In anticipation of the upcoming film, I decided that it was important I read the source material first. I always like having read a book of any kind before seeing an adaptation. It often enhances the experience, and usually it helps promote literacy due to the movie being quite poor (see: Watchmen). So with what little I knew about Red, I hopped right into it with only the knowledge that, one day, the main character would be Bruce Willis.
Red is a book that is rather short and sweet, but is a helluva ride anyway. It is the story of the world’s greatest (and boy, do I mean GREATEST) trained assassin being brought out of retirement despite wanting nothing more than to be left alone. And when I say that he is brought out of retirement, I don’t mean that he’s called up and asked to go do one last “last mission.” No, what I mean is that the new director of the CIA decides that there is no way he can be left alive, and decides that he must be killed. Thus, he embarks on a bloody quest for revenge ine one of the single most bad ass stories Warren Ellis has ever written.
Now, most of time when I read a Warren Ellis book, it usually takes me a fair amount of time to plug through it. Planetary, for instance, is full of intense dialogue and theory. Transmetropolitan, which I’ve recently been reading, is the same case. Heck, even Ghost Boxes was a rather dense read with information about the Multiverse and parallel universes. However I breezed through Red in a total of 15 minutes. My average reading time per single issue is about 15 minutes. So that tells you something about the length, which ultimately is the only detriment of the book. When you add up the costs, the original issues were 3.95 a pop, meaning you’d have spent 11.85 to buy all three. The trade itself is 14.99. Oof. That means an extra 3.14 plus tax for the bonus materials, to which there aren’t many.
Of course, when a story reads as good as this one does, I suppose that doesn’t really matter, now does it? Warren Ellis is capable of lighting your brain on fire when allowed free reign. 9 times out of 10, I will highly recommend you anything that he has written. Heck, 9.9 times out of 10 I’ll recommend it. Red is no different. While it is incredibly short, it was a highly entertaining read. The adventures of Paul Moses are intense and an absolute thrill ride. Warren Ellis can concoct a great revenge story, and the airing of him and Cully Hamner is perfect.
In fact, the biggest shining star of the book is actually Cully Hamner. While Ellis writes the words, it’s Hamner’s art that really tells the story. A lot of the story is dialogue-less action sequences beautifully crafted by Hamner. Quite frequently he shows panel by panel break downs of action, which include several bullet dodges that are wonderfully intense. Hamner’s art is very reminiscent of another Ellis book, Nextwave, which featured Stuart Immonen as the artist, so if you’re a fan of the way that book looked, chances are you’ll love the way Red reads.
When read all together, Red makes for a wonderful story. It is rather short as I have noted, but it is still definitely entertaining, and I feel it makes a great addition to my collection. Of course, when you buy it you need to consider that price mark I mentioned. For a guy like me, Warren Ellis’ name on the cover makes that all worth it alone, and I ended up loving the story even if I flew through it, and I’m excited for the movie. While I’m not sure how Helen Mirren and a sniper rifle fits into it all, I’m excited to see how. All of Warren Ellis’ explanation at how the movie is expanding is also much clearer, because in reality it is a short and quick story. This definitely needs to be expanded upon in order to make an hour and a half to two hour feature film.
But if done correctly, and with all the bad ass killings kept in? This movie will be fantastic. And to be quite frank, if Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) was tapped to direct instead of Robert Schwentke (The Time Traveler’s Wife), the movie would be beyond bad ass. But I’d see it regardless. Just make sure you read it first!
