Red Dawn (2012)

So Red Dawn is a remake of the 1984 film starring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen. Disclaimer: I haven't seen that movie so I won't be comparing this one with that one. I'm taking this movie as a standalone film and talking about what I liked and what I didn't like.

The movie focuses on Chris Hemsworth, a Marine home for a couple weeks (hence his facial hair.) and his brother Matt, a high school football star, played by Josh Peck.

The movie starts out with a montage explaining the political climate of the globe and how with a combination of the economic crisis and an increase in cyber warfare, America may be vulnerable to cyber attacks... I wonder if that's going to foreshadow anything.

The movie starts going pretty quickly when the North Koreans attack the United States with the help of the Russians. Hemsworth and Peck escape with a band of other teenagers and retreat to the woods where they end up creating a resistance, using guerrilla warfare.

Now I could go on and on about how improbable that is given the actual political climate of the globe and the military capabilities of both Russia and North Korea, but I have to suspend a little bit of disbelief for the sake of the movie. Yeah it may be improbable but it still makes for an interesting scenario for our characters to react and make a good plot out of. But that would require the characters to be really good right?

The first thing you may notice from this poster is that Chris Hemsworth is obviously the oldest. I think they did a better job in the poster making him look younger than they did in the movie.

While these actors are actually not incredibly far from each other in age, with the exception of Josh Hutcherson, they all look like they are in high school, 18 maybe. Hemsworth looks like he's in his late twenties. Which is actually accurate, he's a Marine that has been on active duty. He should be older than them right?

Well that's true but it does sometimes look a little weird when you've got a guy who looks much older toting around with a bunch of kids. That's not a pervert allusion, you can just tell who is the better actor here.

And its spot on. I'm seeing more and more movies with Chris Hemsworth and I really like what I see from his performances. I think he's a better actor than just being able to play Thor.

Hemsworth does a really good job in this movie with what he is given. Let's be honest, the script is really cheesy and the plot is a little over the top. But Hemsworth takes it all in stride and he does what he can with a limited role. He's just suppose to be a marine who has seen combat. There's also the dramatic tension between he and his brother but like a lot of the subplots in this movie, that's pretty rushed and not really developed properly.

It is the best relationship in the movie but that's mainly on Hemsworth's part. He pulls a lot of weight in this movie.

The part of his younger brother is played by Josh Peck.

Now I've never seen Drake & Josh. I have no intentions of seeing Drake and Josh. I assume this movie was an attempt to kind of shed the Drake and Josh imagine from Josh Peck's career. And while Peck doesn't do an awful job, I just hate his character.

Matt Eckert is an arrogant football player who does things his way. He's not good with working as a team. Now there are reasonable situations where that would make sense. In the beginning, he's playing a football game and he keeps doing things his way despite what the coach tells him to do. This results in him losing the game. (Foreshadowing much?) But when the invasion happens, you would think that he would think to himself, "Maybe I'm not too knowledgable about fighting in an insurgency, maybe I should listen to my Marine brother, the only person here who has seen combat." And you'd think that would happen but it doesn't. Peck just does whatever he wants. While at the beginning things go along with his plans, he becomes to determined to save his dumbass girlfriend that people end up dying because of it. I know they wanted this to happen for dramatic effect but it was just stupid. Like stupid stupid.

While I'm on it. His girlfriend was stupid too. She looked stupid, she was stupid, just stupid.

And boring!

I think they did the right thing having a lot of the focus be on Hemsworth and Peck and develop the brother relationship but they sometimes sacrificed that development for dumb scenes with Peck and his girlfriend, or Hemsworth and some random ass chick that had a huge crush on him when they went to school. The romance in this movie was just kind of stupid, especially the romance with Chris Hemsworth and Adrianne Palicki, and I should have realized why from the very beginning.

Oh and Peeta?

Yeah he was pointless in this movie. They just needed another guy to fight in the resistance. I'm not sure why they wanted to make his part bigger because almost the entire resistance group were kind of cardboard cut outs.

But for as much shit as I have already given this movie, there are a lot of good things about it.

When I say Chris Hemsworth pulls a lot of the weight, I'm not joking. But it makes the movie ten times better.

