Summary

• Bruce Willis' 2010 action movie Red is highly celebrated and trending on Netflix, offering a blend of action, thriller, and comedy.
• Red boasts an incredibly talented cast including Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, and John Malkovich, earning it positive reviews and a 72% RT score.
• Despite the success of Red, its sequel, Red 2, received more negative reviews and had lower box office performance, preventing a third installment.

Bruce Willis' popular 2010 action movie is one of his best action franchises after 2023's Assassin by director Jesse Atlas.

Willis announced his retirement from acting in 2022 after being diagnosed with aphasia, a neurological condition that directly affects brain functions such as language and comprehension. While it is unlikely that Willis will return to acting, recent health updates from his family have confirmed positive signs in his treatment, which does at least leave the door open. Willis has starred in nearly 150 films and television series throughout his career after initially getting uncredited roles in The First Deadly Sin (1980) and The Verdict (1982). Die Hard made Willis an international phenom and led to his lead role in another action franchise, Red.

Bruce Willis' Red Is Trending On Netflix – What The 2010 Action Movie & Franchise Is About

The Bruce Willis film combines fun elements of action, thriller, and comedy

Red features an absolutely stacked cast that also stars Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Karl Urban, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, and John Malkovich.

The 2010 Bruce Willis action movie Red is currently trending on Netflix. As of the time of writing, Red is ranked 8th in the Top 10 Movies List on Netflix in the United States. Red features an absolutely stacked cast that also stars Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Karl Urban, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, and John Malkovich. Willis plays Frank Moses in Red, a former CIA operative who becomes a CIA target for knowing too many of of the covert agency's top secrets. He discovers that his CIA file is labeled as R.E.D., which is an abbreviation for Retired Extremely Dangerous, and tries to stop the operation in its tracks.

Frank calls up his former CIA associates, Joe (Morgan Freeman), Marvin (John Malkovich), and Victoria (Helen Mirren) to help get the target off his back only to realize they are all considered R.E.D. and together must go rogue. This pulls Frank out of his quiet and bored retired life in suburbia and gets him back into the heat of the action. Karl Urban plays a young CIA operative named William Cooper who is assigned by his supervisor Cynthia Wilkes (Rebecca Pidgeon) to take out Frank. The film combines fun elements of action, thriller, and comedy and inspired a sequel that was released in 2013.

Red Is Still One Of Bruce Willis' Highest-Rated Action Movies On Rotten Tomatoes

Red earned a 72% Rotten Tomatoes score from both critics and audiences

Red is still considered one of Bruce Willis' highest-rated action movies of his career. The film earned a 72% Rotten Tomatoes score from both critics and audiences, which makes it one of Willis' most universally celebrated action films. This is higher than Die Hard 2's RT critic score of 69% and Die Hard with a Vengeance's 59%. Additionally, Red also performed well at the box office, earning a worldwide total of $199 million against a production budget of $58 million. For all these reasons, Red is situated as one of his best recent action franchises after Die Hard and M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable trilogy.

Critics were mostly positive about Red. The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Although tailor-made for genre fans, it benefits from flavors of humor and romance that keep its appeal from being fanboy-only." Time Out wrote in their 3-star review, "There's fun to be had watching Willis and Parker banter, and listening to Malkovich toss off arrhythmically timed one-liners." However, some top critics were less than impressed. Legendary film critic Roger Ebert wrote, "RED is neither a good movie nor a bad one. It features actors we like doing things we wish were more interesting."

Why Red 3 Never Happened With Bruce Willis After The 2016 Sequel

Red 2 had more negative reviews & lower box office performance

Red was actually inspired by a limited comic book series of the same name written by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner. The premise was certainly strong enough to make a strong film with a star-studded cast and the box office success of earned it a sequel in 2013. Unfortunately, Red 2 received more negative reviews from critics than the original movie did and also grossed less money at the box office, earning $148 million worldwide against a much higher production budget of $84 million. The Red sequel even added Anthony Hopkins into the mix but it wasn't enough to round out the trilogy.