Upamanyu Biswas
In the 2013 action comedy, ‘Red 2,’ Frank Moses is embroiled in a conspiracy that leads the FBI to his doorstep after the supposed death of his friend, Marvin Boggs. Following his detainment, the former black ops agent is led to a secure safehouse known as the Yankee White Facility, where he is interrogated in relation to a Cold War-era nuclear project dubbed Operation Nightshade. Soon, a rogue element disturbs the peace of Yankee White’s interiors as Nightshade’s sensitive nature and its fallout lead to the agent being cornered inside the building. Both the Facility and the operation in question become a pivotal and prominent aspect of the narrative, leading Frank Moses down a new corridor of trouble! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Yankee White is a Fictional FBI Facility
The FBI’s Yankee White Facility in ‘Red 2’ is a fictional place conceived by Joe and Erich Hoeber while drafting the film’s screenplay. In the narrative, the Facility plays host to Frank’s captivity and interrogation by FBI officers who try to determine his connection to a top-secret Cold War-era nuclear project known as Operation Nightshade, in which the former CIA agent took part. Later, an assault by Jack Horton and his men rip the defenses of the Facility to shreds as Frank’s life is put at risk. However, with an element of subterfuge, misdirection, and help from a revived Marvin, the protagonist is able to escape Yankee White with a series of government intelligence agencies training their eyes on him and pursuing him through the States.
While the Yankee White Facility may be fictionally conceived, its name can be traced to a real-life special access program held by Department of Defense personnel after undergoing extensive background checks on their profile that allow them top-level security clearance. Therefore, it makes sense for the administrative process to be linked to the name of an FBI facility, lending greater credibility to its genesis in creating the setting. The actual filming for the Yankee White scenes took place at 1025 Rue Lucien L’Allier in Montréal, Quebec. During Frank’s detainment, he has to fight through several waves of enemies, following which he escapes with Marvin down the alley of the Facility. However, despite its brief foray into the narrative, it is a fictional safehouse of the FBI that doesn’t exist in reality.
The Fictional Genesis of Operation Nightshade
One of the major plot elements in ‘Red 2’ revolves around a nuclear project that was undertaken during the Cold War era by a physicist named Dr. Edward Bailey. The enterprise is dubbed Operation Nightshade, which Frank and Marvin took part in back in their heyday as CIA agents. However, the project is a fictional construction by scriptwriters Joe and Erich Hoeber to inject an element of excitement and intrigue into the adventure of the team of secret agents led by Frank. As a result of Bailey’s work, the whole world is at threat of nuclear armageddon unlike anything before, as the bomb created during the Nightshade project is described to be much worse than any nuclear weapon in existence at the time.
Although the specific incident of Nightshade may be fictional, the Cold War era was rife with threats of nuclear arms proliferation between the superpower nations. After World War II, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union took part in building the atomic bomb, which unleashed a new wave of destruction hitherto unseen in the eyes of humanity. The obsession with nuclear arms grew further, with each country trying to oust the other in their race to assert dominance. Therefore, it is not unrealistic to depict the captivity of Dr. Edward Bailey, who had been forced into a secret facility to keep his work out of the hands of the perceived enemy for fear that too much power could fall into the wrong hands.
Additionally, the nuclear bomb created by Bailey sports a red mercury core, which, according to the narrative, shows negligible levels of radiation signature. It explains how the bomb was stored underneath the Kremlin without anyone noticing it until the crew breaks in trying to locate it. However, the use of red mercury as a nuclear reactor core is unlikely to be feasible in reality as the substance is considered to have mythical properties with questionable validity to their claims. Consequently, the entire project and Dr. Edward Bailey’s contribution to its existence is a figment of fictional creation that adds a spark to the narrative but cannot be traced to history or real life.
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