Red Dawn

 

As a film critic, I try to keep an open mind when I walk into a movie.  With some movies, it's harder than others.  Case in point - I knew walking into a remake of Red Dawn was not going to be a promising experience.  The original 1984 film is pretty much only remembered as a trivia question these days, as it was the first movie to be released in theaters with a PG-13 rating.  Now we have the 2012 film, which shares the same rating, yet feels watered down, hacked and edited, and fairly pointless all around.

The film was originally set to hit theaters back in 2009, but due to financial problems with the studio, it was delayed numerous times until a new buyer could be located.  During its long road to the silver screen, the film was altered.  Originally, the Russian enemies from the 1984 film had been replaced with China.  However, due to the fact that the executives thought a movie about Chinese military forces invading the US would hurt its chances in the overseas box office, they decided to make some edits, and change the invading army to the North Koreans.  The flags in the background were replaced to reflect this change, and certain elements of the script were altered and re-dubbed.  So, we have an already implausible premise made even more implausible, and even downright ridiculous.  And this is all before we've even sat down in our seats.  Like I said, sometimes you just know when you're walking into trouble.

Things kick off with a high school football game that introduces us to our main characters.  Strong-willed quarterback Matt (Josh Peck) has been living with his widower police officer father (Brett Cullen), but now has been joined by his emotionally distant military brother, Jed (Chris Hemsworth), who has returned from a tour of duty.  There is tension at home between Matt and Jed, due to the fact that Jed left for war shortly after their mom died, but the movie is not really interested in this bit of character development, and only uses it to give the characters something to talk about during throwaway scenes.  There is a city-wide blackout later that night, and the next morning, the brothers wake up to North Korean soldiers parachuting out of planes, and attacking their suburban neighborhood.  Their dad is quickly captured and eventually killed by the cruel Captain Lo (Will Yun Lee), which inspires Matt and Jed, along with a handful of teenage survivors who managed to escape the initial attack, to form a military resistance group called the Wolverines, after their high school mascot.

Why is North Korea performing this implausible invasion campaign in the first place?  The movie makes a half-hearted attempt to explain this during an opening credit montage of altered news footage, but it still never makes a lot of sense, nor is it really explored in any detail.  The Koreans don't seem to have any agenda, other than to act as targets and get blown away by the young mercenaries. We don't even get a real sense as to how things are going in the rest of the United States.  We hear some talk and rumors, but the invasion pretty much seems centered on Spokane, Washington.  Once the teenagers have been trained to kill and fight back against the invading army (which is covered in a sloppy, five minute montage), the movie turns into a relentless series of never-ending gun battles, and shaky cam editing, almost as if the cameraman is trying to make sense out of the chaos.

Red Dawn is at times laughably simplistic, especially when it comes to its characters.  The lead brothers at least have one-note personalities, such as Jed is the strict, stern military type, while Matt is a young man driven by the fact his cheerleader girlfriend is one of the prisoners, and frequently goes off on his own or puts the group in danger to try to save her.  Everyone else who makes up the heroic Wolverines have about as much personality and depth as your standard horny teenager in a slasher movie.  In other words, we don't really know why we're supposed to care about these kids.  When they do open their mouths, it's usually to say dialogue like, "We're living Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and it sucks..." Nobody contributes anything useful, or gets to say anything interesting.

 

Naturally, the 1984 original was just as ridiculous and implausible, but it still managed to strike a nerve with Reagan-era audiences.  I can't imagine this remake striking a never with anyone, except teenagers, who may enjoy this film's video game-style approach to the action.  Of course, we didn't need a remake of Red Dawn in the first place.  And just to ram that point home, someone did not listen to reason, and went ahead and did it anyway.

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