Jokes fly with the bullets in action sequel

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.

“Let’s face it, Columbo,” she purrs at him. “Things were getting a little stale.”

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 love interest of Frank’s. And the change in directors to comedy specialist Dean Parisot (“Galaxy Quest”) 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 – played by Neal McDonough (“The Guardian”) and Korean actor and martial arts star Byung-hun Lee (“I Saw the Devil,” “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” ) – sent to get them. Frank and Marvin also have to find the mad scientist who built the bomb (Hopkins) to clear their names.

Frank drags Sarah along to Paris, Moscow and London as they do. Mirren returns as her droller-than-droll MI6 assassin; Brian Cox reprises his Russian spy boss. And David Thewlis shows up as a sadistic spy and snooty wine lover.

Some bit players are bland, but the difference between Willis in the more recent “Die Hards” and here is that of an exhausted old man forced to repeat himself versus a lark where he gives action cred to supporting players who do the heavy, funny lifting.

It’s a movie of hilarious reaction shots and scores and more scores of jokes. The car chases are played for exciting laughs. And the fights are both credible and, in the case of the skilled Mr. Lee, incredible.

It’s all ground we’ve sort of covered before and things do tend to drag before the too-violent third act turns too bloody.

But “Red 2” goes down easily, from Malkovich’s demented moments of relationship advice to Dame Helen’s tender and amusing “Hitchcock” reunion with Sir Anthony. There’s a knowing twinkle in their eyes, and in everybody else’s.

“Yeah, we could’ve done a Bond film,” they seem to wink. “And it would’ve been a bloody fun one, at that.”