Red Dawn (2012)
A Movie Review by Dave Randal
Genre: ActionCast: Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Josh HutchersonDirector: Dan BradleyWriters: Carl Ellsworthy(screenplay), Jeremy Passmore(screenplay), Kevin Reynolds(novel)Studios: ContraFilmDistributed by: FilmDistrictRelease Date: November 21, 2012Plot: A group of teenagers look to save their town from an invasion of North Korean soldiers.
Many people remember the original Red Dawn (1984) as being kind of ridiculous. To a certain extent they may be right. There were some flaws in the movie and it probably could use a remake. Unfortunately the 2012 remake we got was ten times worse. MGM developed this movie a few years ago until it went bankrupt. It was shelved and lucky for the new distributors FilmDistrict, them the star of the movie, Chris Hemsworth, became a huge star playing Thor in the movies Thor (2011) and The Avengers (2011).
The new Red Dawn movie stars Chris Hemsworth as a U.S. Marine veteran who has just come home from Afghanistan. Co-starring as his high school aged younger brother Matt is former Nickelodeon star Josh Peck. They don't get along very well at all due to Jed running off when their mother died. Now they have to learn to co-exist as North Korean troops have invaded the United States. Jed, Matt, and a few other high school aged teens decide to pull together and fight back.
The first thing I obviously noticed in this movie is Chris Hemsworth. Out of everyone in the cast he easily stands out as the best. Part of it may be because he is physically huge although I also thing he has kind of a deeper presence that just sets him apart from most actors. I really disliked the movie Thor (2011), but I thought he played Thor perfectly. He had the look and the skills to play an interesting character in a movie that wasn't interesting at all. Here in Red Dawn he does okay although he doesn't have too much to work with.
I can't say that I enjoyed Josh Peck's performance as much. I thought he was funny on the Nickelodeon show Drake and Josh, but since then he has lost a lot of weight and tried to get bigger movie roles. Something about Peck just doesn't quite click for me in this movie. His line deliveries are mediocre at best. I think he has potential, but at 26 years old he needs to have a little more than just potential. I wonder if comedy movies might suit him better considering he had decent comedy timing on the show Drake and Josh.
Other than Josh Hutcherson's character of Robert the other characters in the movie are really just kind of there. The brothers Jed and Matt are the only real characters truly developed with the exception of Robert. Hutcherson is another actor who has gone on to find bigger fame co-starring in The Hunger Games (2011). In this movie you can see that he does his best, but the structure of the script is so paper thin that he just isn't given enough interesting stuff to work with.
That brings me to the plot of this movie. The story goes that originally the bad guys in the movie were suppose to be the Chinese and not North Korea. I guess some genius realized that isn't such a good idea considering China is becoming a big market for Hollywood movies. To explain why North Korea is capable to invade the United States they come up with this bullcrap power turner offer thing-a-ma-jig. Yeah it's stupid although that isn't my biggest problem with the movie. If the movie had been made a bit better I could have actually gone with the idea of the power grid going down.
I'm getting really tired of action movies using the shaky camera. Red Dawn is no exception. I don't know if it is easier to film action scenes this way, but it got old a few years ago. I would take the cliched super slow motion special effect developed from The Matrix (1999) over the shaky cam special effect any day. Just about every action scene has a shaky cam in this movie and it's really annoying.
The story of the movie went a little better than I thought it would. Watching the trailer I figured this movie would be a patriotic propaganda piece supporting war. In a lot of ways I actually think it shows a little bit of criticism against the wars the U.S. has brought onto Afghanistan and Iraq by comparing North Korean troops to the U.S. troops there. They even explain the tactics the teens use to fight back. The original Red Dawn gets a lot of criticism for showing teenagers fighting back against a huge military force. In fact there are examples throughout history of young adults using guerrilla warfare tactics effectively against invading military forces and the movie actually somewhat explains that. Considering that they did that I have to give the writer and filmmakers a bit of credit.
My biggest disappointments with this movie is the beginning and the end. The middle isn't much better, but the beginning and end were just too different from the original movie. I get that they wanted to do their own thing although instead of improving on those elements they made them much worse. My favorite scene in the original has always been the paratroopers coming down over the school out of no where. This new movie decided to just rip off Jurassic Park's water vibration thing by having some water in a snow globe shake. That was followed by paratroopers coming down in the brother's neighborhood. I understand how that might be cool, but I still think the original movie's paratrooper scene is much more effective. As for the ending of the movie it is just too sudden. I won't spoil it, but lets just say that it is quite a bit different from the ending that I liked so much in the original.
I waited for about three years for this movie to come out. I'm a fan of the original and I thought they would be able to improve on it. Instead they went the exact opposite way. The original had great pacing throughout it and a better beginning and ending. This one, even though it is the same length as the original, moves way too fast which completely hurts the pacing. Saying all that though I didn't completely hate this movie. For the elements of the script that I liked I am going to give it a barley passing rating of two and a half stars.
Dave Randal's Rating- 
A-Okay
A-OkayDave Randal's Star Rating- ★★½(2½) out of ★★★★★(5)
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