Red Dawn Reviews

Nowadays, they make remakes for pretty much everything and, this time, they went for a feature from the 80's which might be considered as a cult-classic but even though I haven't seen it, I'm hardly convinced if it was any good to start with. Anyway, there was definitely something appealing about this concept and they could have made something worthwhile from this but, like a similar Australian production called 'Tomorrow, when the war begun' I have seen recently which was just as disappointing as this movie was, the tone was just off and it was obvious that they were not willing to take enough risks. Obviously, to make us believe that any nation could invade the USA is rather preposterous but that wasn't the main issue. The biggest problem is that you never believe that something really tragic is actually and most of the time, it felt like watching a video game. The weirdest thing was maybe to see Josh Peck who used be to this funny chubby kid in 'Drake and Josh' and, somehow, he has become another pretty face. Maybe he should take more acting classes instead of going to the gym because he wasn't really convincing but he did what he could with this material. To conclude, even though the whole thing had some potential, it was rather weak and I don't think it is really worth a look.

The opening montage helped this remake start off interesting and acceptably different from the original... and then it went all down hill from there. The acting isn't terrible but the story and writing... how was this ever accepted by a major studio and had millions spent on it? Careless.

And how did they manage to make Isabel Lucas not look gorgeous?

Unwarranted criticisms abound for this remake of the 80's cheese-fest which starred a host of up-and-coming, young B-listers such as Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell. In contrast, this updated version has it's own troop of young Hollywood talent including Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Adrianne Palicki and Alyssa Diaz; the aforementioned contrast being that this time the cast can actually act.

Hollywood loves remakes for the same reason that it loves sequels - money. Professional (and amateur) critics, on the other hand, tend not to; instead they seem to love to trash them. Granted, quite often the criticism is justified but not always. Every once in a great while the new version surpasses the original; such is the case with Red Dawn.

I'll be the first to admit that some films should be held sacrosanct - inviolable. A fine example is Hitchcock's Psycho. Red Dawn though...c'mon, who are we kidding here? It's developed something of a cult following but it's no classic. The original was chock-full of holes and inconsistencies, bad special effects and even worse acting. It was completely unbelievable...and so cheesy that they should have sold crackers and wine at the theater instead of popcorn...yet it was the 80's and the action film reigned supreme; besides, it was fun.

Even with the problems that the remake faced, being shelved because of MGM's financial woes and the decision to change the protagonists from Chinese to North Korean (for fear of alienating China and losing access to it's box office), this film is still superior to the original in almost every way. It's single deficiency is the choice of North Korea as the invading/occupying force; I found it a bit hard to swallow that a successful operation of this magnitude could be launched by them. Yet the movie is so well-done in every other aspect that it just didn't matter.

I like that they left the original main characters and merely shook up the dynamic a bit. After all, there was no reason to completely change those characters; they were what made the first movie good, in it's own way. From the opening sequence, this new (and improved) version blows it's predecessor away.

Hemsworth and Palicki were fine here (no surprise for me); Hutcherson, Peck and Diaz impressed me (as I had seen little of them up till now) and it was nice seeing Brett Cullen and Jeffrey Dean Morgan in their supporting roles. As I said before, the caliber of the actors here was simply better and so was the script. The actions of the characters, the dialogue, the emotion...all of it was much more believable.

Finally, as movies go, there are set-in-stone classics (such as Casablanca and Rear Window ) and there are memorable action flicks; if the original is remembered as being one of the latter, then 2012's Red Dawn very much so belongs in the second category.

Honestly, I don't get why people are so down on this film. It's damned good! So if you want some cheese with your whine then, by all means, opt for Swayze & company; for myself, I'd much rather see Hemsworth drop the hammer on the North Koreans.

"Marines don't die, they go to hell and regroup."

Red Dawn was filmed and completed three years ago in 2009, but its studio, MGM, went bankrupt and lacked the money to grant the picture proper distribution. The same fate was shared by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods, which was at long last released earlier in 2012. The two films share a common star in Chris Hemsworth, but the comparisons end there. While Cabin in the Woods is an outstandingly original horror movie and one of the year's notable highlights, Red Dawn is merely a middling actioner. The best remakes are those which produce an exciting new take on an old idea, or at least improve upon the execution of the original film. This Red Dawn does neither. It begins with promise, but soon collapses under the weight of its glaring idiocies, forgettable characters, and incomprehensible photography.

