USA: Cast of "RED," a movie about retired CIA agents, talks about what it means to age

Record ID: 829927

  • Title: USA: Cast of "RED," a movie about retired CIA agents, talks about what it means to age
  • Date: 4th October 2010
  • Summary: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (OCTOBER 3, 2010) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) JOHN MALKOVICH, ACTOR, SAYING: "Age is really simple for me. It means experience, and I value experience."
  • Embargoed: 19th October 2010 13:00
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  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA4NEL2M35W0OPU7QKNZHD2FN6R
  • Story Text: The cast of the action-packed comedy movie "RED" discussed aging on Sunday (October 3), the core concept behind "RED"-- "Retired, Extremely Dangerous"-- which tells the story of a band of ex-CIA agents who all retired after a brilliant career.
    Based on a cult-favorite graphic novel, "RED" looks at society's discarding people once they reach a certain age, specifically, old-school CIA agents and Cold War spies who get replaced by younger tech-savy agents.
    Bruce Willis plays former CIA agent Frank Moses who is living a quiet life until one day a hit squad shows up to kill him. With his life and that of his love-interest Sarah's in danger, he reassembles his old team in an effort to survive.
    Willis, who is 55, said that to him age is just a conceptual thing.
    "I would actually say that I take my age for granted. I don't think of myself as any age, really," Willis said. "And in life in my mind, I am about 28 years old. And I feel like I can still run fast and chase after my kids and still have wisdom enough to tell them the difference between right and wrong. And when I need to, be able to, on screen, fight and not look like I am going to throw it all in," he added.
    Fifty-six year-old John Malkovich plays Marvin Boggs, a former master-of-disguise CIA operative who was turned into a live experiment by the CIA, getting daily doses of LSD for eleven years.
    "Age is really simple for me. It means experience, and I value experience," Malkovich said.
    Academy Award winning actor Morgan Freeman stars as Joe Matheson, the senior member of the ex-CIA squad, who is suffering from terminal cancer.
    "To my character, it means end of the line for me until he (Bruce Willis) shows up in my life again and says I need some help. I am sort of beginning to dotter, as it were, being a sexual harasser with the nurses," the 73-year-old actor said.
    Sarah, Willis' character's love interest, is the odd bird in the bunch. She is not an ex-agent, nor retired. Actress Marie-Louise Parker, who plays Sarah in the movie, said there is a reason why the character fits in.
    "Because this is the world she always dreams about, she always fantasizes about her romance novels, this is kind of the ideal fantasy to her," Parker explained. "And then she is living it, so she kind of become this super hero that she has always dreamed about."
    At age 38, Karl Urban is the youngest of the entire cast. He plays William Cooper, the personification of the younger generation high-tech CIA hit man. Despite his younger age, Urban had to admit that the shoots were physically challenging.
    "We shot the film over two weeks and those days were pretty long. At the end of the take you have your support there with a flannel to towel you off, and then you get right back into it," Urban said.
    With a career spanning six decades, the oldest cast member is Ernest Borgnine, who still actively works in the film industry. He said that he is proud that he can still participate in action movies, and that retiring is never an option.
    "(It) made me feel good. Very good," Borgnine said about his role in "RED." "I am still putting them out, you know. I am still working and I am still having a wonderful time at it. And it can be done. A lot of people say: "You have gotten old, I think I'll quit now." That's when they die," he added.
    "RED" will open in theaters on October 15th.
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