Movie Review: Red Dawn (2012)

Red Dawn (2012)

A group of teenagers look to save their town from an invasion of North Korean soldiers.  Short synopsis of Red Dawn taken from IMDb.com

I avoided watching this one for a long time, as I didn't believe it could be any good.  After all, Hollywood is enamored with the '80s right now, and so the slew of remakes gets a bit tedious at times.  My wife quipped while watching Red Dawn that it's a shame that they can't do anything original, as there are so many good ideas out there that aren't be tapped (she referred to books that could be made into movies).  And I agree.

But then something surprising happened.  I actually started to like this film.  A little.  It didn't totally offend me.  Let's put it at that. 

So what was good?  Well, the nice touches of homage to the original film, and also the twists on scenes in the original, were favorable.  For instance, the famous scene where, in the original, one of the female leads is accosted by the crew of a Soviet tank at a gas station.  She has a bomb in her bag, which goes off inside the tank and causes the survivors who were outside the tank to chase after her into an open field.  In the field are secreted her comrades, who pop out of concealed pits and shoot down the bad guys.  In the new version, this scene is replayed in the city, and the idea is to get better guns from the bodies of the killed Korean soldiers.  The firearms the youngsters have previously had at their disposal has been just demonstrated (in a preceding scene) to be short ranged and not terribly accurate.  I liked how the remake used the scene to move the plot along.

Comparison shot.  Above is the 2012 remake, below the original 1984 movie.  Top (left to right) are Josh Peck as Matt Eckert (too boy-band looking to compete with Sheen, in my opinion), Josh Hutcherson as Robert (I'm not convinced he transformed from child to soul-less fighter as well as C. Thomas Howell) and Chris Hemsworth as Jed Eckert (came the closest, in my thinking, but he's still too... what's the modern-day equivalent of "dreamy?"  - though I imagine people could say the same of Swayze, back in the day).  Below (left to right) are Swayze as Jed Eckert, Howell as Robert and Sheen as Matt Eckert. / Source: aszuminski19.blogspot.com

Then there is the humor of the scene in which members of the newly christened "Wolverines" partisan group are hunting deer.  The least experienced of the group shoots the deer, and the two older boys offer him a cup of steaming blood from the deer's chest cavity, saying it will make him "one with the deer spirit."  In the original, the boy drinks, and then afterward shows an increase in blood lust that - while not overtly directly linked to the blood drinking - can be traced as part of the progression of events.  But the twist in the remake is funny, if a bit post-modern cynical.  I'll save it for those who are interested in perhaps watching Red Dawn (2012) for themselves.  The point is, the remake does this twisting for effect a fair amount of the time throughout.

In fact, Red Dawn puts in a number of twists that weren't too offensive to me, to tell true.  But then again, some of the changes did annoy me.  The Russians, so omnipresent in the original, play a part here, but only just barely.  The North Koreans are the main baddies, though I am to understand that the Chinese were originally the intended foes.  I think the change to North Koreans is ridiculous, personally.  But that is just me.  I understand we can't offend potential markets (that's capitalism for you).  But just the same, North Korea seems to be stretched a bit thin as a villain here.  This is especially so in an opening scene that was traumatic in the original, but felt forced in the remake.  A fleet of Soviet era transport aircraft fly over head a small community, disgorging hordes of paratroopers.  It looks pretty awe-inspiring, except for one small fact.  I quipped at this moment that there were more of the transport planes on screen than were probably built in the entire run of that particular aircraft.  It was laughably annoying CGI at work.  And the movie has a number of such scenes where CGI is used ham-fistedly.  That could easily lead me into a  rant about how subtlety is lost in film-making when movie makers can just throw in anything they want via computer graphics.  But I'll spare you that jaunt down irony lane for now.

You know, I realize that Hollywood thinks pf all those potential Chinese consumers and sees dollar signs, but I'm sorry, this film could have been better if they'd had the guts to make it about China.  Sure, it might have been labeled "reactionary."  But going half-way and then chickening out and re-labeling all the equipment int he film from Chinese to North Korean shows a fawning attitude, in my opinion.  In fact, let's turn the tables. I'd be one of the people who wouldn't mind seeing a version of this sort of "invasion" scenario in which Americans were the ones doing the invading.  Sure, it opens you to the harsh light thrown upon the weaker sides of your culture.  At the same time, we are ALL human beings, just the same. / Source: screenrant.com

Also, the pace of the film annoyed me.  It disturbs me that movies of the modern era don't seem comfortable with themselves enough to take a breath.  Everything has to keep moving.  The original Red Dawn had a number of scenes in which the film stopped to breath.  The snow field scene in which the two brothers talk about how things are going (badly, and they know that the group really needs a respite, which moves the film along in a most appropriate way) is one such scene that comes to mind.  But this new Red Dawn can't slow down for anything.  Is the attention span of modern young audiences, to whom this movie is mostly targeted, so short that if something isn't being said, done, blown up or flirted with, the film will die?  I hope not.

The previous video clip went private, so I replaced it with this movie review from YouTube.

In the end, 2012's Red Dawn wasn't bad.  If it had been better blended into the original, this could have been a  monumental remake.  Instead, it just feels a bit thin and lacking.  So much potential wasted.  To be blunt, I saw a TV series in this plot that would have kicked some lesser cable TV series' butts (Falling Skies, I'm thinking of you in particular).  Such good ideas...  But c'est la vie.

The parting comment:

Source: LOLSnaps.com

If I had a fancy job in an office, and thus an email address that required a reply message if I was out of touch, I think I'd go with #8.  But #4 would be a close second place choice.