Red Dawn

I finally broke down and watched Hugo the other day and it was everything I thought it was going to be; well shot, technically amazing, yet unbelievably boring. It was painful to watch at times especially when the children in it attempted to convey emotion through their performances.  If you want to see real tears, just look at me after I follow Wesley Snipes’ advice and bet on black 10 times in a row while the stupid ball lands on red each time! Meanwhile my idiot friend pops in for one roll, bets on green and it actually hits while he walks away up $1700. I hate children’s movies AND Vegas!  So since this movie sucked and reminded me of losing money and time,  I figured that if I’m going to watch bad acting there may as well be explosions involved. Enter Red Dawn.

I won’t waste your time talking about how much it sucks that Hollywood remade this 80’s classic. It worked back then because of the Cold War and Rocky 4. As a kid, I thought it was totally possible for the Russians to sneak up through Mexico and invade us with an army full of Dragos but now with all of the technology that’s available it's beyond absurd to try and convince me that an entire country’s army can cross the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and we have no idea it’s happening.  But whatever, there are guns, explosions, evil  Koreans, and a hot red head whose rack is on full display the entire time. Not sure if she’s really all that hot because honestly I never made above shoulder level; but it did remind me of the time  a close friend of mine who has some nice assets herself, went up to a kid at the baseball game and asked him if he wanted some milk. Why I didn’t propose to her on the spot, I still cant figure this out but on to the movie.

The plot is ridiculous. You get introduced to most of the characters through a high school football game and the subsequent after party. You notice some tension between  Jed (Hemsworth) and Matt(Peck) which will be explained later but right when the movie pretends to tell a story, the evil Koreans fly in and take over the town of Spokane, Washington.  Jed and Matt escape to their cabin in the woods along with a few other teenagers to hide out until they can figure out what to do. Well once they see their dad executed they decide that it’s time to fight back and since they know their homeland better than these foreigners, this gives them a distinct advantage. 

With the crazy detailed and violent Call of Duty type video games that are out now, there is no doubt that many teenagers think they could handle this kind of situation. And they even have a terrible exchange between the new ass face Josh Hutcherson (replacing the old face that looked like an ass in Josh Hartnett) and some little black kid (Conner Cruise) that went like this “Man, I miss playing Call of Duty” “Dude, we’re living Call of Duty and it sucks”.  Did David Letterman write these jokes? Anyway, the point is, the second a kid from the suburbs got shot at for real, he’d piss his pants and cry for his mom. 

This movie felt like it was chopped all to hell. There was no flow from scene to scene that actually had dialogue in it so any attempt at humor or bonding just fell completely flat. It was as if the editor saw the three hour version of this, realized that no matter how the material was presented there was no way to not make it look and feel cheesy,  and decided then to just have filler scenes in between the action pieces. And thankfully he did, because once the action scenes came around they were actually done well and you caught yourself getting into the movie. Hemsworth did what he could with his character and hopefully he decides to become the next big action star but it’s a shame they wasted Will Yun Lee’s casting. He just stood around and looked angry the entire time without ever really saying anything. The key to any good action flick is to have a cool bad guy but they didn’t even bother giving him a personality or even any lines! The kids aren’t really that annoying for the most part except for Josh Peck. He can’t act and he looks like the next Skeet Ulrich. 

I say avoid this movie and plea to Hollywood for a remake of the remake starring all kids from the hood. Maybe get Lorenz Tate to be their mentor. “I got these cheeseburgers mane”! This movie was WEAK!