A while ago in the news, the pension age in the UK was announced to be raised to 66 for all from the year 2020.

This caused uproar from butchers, bakers and ladies of ill repute, mainly due to the fact that when they got older, people couldn’t have a sit-down and then spend the rest of their days cleaning their house, looking though windows at anything that moves and unable to perform bowel movements of any kind unless they eat a year’s worth of prunes in a single hour.

People will instead by allowed to continue falling asleep at their desks, staring out of the window bored and mutter about the state of the world a year longer, pretty much the same as what most people do now.

However it seems that getting old is not as bad as it used to be, if we are to believe what happens in the recent release at the picture houses, RED

We begin with Bruce “Die already for f**k’s sake, why for the love of god can no-one kill me in anything?” Willis, playing Frank Moses, who at first appears to be just an old guy bored with his lot, who seems to continue to rip up his pension checks just so he has an excuse to get free sex talk time with a woman in US social services. Why he just doesn’t pay for it like we all do, no-one knows.

You see, the woman working for the social services, played by drug dealer Sarah Louise Parker, is so bored with her lot in life, that not even doing dot to dot puzzles, or smoking a crack pipe can stop her brain from melting. So it seems that these two star-crossed phone sex addicts are destined to meet, if only to share their love of Mills and Boon novels.

What starts as a relatively simple plan to meet up for naughty, turns in all out war, as a team is sent to kill Bruce Willis. Oh like that was going to ever happen. It seems Bruce Willis is a dab hand at armed combat, and also Ex-CIA who retired, extremely dangerous (hence the letters of the title).

Naturally, this is the start of a whirlwind adventure as drug dealer Sarah Louise Parker is caught up in the middle and goes against her will, with Bruce across the country to see his old buddies from the biz, basically to get the band back together one last time for the big concert or words to those effect.

On bass we have Joe (Morgan Freeman or “Mr President” from Deep Impact) who basically stores mental images in the naughty mind bank thanks to the young women in the nursing home.

On drums, we have Ringo, sorry Victoria (Helen Mirren or “the Queen” from the Queen) who is still taking contracts on the side but she does like flowers and a bit of girl time every now and then.

Finally there is Marvin on keyboard (John Malkovich or “John Malkovich” in Being John Malkovich) who has become highly-paranoid and lives in a bunker (although that has more to do with the daily doses of LSD for years from the CIA than the retirement, and at the request of our lawyers, at no point did he receive the drugs from drug dealer Sarah Louise Parker….honest).

Throw in Brian Cox with a bad Russian accent (remember, the cold war did happen kids) and the stage is set for one last job.

In the mix of action and comic moments, it was not hard to compare this film to the wonderful work done by Sly Stallone, in which lots of older men were out-acted by pieces of cardboard in the ultimate action movie, “Dave does dogging”, or as you may know it from its theatrical release title, The Expendables, the “oscar-winning in a parallel universe where people are all dead from contracting a sexual disease from this piece of…” film.

The obvious comparison came with the age of the actors used and the fact that they were all fighting for a good cause etc. albeit one film was set in a run-down wasteland filled with horrible mutants and puss-ridden slimy death, with the other film was set in a none de-script South American country.

That is where the comparison ends really as RED clearly moves past the aforementioned Oscar winning film in every single way possible, without even breaking a sweat, which given the age, spirit and chemistry of the cast is incredible. Granted a dead badger moves past the expendables in quality terms….anyway…

John Malkovich could have stolen the show so easily as the nut job that wasn’t, but instead stayed back and blended in while wearing his camouflage to hid from the satellites.

However it should be noted, that while the action sequences were good, the overall story and humour was somewhat lost by the fact of the film having big name people on screen. There was a lot of scope for real good comedy given the subject matter, but alas this appears to been flushed away like the toilet paper that the script for the expendables was written on.

Remarkably, the old age thing was barely remarked on, save for one sequence with Mr.President Freeman and Bruce “I Cannae die Captain, I donne have the power” Willis, with the young whipper-snappers (well, most of the time, just the Bloke who was McCoy in Star Trek) from the CIA trying to get our heroic band, being stopped in their tracks at every turn, all the while, no-one appears out of breath, needing an injection in their ass, or taking an afternoon nap.

You also cannot shake off the feeling that this entire experience is pretty forgettable, and that soon after leaving the cinema, you’ll be wondering if you’d just woken up from be drugged in a local bar (and if not, why not?) before making your way to a local bar where you’ll be drugged, and then wake up wondering if you’d just seen RED.

Sadly, this film could have been a lot better, as it stands, it’s passable and again like a lot of recent films, won’t leave you feeling lighter in the wallet without at least obtaining some level of enjoyment. However, there is a moment worth savouring from RED, just as in a Mastercard advert, the single sight of seeing the Queen shooting a sniper rifle…..priceless.

And that’s why we all have to work one extra year of our lives, because it seems we can still groove with the best of them when we’re old. Word up, let’s play dominoes and watch Countdown….