Red 2

It still stands for “Retired, Extremely Dangerous,” just as in the 2010 movie and the comic books it was based on (by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner). This time, courtesy of writers Jon and Erich Hoeber and director Dean Parisot, the emphasis is on “comic” as well as “dangerous,” as retired CIA agent Frank Moses (Bruce Willis), his sweetheart Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) and colleague Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich) swing into action to find a lost nuclear bomb—and dodge the assassins set on their trail. Helen Mirren and Brian Cox return from the original; new this time are Korean star Byung-hun Lee as one of those killers, Neal McDonough as another, Anthony Hopkins as a daffy scientist and Catherine Zeta-Jones as a KGB agent. The action is solid, the pace headlong, the dialogue saucily tongue-in-cheek.