Red Dawn

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Josh Hutcherson, Adrianne Palicki, Isabel Lucas, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Connor Cruise, Kenneth Choi, Matt Gerald, Brett Cullen
Directed by: Dan Bradley
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Action
2012

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: After the North Koreans invade the United States and take over the Pacific Northwest, only a small band of teenagers can mount a resistance.

Review:

Tim: There's really no reason for this remake to have been made. The original film was decent, but certainly not a great movie. The idea of Russians invading the United States during the 80s was a very real threat. The idea of North Korea invading the U.S. in 2012 is absolutely preposterous. I wanted to hate this movie because it shouldn't exist, but I actually found it not as terrible as I expected. It's an okay, average film, but it still never conveys why it should exist. This is a film I still wish wasn't made.

While the movie gives us some good action scenes, it cannot overcome the inherent ridiculousness of the plot- the United States is invaded by North Korea. Are you kidding me? I could go on and on with how absurd this is- with all the U.S.'s advanced technology, and with North Korea's relatively sparse resources, there is truly no way this could ever happen. The film mentions help the Koreans received, as well as new technology, but the whole thing comes across as farfetched and hard to believe. The premise of the movie is awful, and it cannot ever recover from that. While we are living in scary times, this isn't the Cold War. This is a story that worked once upon a time, but no longer. I had a hard time with everything that followed, because I never believed the film's central construct.

This is a shame, because the film isn't all bad. The best part of the original film was watching this small band of American teenagers wage this little resistance against overwhelming forces. It was fun to root for the underdog. Unfortunately, times have changed. Our heroes do things that we rail against our enemies for- they murder soldiers, they bomb events, etc. These things are all good, though, because they're on our side. If the enemies did these things, we'd say they were savages. We're living in very complicated times, and it diminished the effectiveness of this film. Still, it's fun to see Americans shooting up the bad guys, and I did enjoy that aspect. I will say that this film took it pretty far- it started to seem very absurd that these small band of untrained Americans could inflict this kind of damage, without ever getting caught. I just had a very, very hard time buying the events in this film.

The cast was pretty decent. I like Chris Hemsworth, and while this wasn't his best performance, he worked well in the lead role. Josh Peck was fine as the 2nd in command, but I did not love him here. It was fun to see Josh Hutcherson here, but he added very little. Isabel Lucas and Connor Cruise are both terrible actors. I do like Jeffrey Dean Morgan, but I wish he made better film choices. As a whole, the cast was better than it had any reason to be, but it's the myriad ineffective actors who bring the film down for everyone else.

I admit that I did get every so slightly caught up in the story. The execution isn't terrible in this film- we do get a number of decent action scenes. Unfortunately, the utter ridiculousness of the whole thing is a flaw too big to overcome. In the end, this is a movie that shouldn't have been made. I am really growing tired of the remake craze in Hollywood, especially when the vast majority of them turn out worse than the original. In this case, the original Red Dawn didn't exactly set a massively high bar. Unfortunately, this film couldn't even meet those lowered expectations. This isn't a good movie, and while not terrible, it still bums me out that this movie exists.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Tomorrow, When the War Began; The Hunger Games