Review: Red Dawn (2012)

By Jason McKiernan
November 20, 2012 Reviews 2 Comments

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Isabel Lucas, Josh Hutcherson
Director: Dan Bradley
Country: USA
Genre: Action
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Notes: Red Dawn opens wide in North America tomorrow, November 21st 2012.

Red Dawn is insipid, downbeat, incessantly stupid emotional opportunism, a movie borne solely out of the desire to implant destructive thoughts in the minds of impressionable kids. It’s one thing to set an apocalyptic story of kid uprising in the gaudy context of a graphic novel, where the conflicts are inflated, the style is gauche, and the characters are purposely outsized. It’s quite another to tell the same story with an earnestness that pretends one Iraq war veteran can actually coach a rag-tag group of neighborhood kids to overcome a stateside occupation. In theory, this material is so loony it should be fun. But Red Dawn isn’t about fun – it’s about sullen brooding and violent unrest.

Based on the 1984 Patrick Swayze starrer, this 21st century “upgrade” – directed by longtime 2nd Unit Director Dan Bradley – basically clones the concept: a group of All-American teens revolt against the occupying forces of an Evil Foreign Country, who have taken over their small hometown as part of a larger effort of total U.S. domination. In the process, foes are vanquished, foreign enemies denigrated, American exceptionalism incited, and stuff blowed up real good.

…one might be inclined to assume there must be a satirical bent to the material. There isn’t.

Reading that synopsis, one might be inclined to assume there must be a satirical bent to the material. There isn’t. One might also assume, correctly, that in order to make such fanciful material work, there would need to be a strongly stylistic directorial voice to visually support the narrative’s high unbelievability quotient. There isn’t that, either. Instead, the story is related in literal terms, with a sleepy Midwestern town invaded by North Korea, and the town’s prodigal son forced to lead his kid brother and assorted friends in a makeshift insurgency. Stylistically, the movie looks like entirely earthbound, except when high tech aircraft fly over the suburban neighborhood dropping bombs, at which point the film resembles a green-screen exercise gone awry. The film’s dour tone is laughable, but as the film drones on, attempting to manipulate us into feeling something for its cardboard caricatures and American revenge fantasy plot, laughs eventually recede into depression.

Chris Hemsworth leads a cast consisting of every hot young actor currently working, give or take a few. Notable exceptions include Abigail Breslin and the Fannings, who seem to have a more secure grasp on legitimacy than some of their peers. Likewise, Hemsworth must’ve signed onto this role before he realized he was a good actor. Still, he is engaging enough to inject some class into the otherwise execrable proceedings, commanding the screen partly due to his charisma and partly because everything around him is so repulsive. Among the supporting cast are Josh Hutcherson (who is such a side note that it’s a wonder he even considered the role), Connor Cruise (yes, the son of Tom and Nicole, who is…blandly pleasant), and Josh Peck, former Nickelodeon star, who was so good in Mean Creek and The Wackness, but here is so engulfed by the lugubriousness emotionality of this script that he is borderline embarrassing in certain sequences. He’s the primary casualty in this war, likely through very little fault of his own.

A film like Red Dawn not only propagates the sort of myopic rah-rah cheerleading of American geocentrism, but also theorizes the complete demonization of a legitimate foreign for in a way that sets our country’s collective intelligence back about 20 points.

Global paranoia and apocalyptic conspiracy theorizing have become pervasive in all forms of art in the last decade, sparked by the kinds of extremist divides that permeate nearly all significant American sociopolitical events – certainly the just-finished U.S. presidential election. However, if the results of said election are to be believed, then the majority of the people are firmly grounded, not panicking about the state of the world, and want to continue moving forward. A film like Red Dawn not only propagates the sort of myopic rah-rah cheerleading of American geocentrism, but also theorizes the complete demonization of a legitimate foreign for in a way that sets our country’s collective intelligence back about 20 points. This is the kind of blindly aggressive mindset that rejects complexity, ignores discernment, and instead favors a gutless, obtuse American violence fantasy without any irony or commentary.

You might be saying I’m the one taking this trifle too seriously, that I need to just let it go and have fun. But here is my judging criteria for a movie like Red Dawn: if your movie sparks conversation with your young son upon exiting the theater, then its methods were valid. If the kid leaves the theater shooting fake guns and conducting an invisible mission throughout the lobby, then your movie is probably evil.

18/100 ~ UNBEARABLE. Red Dawn is a nasty piece of emotional opportunism that wastes a solid cast and promotes the most dim-witted of American ideas.
By Jason McKiernan
Sr. Staff Film Critic & Awards Pundit: I married into the cult of cinema at a very young age - I wasn't of legal marriage age, but I didn't care. It has taken advantage of me and abused me many times. Yet I stay in this marriage because I'm obsessed and consumed. Don't try to save me -- I'm too far gone.
  • luke_a

    “Likewise, Hemsworth must’ve signed onto this role before he realized he was a good actor.” On the Cabin in the Woods commentary track, Joss said that after MGM (back when they were the ones making Cabin) saw the dailies of Hemsworth, he got Red Dawn on Friday and then Thor on Saturday. So this was made way before he had any clout and it’s only now that this is getting released.

  • http://www.facebook.com/bryan.murray.33 Bryan Murray

    This is not a great remake but it is entertaining enough for one to go see