Jed Eckert (Hemsworth) is on leave from the Marines, living with father Tom (Cullen) and brother Matt (Peck) in their quiet Washington State hometown. Not long after a mysterious power outage sweeps the Pacific Northwest, Jed and Matt wake up to the sound of gunfire and a sky littered with armed paratroopers. With North Korean invaders hastily moving into the country, Jed and Matt skip town, forced to leave their beloved father as they flee to a forest in the local mountains with as many of their friends as possible in tow. Calling themselves the Wolverines after their high school football team, Jed begins presiding over a resistance unit, turning to terrorist tactics in the hope of defending their tattered country and thwarting the takeover effort run by Captain Cho (Lee).

As Red Dawn languished on a shelf awaiting release, the invading force was changed from China to North Korea, necessitating extensive dubbing, a new opening title sequence, and digitally altered flags, uniforms and insignias. The decision was purely motivated by money, as the distributors realised that China is a huge market for action blockbusters, and Chinese invaders would diminish foreign box office takings. North Korea was fair game, though; nobody cares what they think. To the credit of those involved, the change is seamless, but the notion of North Korea successfully invading America is risible. I mean, North Korea cannot even take over South Korea. Plus, the country's population falls short of 25 million - even Texas alone has a higher population. Hell, the amount of armed citizens in the whole of America would outnumber the invading soldiers by a hilarious margin. It's implied that the Russians are assisting the takeover, but the extent of their involvement remains a mystery. We only see one Russian in the entire film.

Screenwriters Carl Ellsworth and Jeremy Passmore not only neglected to fix the glaring idiocies of the original Red Dawn, but they introduce a new slate of stupidities as well. What is North Korea's game plan? What do they aim to achieve? Plus, the Wolverines seem able to easily come to town and leave as they please. Are there no road blocks to prevent them from escaping into the forest? How is the forest not overrun by North Korean forces seeking to find the squad's base camp? Cell phones are often used to take photos as well, despite the fact that the characters have nowhere to charge the things. And not to worry, although America has been taken over, Subway restaurants are still in operation. Moreover, all it takes is one training montage for Jed to single-handedly turn his inexperienced would-be soldiers into competent militias able to shoot and fight. Red Dawn is bloody cheesy, too. No matter which way you cut it, chanting "Wolverines!" and giving motivating speeches can never be taken seriously.

Director Dan Bradley's years of experience as a stunt coordinator and second unit director serves him well here. This Red Dawn admittedly works in fits and starts, with bursts of stand-out action here and there. The initial takeover is chilling and nail-biting, a petrifying vision of what a modern military invasion might look like. Added to this, a few shoot-outs are fairly awesome. But here's the thing: Bradley merely aspired to blow shit up and use the teen guerrillas as action figures with perfect marksmanship skills who can superhumanly jump from great heights without breaking any bones. (Are these Wolverines reinforced with adamantium?) In other words, while John Milius' original Red Dawn explored the devastations of war, this reboot is all cheap thrills, but without any actual bloodshed since this is a PG-13 film. The 1984 film was one of the first pictures to receive a PG-13 rating, yet it's far more violent and edgy than anything in this sanitised, bloodless remake.

Compounding its many flaws, the film's attempts at character development oftentimes fall flat. The screenwriters even use the old "forcing a naïve newbie to consume something nasty under the guise of it being tradition," even though the stale old joke hasn't been funny for over a decade. The characters are much too indistinguishable beyond the three main characters. Whenever one of the characters died, I struggled to figure out who it was, and struggled even further to care. It doesn't help that Bradley's team heavily leaned on lazy shaky-cam techniques. Throughout the action set-pieces, the cameramen keep suffering epileptic seizures, so it's hard to tell who dies and how they were even killed. Interestingly, the cast of the original Red Dawn (including Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen) went on to become big stars. Meanwhile, the stars of this update became big names between filming the movie and the film finally being released. Heh. In the lead role of Jed, Chris Hemsworth is suitably authoritative and strong, whilst Peck is merely okay as Jed's younger brother. Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games) and Connor Cruise (Tom's adopted son), meanwhile, play some of the most forgettable characters in the film, though it's hardly their fault; blame Bradley and his writers. Honestly, if someone lined up all the Wolverines in the film, I would not be able to tell you whether or not they died, or, more pertinently, how or when some of them died.

1984's Red Dawn was relevant at the time of its release. Created at the height of the never-ending Cold War, it was a response to the public's heightened paranoia that the Soviets could be on their doorstep at any minute. Moreover, although the film is cheesy, it had a wonderful sense of political awareness and its portrayal of war was effective. 2012's iteration, on the other hand, has no relevance or ambition; it's a random stab against a country with no beef against the United States. To be fair, this Red Dawn may entertain you, and there are worse action movies out there, but overall it's a wasted opportunity. Its initial sequence depicting the takeover is chilling, yet the film doesn't follow through with its promise to be a complex, challenging war movie emphasising the terror of a foreign invasion.

5.1/10

Linda Boston played "Shop Keeper" in Red Dawn