Red Dawn

Red Dawn is a remake of the 80s film in which the Russians invade the US and a high school football team becomes an insurgent force fighting back.  This time around, replace the USSR with North Korea, and you get the newest standard of remaking/rebooting unoriginality.  This movie was brutal.

The pacing was downright awful. There was very little set-up with these characters so that when the plot kicks into gear, we don’t know any of them besides the two brothers, and therefore don’t care about them. It was just a whole bunch of red shirts. And after that, the pacing didn’t get any better. I mean, they did a training montage! An honest to goodness training montage. And afterwards we just accept that these kids are now a fully functioning guerrilla unit.

The premise is absolutely ridiculous, and it never really gets explained. How exactly were the North Koreans able to take the entire country over in a morning by complete surprise? I know we’re just supposed to accept it and move on, but its so ludicrous and never properly explored that it was hard to do so.

Can I also mention the awful casting? Chris Hemsworth was fine and actually provides some gravitas to the film, but he is so heads and shoulders above everyone else in talent that it makes it glaringly obvious how weak the other kid actors are.

The worst of the bunch is the brother Matt, who would probably be considered the central character. The guy they cast as him was just some mopey kid who looked like he was going to cry half the time. I could not stand this character, which took a lot of enjoyment out of the film.

Red Dawn is a good example of an action movie being made without a clear vision by the director. Its too silly that it leaves the “goofy fun” territory and the action isn’t unique enough to care on that level. The characters are a bunch of nobodies, the pacing is completely unguided, and it turns out being quite the mess.
4/10