The action and tactics in the movie were kind of fun and it was entertaining to that guerrilla warfare turned around and having American's defending the home front. I mean its a really interesting and entertaining concept. A lot of credit goes to the original movie but I'll give this movie credit where it belongs. The action is done well and its a fun ride.

In the last act of the movie, Jeffery Dean Morgan shows up as a marine fighting in the American liberation movement.

Jeffery Dean Morgan, while overall sort of pointless, was really a badass in this movie. He looks like he's just here for a paycheck the entire movie but that doesn't make him look any less cool.

I guess I should have realized why he was there from the beginning... but I didn't.

And if you're wondering why I'm being cryptic, its because this realization has to do with the ending. This movie was doing so well despite a couple bland characters and an over the top story. Until the last 15 minutes of the movie. That last stretch just killed the entire movie for me. If you're really interested in having this ending not spoiled, click out and watch Red Dawn. Its only about 90 minutes and that's the last thing it did right. It was a good, short, and to the point movie.

Here come the spoilers. 

The Wolverines (that's the name of their resistance group) assault the police station and are able to retrieve a radio essential to the North Korean communications. (Couldn't the North Koreans just disable that radio? Eh who gives a shit, the assault was cool)

So they go back to this apartment where they just did the assault from and they relax... why? Chris Hemsworth has gone the entire movie saying they need to be careful and he's having beer with his new squeeze. (That's basically what she is in this movie). This is an unsafe environment and he's going to have sex. He and Peck have a quick moment, and just has he's about to go make sweet passionate love to rando-girl and he gets a bullet square to the head.

Well turns out the only black kid in the group had a scuffle with some Russian soldiers and they tagged him. Now I'm not totally sure how or why the Russians have animal trackers... but the point is Chris Hemsworth is dead and the focus of the movie is now on Josh Peck.

Well they just leave the black guy on the side of the road and escape to fight another day, keep the resistance going with Josh Peck at the helm. This was suppose to be super dramatic, especially for Josh Hutcherson because they apparently had a deep connection that could never be severed not even by North Koreans. But Josh Peck gives the radio to Jeffery Dean Morgan and decides he's going to lead the resistance now.

Everything up to the last 15 minutes of this movie was alright. It wasn't an awful movie, it was just entertaining. I would have written this off as a mediocre action flick until the bullet hit Chris Hemsworth. That's why the romance between Hemsworth and Palicki was stupid, because it wasn't going to matter in the end. That's why Jeffery Dean Morgan came in, because they needed an actual badass to finish the movie.

But think about this. Why kill off Hemsworth?

Is it to give Peck one last lesson about being on a team? No, he was already working well in a team, that subplot seemed finished. Was it to show the casualties of war? Well they already killed off half the original team, killing off Hemsworth was just another body. And I'm not joking, with the exception of his brother, nobody really cares that much that Hemsworth dies. Yes, Palicki pretends to care but they have maybe 3 conversations throughout the entire movie. If I was Josh Hutcherson's character with the character development, Hemsworth is just another casualty.

I think Hemsworth just didn't want to be in the sequel if there was going to be one. Which there won't. But Hemsworth didn't want to take any chances.

Its a bummer because the movie was alright. It shows how a movie can have everything right but then just lost it all with one decision.

Beyond that, thinking about this movie too much makes your realize that what they're doing is really inconsequential. This isn't my biggest complaint because they do do a good job kind of painting this resistance as an insurgency. But these guys are not going to free the entire United States. They're just a band of teenagers fighting in a town. If they win the town not much is going to change but they got the town... and that's a big deal for them I guess.

In short, I liked 75 minutes of this movie. The last fifteen minutes were complete dogshit. If you watch this movie watch up to the point where Chris Hemsworth kills the guy that killed their father and then be done. There's nothing else to see, you'll basically have the same result with the exception that in that case, Chris Hemsworth is alive.

I may sound like I'm obsessing over this but there isn't really anything good about this movie besides Chris Hemsworth.

So have you seen Red Dawn? Have you seen the original? How does it stack up to the original? Comment and discuss below.

I'll leave you with this. I can never get enough of the Hitler reaction videos. If you don't know what those are... are you new here? Here's Hitler reacting to the Red Dawn trailer.