Red Dawn

 

2 stars

For a while there, the invading army in the "Red Dawn" remake was Chinese. Then the producers decided to change the enemy into North Koreans, backed by a Russian or two for old times' sake, by way of an opening sequence explaining the geopolitical and economic crises that have rendered America ripe for attack. We see, among others, Vice President Joe Biden mouthing words of warning while implicitly standing for the United States of Appeasement. Elsewhere in the remake the emblems on the tanks and such have been digitally de-Chinesed, so as to ensure better box-office results in the lucrative Chinese market. And to blazes with North Korea.

The film itself, shot in 2009 by director Dan Bradley, is more of a damp matchstick than a blaze. It stars Chris Hemsworth in the old Patrick Swayze role, and a couple of Joshes, Hutcherson and Peck. Like the first and more interestingly insane "Red Dawn," a product of the Reagan era and the fevered machismo of writer-director John Milius, the remake imagines a home-turf takeover, this time in and around Spokane, Wash.

America's only hope is a gaggle of high school kids who form a guerrilla army calling itself the Wolverines, after the local high school football mascot. "We inherited our freedom," says Hemsworth's U.S. Marine and Iraq War veteran, a less emotional and vulnerable fellow than Swayze gave us. "Now it's up to us to fight for it."

Revisiting Milius' "Red Dawn," it's astonishing just how many hundreds of people die on screen in what was the first release to enter the marketplace with the newly created PG-13 rating in 1984. The mood swings in the original are fascinating as well, with Milius' "Lord of the Flies" infighting jostling for attention with weird little dollops of humor (a shot of the captured town reveals the local movie theater to be playing "Alexander Nevsky"). The new "Red Dawn" is a more buttoned-down affair, although its two-faced hypocrisy regarding the horrors of war are just as galling as they were a generation ago. Hemsworth's character delivers speeches to his younger comrades about the ugliness and bloodiness of what's about to happen, but of course there's no movie without the thrill of the righteous kill. And since the North Koreans have employed cyber-terrorism and old-fashioned airstrikes and ground troops to make the U.S. its playground, it's 100 percent righteous killing.

I like Hemsworth as an actor, and Hutcherson as well; they know how to serve a scene (even a stupid one) and keep things self-effacing. Peck, from TV's unfortunate "Drake & Josh" and the indie "The Wackness," not so much. He's all adenoidal mumbling and too-cool-for-the-invasion self-regard. Many of the original film's booby-trap scenarios are repeated here, but without Milius' grandiosity and nihilism. There's less of both in the new "Red Dawn." It's not a disaster. It's just drab.

 

 RSS

 

"Red Dawn" Movie Trailer

 

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for sequences of intense war violence and action, and for language).

Running time: 1:33.

Cast: Chris Hemsworth (Jed Eckert); Josh Hutcherson (Robert); Isabel Lucas (Erica); Adrianne Palicki (Toni); Alyssa Diaz (Julie).

Credits: Directed by Dan Bradley; written by Carl Ellsworth and Jeremy Passmore, based on the original screenplay by John Milius; produced by Beau Flynn, Tripp Vinson and Vincent Newman. An MGM release.

---

<< RETURN TO MOVIE REVIEWS ...

---

Recent Movie Reviews - Films in Theaters

---

 

---