally unstable scientist with a dark secret.

Undated Film Still Handout from Red 2. Pictured: MARY-LOUISE PARKER as Sarah, BRUCE WILLIS as Frank and JOHN MALKOVICH a Marvin. See PA Feature FILM Willis. Picture credit should read: PA Photo/Entertainment One. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature FILM Willis.Undated Film Still Handout from Red 2. Pictured: MARY-LOUISE PARKER as Sarah, BRUCE WILLIS as Frank and JOHN MALKOVICH a Marvin. See PA Feature FILM Willis. Picture credit should read: PA Photo/Entertainment One. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature FILM Willis.
Undated Film Still Handout from Red 2. Pictured: MARY-LOUISE PARKER as Sarah, BRUCE WILLIS as Frank and JOHN MALKOVICH a Marvin. See PA Feature FILM Willis. Picture credit should read: PA Photo/Entertainment One. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature FILM Willis.

The incendiary cocktail goes down a treat, delivering big laughs without needing to engage your brain too much to keep track of the usual array of crosses, double-crosses and sly twists.

RED 2 opens at a wholesale grocery store where retired CIA operative Frank Moses (Willis) is enjoying domestic life with girlfriend Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), who craves excitement in their relationship.

So she is delighted when Frank’s sartorially challenged former associate, Marvin Boggs (Malkovich), pops up unexpectedly in the adjacent aisle.

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Marvin’s re-appearance coincides with a dastardly plot involving US government agent Jack Horton (Neal McDonough), Russian secret agent Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and an enigmatic figure known as The Frog (David Thewlis). Frank, Marvin and Sarah go on the run for their lives with Chinese contract killer Han Jo-bae (Byung-hun) in hot pursuit.

And stylish assassin Victoria (Mirren) telephones Frank to let him know that British intelligence have also hired her to put a bullet through his head.