Pausing momentarily from a binge-watch of the TV show Succession to watch something else with Brian Cox in it – Red, a 2008 movie which went largely unnoticed. For good reason, it turns out, though there is a good film lurking in here somewhere.
It was beset by problems – original director fired, Cox’s original co-star also fired – which is how come it’s Trygve Allister Diesen behind the camera and Kim Dickens in front of it with Cox (Cox is also an executive producer so might, Logan Roy style, have ordered the firings, or might not have – speculate away).
It’s a John Wick-before-John Wick story of a guy whose dog gets killed, which launches him onto a path of righteous justice and payback. Scratch that comparison because there’s barely anything connecting this adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s original novel with Wick. In a film thick with folksy Americana, Cox plays a store owner in a hunting-and-fishing smalltown, a decent widower whose only connection to his dear departed wife is his dog, Red, which within minutes of the film opening is dead at the hands of a trio of local lads, two brothers and their friend. Avery Ludlow (Cox) leaps into action. Well, clambers slowly into his station wagon and heads off to extract the very minimum of retribution – an apology, particularly from chief instigator Danny (Noel Fisher), the cocky, entitled son of a one-up-from-redneck local somebody, McCormack (Tom Sizemore).
All Ludlow wants is for someone to say sorry. This is the logic that drives the rest of the story. Ludlow first tries to engage a local lawyer (Richard Riehle) to pursue his claim, who breaks it to him that no one is interested in the death of a dog. Ludlow then somehow attracts the attention of a TV journalist (Dickens), who helps him get some publicity for his cause, sets him on a road that becomes increasingly gnarly and sparks what might or might not turn into a romantic dalliance.
The conflict between justice and putting a term on righteous anger – when to let things lie – is what the story is really about, or so it seems by the end, when the almost exclusive focus on Ludlow starts to look like a bit of a mistake. Though obviously any opportunity to watch Brian Cox in full spate is to be grabbed. His fellow actors also seem to have been chosen for their saltiness, with Sizemore particularly bristly as the selfmade dad who listens patiently to the hat-in-hand supplicant but isn’t going to budge an inch towards his position. Robert Englund and Amanda Plummer also have a tang as the other boy’s parents, white trash whose appointment with a meth pipe can surely only be minutes away. Noel Fisher, Kyle Gallner, Shiloh Fernandez as the lads do enough to convince any viewer the problem with this movie isn’t their acting but something else.
Back to the original director, Lucky McKee, a regular co-writer with Ketchum who lost the directing gig when shooting was apparently almost finished. In came the Norwegian Diesen instead, who was possibly hired to inject some Scandi-noir darkness. The fact that the editor is also a Norwegian (Jon Endre Mørk), and the cinematography and score are by Danes (Harald Gunnar Paalgard and Søren Hyldgaard) suggests Scandi-something might have been the idea.
If it was, it hasn’t worked. Worse, there are strange leaps in emotional logic – the relationship with TV person Carrie seems to heat up suddenly out of nowhere and then cools back down again inexplicably, as if something explaining the changes in temperature was left on the cutting-room floor, or was never shot in the first place. And the attempt to add psychological complexity by drawing a comparison between McCormack’s two sons – wayward Danny and decent Harold – and Ludlow’s own history is spamhanded.
Watched with a forgiving eye, and mindful of ructions in the background, it does all make a kind of sense. It has a pitiless logic to it, and there is the sense that everyone involved wanted this to work, especially Jack Ketchum, who turns up in a cameo as a bartender. But watch it for Cox. Now back to Succession.
Red – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2023
