And that's because he's a former CIA operative categorized as "RED" (Retired and Extremely Dangerous) who has just survived a coordinated attack on his home where the intent was to leave him dead. Needing to know who's responsible, but also realizing that his calls to Sarah have most likely been traced, Frank first heads from Cleveland to Kansas City to get her out of harm's way, but must first kidnap her since there's no time to waste and she doesn't recognize him by face.

With Sarah in tow, Frank visits his former colleague, Joe Matheson (MORGAN FREEMAN), who now lives in a retirement home, for any possible helpful info, and then seeks out Marvin Boggs (JOHN MALKOVICH) for the same. Having been experimented on with LSD in the past, Marvin is a loose cannon, but he comes in helpful when eluding even more assassins. When Victoria (HELEN MIRREN) is added to the mix, their old team is reunited, and she even enlists the aid of their one-time Russian nemesis, Ivan Simanov (BRIAN COX), for any insight about who's after them.

They eventually realize it involves an array of people, ranging from CIA hitman William Cooper (KARL URBAN) who works for Cynthia Wilkes (REBECCA PIDGEON), to American arms dealer Alexander Dunning (RICHARD DREYFUSS) all of the way up to Vice President Richard Stanton (JULIAN McMAHON). With time running out, the team must survive other attacks as they go after those responsible for wanting them dead.

The last we saw of the two of them, Red was a lost man in his paroled life and thus sought out his escaped friend, eventually meeting him on an isolated Mexican beach as the score soared and the camera pulled out to a wide shot. Now 16 years later, Red and Andy are, well, we don't know, because the linking of Morgan Freeman with "Red" doesn't occur in "The Shawshank Redemption 2." Instead, Freeman plays one of various characters, none of them a titular one, in the action-comedy "Red."

Granted, it is about older characters (and veteran performers embodying them) coming together and lamenting how things have changed and how they miss the good old days, but who are still capable of holding their own. Thus, it's been drawing various snarky comments by those who haven't seen the film as something of a kissing cousin to "Space Cowboys." But our plucky anti-heroes -- that include Bruce Willis, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren joining Freeman -- aren't brought together to save the day like Eastwood and his cronies. Instead, they're simply out to save their own hides, forced out of retirement to figure out who wants them dead.

As directed by Robert Schwentke from a script by Jon Hoeber & Erich Hoeber (who adapt Warren Ellis & Cully Hamner's graphic novel), the film is an action-comedy offering, a notoriously difficult sub-genre to pull off successfully in combo form (particularly in terms of appeasing fans of one or both cinematic styles). While it greatly benefits from its charismatic and highly recognizable cast, the film follows in the footsteps of other recent "all-star" offerings in that the total package mostly squanders such an assemblage.

It's not bad and most of it goes down fairly easily, but neither the filmmakers nor the cast manages to do anything particularly novel with the action or comedy elements to make them or the overall film stand out. In fact, and despite all of the bullets and one-liners flying about, the whole thing feels fairly bland and essentially comes off as if it were pulled from the production oven too soon before it was completely done.

For all of its intricacies in terms of who the central villain is, the plot is fairly straightforward and simple. Bruce Willis plays a federal retiree whose highlight of the day is calling to a customer service center to "complain" that he hasn't received his pension check when he really has. His motivation is to chat with his new buddy (Mary-Louise Parker) who enjoys his calls and charming over-the-phone demeanor. But he's really doing so because retired living is a far-cry from his old days of being a CIA operative.

That's no spoiler as early in the first reel various federal assassins show up and make Swiss cheese his place, but he easily dispatches them and then sets out to figure out who's responsible and why they want him dead. Of course, he has to retrieve and then drag along his new pal (to protect her) as he rounds up his old colleagues (Freeman, Malkovich and Mirren) who've adapted to their retirement to varying degrees of success.

At the same time, we see their contemporary and, natch, younger replacement (Karl Urban, who does a decent job with what's essentially a one-note character) who's been ordered to take care of them. Eventually an arms dealer (Richard Dreyfuss, mostly wasted -- and I don't mean intoxicated) and even the Vice President of the U.S. (a bland Julian McMahon) are thrown into the mix, along with an old foe (a good Brian Cox missing his old days on the red side of the Cold War).

Once Willis' character (for whom the movie is named - as in "Retired & Extremely Dangerous") has grabbed Parker's, the story turns into something of a road movie as they travel around the country (noted by onscreen postcards identifying the various locales) rounding up and interacting with the others, with occasional bursts of action-violence and/or comedy thrown into the mix.

Malkovich (doing his usual shtick -- just as he did recently in "Secretariat" -- but with a bit more edge this time around) and Parker (as fresh as always) provide most of the humor, but one wishes the chemistry (that's often friendly-antagonistic in nature) between the main characters was better formed. It has moments of being good and hints that it could have been terrific, but it never completely gels along the lines of, oh, something like the charming results in "Ocean's Eleven."

The action is all adequately handled and choreographed, but it likewise lacks the sizzle to make it stand apart from so many similar cinematic scenes we've witnessed over the years in countless other flicks. It goes through the motions, but it would have been nice -- and certainly would have come off as more entertaining -- had it oozed a more playful and hip aura.

While I wasn't expecting the second coming of "Shawshank" (and I hope no one ever dares tread in those sequel waters), I just kept hoping for the film to come together a bit better than it does. Not good enough to warrant a full green light in terms of recommending it but certainly not bad enough to elicit its namesake top of the traffic signal light, "Red" falls in the cautious yellow middle. It rates as a 5 out of 10.