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Not exactly realistic, the story is a grizzly exaggeration of the darkness lurking in the C.I.A.’s history. If there’s a moral here, it’s that the history of the darker edges of the government should be allowed to die in peace. Judging from the relative lack of depth in the plot, however, it really feels like Ellis was going more for a mood piece than a morality tale here. The mood is delivered pretty competently in Cully Hamner’s artwork. Action is reasonably kinetic and has a good sense of action and pacing. The intensity seems respectably modulated throughout much of the series.

Hamner’s linework has a form and detail to it reminiscent of Geoff Darrow. There are parallels in theme and form between Red and the early ‘90’s Frank Miller/Geoff Darrow three-issue miniseries Hardboiled - an ultra-brutal sci-fi series that was altogether more polished, more inspired and released in a far more erratic schedule. Hamner’s work here lacks the explosive, ridiculously over-rendered beauty of Darrow’s. Hard Boiled looks considerably more inspired next to Hamner’s relatively flat execution in Red. We get a sense that Moses is, in fact, the best there is at what he does - a brutal killer who has lost all touch with his humanity and must shelter himself from other people or return to the brutality he had been trained for...but only a general sense of it.

The exaggerated stylish moodiness of Ellis’ script calls for a similarly stylish and exaggerated graphic rendering. Hamner only goes roughly halfway here. It’s exceedingly competent, but it needs to be far more inspired to give a visually dynamic depth to the relatively limited detail of Hamner’s story. The script doesn’t seem to go quite far enough to make this feel like anything other than a single-issue story stretched out into three issues and the artwork doesn’t stand on its own enough to make the length seem anything other than over-indulgent. The miniseries tells a pretty solid story, but without much else to offer, it’s largely forgettable.

The Movie

The film opens on roughly the ninth page of the comic book, skipping over much of the darkness. The intro with the new director of the CIA is absent, as is a tumultuous evening storm that introduces Moses - framing him in a dark, moody moment.
The film opens with Moses waking up in the morning. Moses is played here by Bruce Willis. As Moses, Willis seems to have a pleasant demeanor. Though he appears wide awake before a bedside alarm goes off and though we see him going through a pretty aggressive morning exercise routine including taking a few jabs at a basement punching bag, he doesn’t seem all that haunted.

A variation on four establishing pages in the first issue plays out over the course of the first eight or nine minutes of the film. Willis’s Moses comes across much younger. The telephone conversations with the girl at CIA headquarters are turned into something of an awkward romantic connection. In the comic book, the older Moses seems to have more of a paternal relationship with her. The paternal feel of the character makes his sudden trigger into a dark figure much more dramatic.

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