You can sense something better fighting its way to the surface, and the hope for that carries RED past its shakier elements. The central notion demands some really first-rate material which the script delivers about every third scene or so. In those moments, the over-the-hill spies concept becomes delightful fun, with our chosen guides smiling gleefully at us all the while. But between them, we’re marking time: relying solely on the stars’ presence and the relative novelty of the concept to carry the day. I spent the whole movie hoping it would. The disappointment at its comparative failure stings worse than a bad movie might, because RED really had the chops to go the distance. Somewhere along the line, it wandered off the path and despite its Herculean efforts, never quite got back to where it started. Too bad. Too, too bad…