"RED" - The 2010 Movie Trivia Quiz

Answer: Retired, Extremely Dangerous

In the movie and the graphic novel upon which it is based, it stands for Retired, Extremely Dangerous. In the graphic novel, the designation is used by the protagonist to explain his status change when a team of assassins attempts to kill him in an Agency sanctioned hit. He tells the Agency his status has gone from Green to Red, a fair warning of what he is about to do.

In the movie it is not so clearly defined as to when Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) becomes RED. All we know for sure is that when Agent Cooper goes into the CIA Records Vault to see Frank's file it has RED stamped on the front of it in big red letters and the Records Keeper tells Cooper what it means. Whether this is Frank's status because of what he knows and has done in the past or because he is now being hunted by the Agency is unclear and not really relevant.

Answer: Mary-Louise Parker

Mary-Louise Parker plays Sarah and has starred in "Weeds" since 2005. Sarah agrees to meet Frank when he says he will be in Kansas City. The meeting does not go as planned because between the time of the phone call when the date was set and when they actually meet, Frank ends up on the run from assassins.

He is in her apartment when she gets home from a date that has not gone well. She freaks out and he ends up kidnapping her to save her from the hit squad as it arrives at her apartment. As the movie goes along you can see Sarah changing from being mad at being kidnapped to being excited by all of the action.

By the end of the movie she is an adrenaline junkie just like the rest of them.

Answer: Love's Savage Secret

Sarah tells Frank she is reading "Love's Savage Secret". She admits that it is a trashy novel but she loves it. Frank reads it too so that he will have something to discuss with her and so that he will have a connection to her. Later on after Sarah is drugged in an attempted kidnapping by a bad guy and Frank rescues her, she says this is just like "Love's Savage Secret". Some reviews have said the movie's title should have been this instead of "RED" because "RED" is mundane whereas that title speaks to the type of fun frolicking adventure the movie is.

The other three are real romance novels. "Flowers from the Storm" is by Laura Kinsale, "Pride and Prejudice" is a classic by Jane Austen, and "Knight in Shining Armor" is by Jude Devereaux.

Answer: Grenade launcher

Marvin Boggs is a conspircacy theorist who thinks the government is out to get him. Frank explains to Sarah that Marvin's paranoia is well founded as he was a victim of a CIA experiment in which he was given LSD every day for eleven years. Sarah remarks that since that is the case he seems to be doing very well then.

At first it appears Marvin is carrying the pig merely for security but when the team gets ambushed Frank tells him to open the pig up. Inside the pig is a collapsible grenade launcher. One of the more humorous lines in the movie is when Marvin turns to Victoria and says, "I remember the Secret Service being tougher." Clearly this is most likely a reference to Malkovich's role in the movie "In the Line of Fire" opposite Clint Eastwood where Malkovich plays a man trying to kill the President and Eastwood plays the Secret Service Agent trying to stop him.

Answer: Sniper

Victoria's specialty is as a sniper. Although she has retired she admits to Frank that she takes the odd side job every now and then to keep away the boredom. She is also quite fond of Frank and realizes he has fallen for Sarah. At one point she tells Frank he may have a hard exterior but that he is all gooey on the inside because he is a real romantic.

She also nonchalantly tells Sarah that Frank is ovbiously head over heels in love with her and if Sarah breaks Franks heart, Victoria will kill her and bury her body in the woods. Sarah is a bit shocked but actually finds the comment endearing.

Answer: Joe Matheson

Morgan Freeman plays Joe Matheson. As Joe says he is an 80 year old with stage four liver cancer who never thought he would die in a nursing home. After Frank leaves Joe the first time, an assassin shows up and it appears Joe is killed. Later on, Joe turns up just in the nick of time to help Frank and Sarah escape from CIA headquarters after they have stolen the file on the Guatemala mission.

At Dunning's, Frank offers to give himself up to Cooper and Cooper in return tells the FBI not to fire. A man comes out the front door and is shot down.

While this is happening the rest of the team sneaks out the back and makes its way to the woods. Cooper goes over and finds it is Joe and not Frank who has been killed. It is ironic that this is how Joe dies because earlier in the movie he said there was nothing the government could do to him since he was terminally ill and Frank said they could shoot him.

Answer: Dunning, he lied to them.

Dunning plays innocent with the team and tells them that Stanton was the man rescued from Guatemala where he had snapped and massacred a village. Dunning says Stanton must have ordered the hits to clean up any trace of what he had done in Guatemala. When Cooper goes to meet Frank to exchange Sarah for Stanton we learn that Dunning has been the one pulling the strings all along. Cynthia Wilkes, Cooper's handler, has been working for Dunning not Stanton. Dunning has been protecting his own self interests because if Stanton gets elected President, his company stands to make a lot of money.

Answer: Ernest Borgnine

Ernest Borgnine plays Henry. According to Henry, Frank is one of the best operators the CIA ever had. He 'retired' (meaning killed) drug lords, terrorists and even toppled governments. As the Records Keeper Henry has seen it all and his high praise of Frank should be a warning to Cooper but Cooper doesn't heed the warning.

Borgnine starred in "The Wild Bunch" along with William Holden, Robert Ryan, and Ben Johnson. He is probably best known as McHale from the TV show "McHale's Navy" which aired from 1962-1966. He also won an Oscar for the film "Marty".

Answer: She shot him three times in the chest.

Victoria and Ivan carried on an affair at the height of the Cold War. When her handlers found out about it, they ordered Victoria to kill Ivan. She shot him three times in the chest but none of the shots were fatal. Being the marksman that she is, this had to have been on purpose.

This is how he knows she loves him. Although they have been apart for many years, Ivan still carries a torch for Victoria and although she tries to deny it, she obviously still cares for him. Ivan helps Frank out by giving him the plans to CIA headquarters.

In return Frank owes Ivan a favor. After everything is over, Ivan says he has a problem in Moldova he needs Frank to take care of. Sarah enthusiastically asks if they can go. The movie ends with Frank and Marvin being chased by Moldovan forces.

Answer: Karl Urban

Karl Urban plays William Cooper. Cooper was born in New Zealand and plays Dr. McCoy aka Bones in the 2009 "Star Trek" movie. It is obvious that Cooper now does the job Frank used to do and is in essence a younger version of Frank. But as the proverb in my introduction states, "Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill." When Frank and Cooper are fighting in CIA headquarters Frank asks him if Kordeski trained him to which Cooper replies yes. Frank then dislocates his shoulder and says, "I trained Kordeski." When Cynthia finds Cooper after Frank has escaped she tells him he just got his rear handed to him by a retiree.