Red Dawn (2012)

"This is just some place to them, but this is our home"


PLOT

A group of teenagers look to save their town from an invasion of North Korea soldiers



MY THOUGHTS

I was not to happy when I heard that there was going to be a remake of a childhood favorite of mine, but I've come to get used to seeing most of my childhood favorite movies being remade in recent years and a few more are still to come, but the latest of the remakes is Red Dawn.

I'm going to try and be as fair as I can to this movie as possible but I'm sure I'll go off on a tirade about remakes at some point during this review. so I apologize now if i do.

The New Red Dawn begins like most new remake do with giving more story and backstory to characters that are vaguely mentioned in the originals and aren't needed at all but we still get it anyway, but showing the final minutes of a high school football game that introduces us to Jed Eckert (Chris Hermsworth), Matt Eckert (Josh Peck), Tom Eckert (Brent Cullen), Matt's girlfriend Erica (Isabel Lucas).

We are shown that there is somewhat of a family rift between Jed and Matt, Matt who is the hot shot Quarterback of The Wolverines that doesn't like to use his teammates the right way to win the game and ultimately cost them a chance at going to the championship, this sets up for how Matt will be later.

Jed is a soldier who is on leave from fighting in the war and has come back home and meets up with a former high school friend Toni (Adrianne Palicki) we also see the beginnings of what the bases for what their relationship will be as well later on.

Its the typical start to these new remakes that seem to follow the same formula as the countless bad remakes that come before.

In the mist of all of this little clues of the North Korean invasion is coming is given thanks to new, radio broadcast, that no one seems to be paying attention too. until the next morning when World War III has broken out and the Eckert brothers along with a few others get out of town and into the woods where they go to the Eckert's family cabin.

Here we meet Robert (Josh Hutcherson), Danny (Edwin Hodge), Julie(Alyssa Diaz), Greg(Julian Alcaraz) as they all try to figure out what is happening, a few of them want to go back into town to find their families, Jed gives them a speech about staying there and fighting against the Invading Soldiers and gets everyone to say and fight with him.


The Leader of North Korea Invasion Captain Cho (Will Yun Lee) and some of his soldiers have captured Tom and Darryl's dad and Mayor (Michael Beach) who they have to try and plead with the teens to surrender and no harm will come to them, after a few minutes of this Tom tells his sons to do what he would do and fight back, Captain Cho kills him and leaves. Jed trains the others to fight back against the soldiers.


I have a lot of problems with this remake, but I'm going to try and keep it short but my biggest problem with Red Dawn is that this remake takes everything that made the original good and takes it and flips it on its head and waters it down.

Namely making Jed an soldier, the characters in this shouldn't have been as ready to fight back as they were, but by making Jed a soldier there was really no need to have  Tanner (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) come into play who in the original came in and helped them better prepare themselves and fill them in on a few things as to what the army was doing, his character was somewhat of a waste here.


Matt was the one character out of everyone that I really didn't care for in this movie, because he seemed to just want to go off and do his own thing which we already got to see from the opening football game, but after the invasion when he does that, he puts a lot of people in danger and gets others killed just to save Erica who had been captured during the invasion, I really disliked his character.

Another big problem I had with this movie was that even though its a WWIII what if type of story there was never really in real danger the young teens where in like in the original, some of the homages to the original are done poorly, using Toni as bait and Darryl's final scene to name a few are done poorly.

CAST

Chris Hemsworth- Jed


Josh Peck- Matt


Josh Hutcherson- Robert


Adrianne Palicki- Toni


Isabel Lucas- Erica


Conner Crusie- Darryl


Edwin Hodge- Danny




Jeffrey Dean Morgan- Tanner

In closing If Red Dawn was probably named something else It would've been  just another movie that came and went without any questions, but by making it Red Dawn my expectations were set a little bit higher because of the name.

I know the movie was filmed a few years back and just was released in 2012, and it didn't hurt that Josh Hutcherson became and bigger name thanks to The Hunger Games and Chris Hemsworth got huge thanks to Thor/The Avengers, I am a Chris Hemsworth fan but I will say I don't know where his career would be right now if he didn't get the role of Thor because Cabin In The Woods and Red Dawn are not the best to have on his resume of films hopefully as his career continues he does better roles that will erase these films from what he is known for outside of The almighty Thor role.

I say if your a fan of the original Red Dawn say away from this movie, and enjoy what that movie was which had a better overall cast and better action scenes, If your younger and don't like any movie that's older then you are this might be the movie for you, but I highly recommend watching the original as well to see how this story should be told.


MY RATING

4/10