This has been a good year for action movies. Last summer alone had the triple-whammy of The Losers, The Expendables, and The A-Team. Even Inception was basically an ensemble team-on-a-mission flick with running, gunning and scheming dressed in so much intellectual wrapping. And now, we have one more in the genre for this year.

RED is the first — and probably the only — film adapted from a DC Comics property that wasn’t released by a Time Warner company. Summit handled the funding and distribution for this one, choosing to release the film in October, of all months. This has widely been considered an unorthodox move, but I personally think that distancing the film from the aforementioned summer blockbusters to give it some breathing room was a very savvy decision.

The movie itself is about a half-dozen of the finest agents to ever retire from the CIA, set to hunt down the people who are trying to kill them. It’s really quite a threadbare premise, but it’s elevated to great heights by the actors cast and what they do with it. This film is loaded almost entirely with classic names in acting, all of them competing with each other to see who can steal the most scenes. I know that this was also the approach to casting The Expendables, but the films differ on two counts. First is that Stallone and company more or less went through their movie under the pretense that they were all still in their physical prime. Second is that with the exception of Bruce Willis (who got a cameo in Expendables, incidentally), none of the actors in RED made their name as action stars. These all well-renowned thespians who are blowing shit up and knocking people out, playing against their senescence and established images while clearly loving every minute of it.

First, let’s talk about Bruce Willis. What happened to this guy? Ever since his awesome turn in Sin City five years ago, his filmography has been loaded with voice-over roles, uncredited performances, cameos, assorted flops and such John McClane cash-ins as Cop Out and… well, Live Free or Die Hard. It’s like he hasn’t even been trying. Until now.

Willis has a lot to do in the role of Frank Moses. For starters, the guy is smitten with a Social Security worker whom he’s only ever spoken with on the phone. Willis plays this like Moses is a teenager with a bad crush and it works. He feels his age and the ongoing flirtation makes him feel young again. Willis sells all of this, with every emotion it entails. Of course, the vast majority of RED focuses on Moses as an old man and a superb warrior. This is where Willis taps into his John McClane character, crafting a man who is very decidedly old-school in his methods and attitude. However, while McClane was mostly a guy who flew by the seat of his pants all the time, Moses is a crafty bastard. He always has a plan and he’s always a step ahead of everyone else. It’s not easy to sell this level of brains and brawn, but Willis somehow does it.

Next is Morgan Freeman, who doesn’t get nearly enough to do. The man is very charming and every moment he has onscreen is a joy, but his screen time is cut way too short for various reasons and that’s a damn shame. Fortunately, Brian Cox is around to pick up the slack, serving as the team’s reserve member and getting some pretty awesome moments of his own. He also gets a fair bit of time with Helen Mirren, who is on fire with this one. She’s adorable, she’s badass and she hilariously plays her character as a woman with a potentially very raunchy past.

John Malkovich is hilarious here, playing the practical application to that classic theoretical question, “Is it really paranoia if everyone actually is out to get you?” It’s so very tempting to call Marvin Boggs crazy, except that so many of his paranoid suspicions turn out to be true and pretty much all of his countermeasures against imaginary threats have turned him into a very real threat. Boggs is proof that there is nothing more dangerous than a lunatic with heavy artillery and high explosives.

The villain is played by Richard Dreyfuss, who’s chewing scenery like a zombie at a shopping mall. Dreyfuss plays an arms manufacturer with heavy political influence, making up for his brief screen time by crafting the sleaziest, slimiest, greediest, least ethical coward he possibly can. It’s totally one-dimensional and God knows this isn’t the first time a corporate money grubber has been played as pure evil (just ask Michael Caine), but Dreyfuss makes it a lot of fun to watch.

Then there’s Ernest Borgnine, who basically gets a glorified cameo here. Borgnine could have played this role in his sleep, though his presence does add a lot of heft to what’s otherwise a throwaway character.

As for our younger stars, there’s Karl Urban as CIA Agent William Cooper. Urban delivers an extraordinary CIA agent who utilizes all of the finest technology available to get the job done. He’s also quite good at CQC and very intelligent to boot. If Frank Moses represents the old-school CIA, then Cooper represents the new style and it’s fascinating to watch them play off each other in this regard. Adding to this is that in spite of his position against Moses, Cooper’s really not a bad guy. He’s just a family man trying to end this whole affair, doing so as legally and bloodlessly as possible. It’s quite heavily implied that Cooper and Moses learn a lot from each other over the course of this movie and it was nice to see Urban and Willis play that.

Last but not least, we have Mary-Louise Parker as love interest Sarah Ross. Mostly, this involves acting as a sounding board for all the craziness around her and Parker plays this wonderfully. She has great chemistry with Willis and her comedic timing is impressive, though her attempts at “attitude” fell flat quite often (“You’re asking me for help? That is so lame.”). Of course, Sarah does get captured in the most pathetically useless way possible, but she also gets a genius save involving a contact lens, so I guess it evens out. It’s also worth mentioning that Sarah is established as an unhappy cubicle worker who loves Harlequin romance novels, longs to travel someplace and is sick of dating mundane guys her age. She could not be more transparently set up to fall in love with an old spy who takes her on covert missions. However, it’s still understandably hard for the two of them to fall for each other, given the circumstances of their meet-cute, so I’ll let this slide.

The acting in this film is very good all around. The story, however, is predictable in many places and full of holes. I know it’s odd to complain about plot holes in a big, dumb, loud conspiracy action thriller like this one, but anytime a clue is left and found in a library book, I’m going to call bullshit. Still, a couple of clunker lines and the occasional plot hole doesn’t really get to my main problem with this movie: Its tone.

I kept getting the distinct impression that this film didn’t know just what its ideal action/comedy ratio was. There were a few outlandish action shots (my personal favorite being the grenade that was thrown at Marvin, who batted it back with the butt of an assault rifle just in time for the grenade to vaporize its user), but these are way too few and far-between to act as an action self-parody (see: The A-Team). However, there was still way too much comedy present for the film to be a straight action movie (as The Expendables was). Call me narrow-minded, but it seems to me like action movies have to be one or the other nowadays and I was never sure which this film was going for.

Adding to this confusion are the visuals, which are just trying too damn hard. There is absolutely no subtlety in the camera work or editing (the close-up of a bullet on a frying pan comes to mind), making for a film that visually takes itself quite seriously as action. On the other hand, we also have the onscreen postcards to announce our current location. These graphics are obviously trying to be comedic and inventive, but just come off as annoying and distracting.

The direction of RED leaves quite a bit to be desired, but the main draw of this movie is its cast and the actors do not disappoint. There are a lot of clever moments and times of humor to be found here, amidst the visual deficiencies. This all adds up to a pleasantly mediocre time at the movies. It’s an action film to enjoy and promptly forget about. I know we’ve had a lot of those lately, but I’m still recommending this movie. After all, when else will you ever get to see Helen Mirren in a gunfight with automatic firearms?