Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is retired. He lives on a quiet street in Ohio where all the houses look the same, and where all his neighbors say hello and make sure that their garbage cans line up perfectly with the curb. On the surface everything is idyllic, but in reality he is bored as hell. The only pleasure he gets in life are the regular phone calls to Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), who answers the phone at the pension office. Frank rips up his checks and pretends they didn’t arrive so he has an excuse to talk to her. Both are lonely individuals who rely on their truncated conversations to brighten up their respective days.
When a heavily armed hit squad busts into Frank’s home in the middle of the night, and he easily dispatches them, you start to wonder, what exactly did Frank Moses retire from? Turns out he was a CIA operative. And from the looks of things, he was pretty damn good at his job. His duties included assassinations, toppling governments, starting wars, ending wars, and all manner of shady black-ops. His file is a foot thick, and more is blacked out than visible.
Someone, somewhere has designated Frank “RED”, or “Retired Extremely Dangerous”, which is where the movie gets its name, and slated him for execution. Frank begins what amounts to a cross-country road trip where he picks up Sarah, and reassembles his old team that includes Joe (Morgan Freeman), Marvin (John Malkovich), and Victoria (Helen Mirren). Together they try to unravel the tangled web of lies and misinformation, and discover who exactly wants them dead and why, doing battle with Agent Cooper (Karl Urban) the entire time.
