H H 1/2

PG-13, 116 minutes. Starts Friday at Olde Mistick Village Art Cinemas. Through tonight only at Niantic. Still playing at Waterford, Stonington, Westbrook, Lisbon.

They bicker, emotionally blackmail each other, kiss and make up. Because they have history. But Bruce Willis and John Malkovich aren't the "real" couple at the heart of "RED 2," the action comedy sequel about retired government assassins. They're just part of a love triangle, one that Mary Louise Parker completes. Her character Sarah may be Frank's (Willis) dizzy but decreasingly naive lady love, but Marvin (Malkovich) is the one who gullibly fills her in on this bloody if exciting life they've led and somehow continue to lead. And he's the one who gives her guns. Frank is incredulous. But as the bullets fly and the plot thickens, once mild-mannered Sarah gets into the spirit of things entirely too quickly. The joy of "RED" was seeing a cast packed with Oscar winners (Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Richard Dreyfuss, Ernest Borgnine) and very good actors (Malkovich, Parker, Brian Cox and Karl Urban) flesh out and class up a Bruce Willis action film. "Codgers make the coolest killers" was its motto. And if anything, this "Retired, Extremely Dangerous" sequel ups the ante. There's a new acronym - "ICE: Incarcerated, Cannot Execute." They've replaced killed-off Oscar winners with Anthony Hopkins as an addled old scientist and Catherine Zeta-Jones as a Russian agent and one-time lady love of Frank's. And the change in directors to comedy-specialist Dean Parisot means there's a laugh a minute amid all this mayhem. Somebody's Wikileaked info about a secret bomb project named "Nightshade" that Frank and Marvin were linked to decades before. Now they need to survive the hitmen sent to get them. Frank and Marvin also have to find the mad scientist who built the bomb to clear their names.

- Roger Moore, McClatchy