Review: Red Dawn

Every generation has their boogeyman and these boogeymen often inspire the types of films being made. Films like Godzilla and Them were created because of our fear of The Bomb. Movies like Psycho and Easy Rider were reflections on our distrust of The Man or "our fellow man."

Then came the 1980s, a time of reflection for our decade about the time spent fighting in the jungles of Vietnam. Two films stand out: Red Dawn and Platoon. Platoon was a reflection of the hardship inflicted on the soldiers during the Vietnam conflict. Preceding Platoon by two years was Red Dawn. The 1984 film asked a question: What would happen if our country was invaded by a superior force, this force being the Soviet Union? The Viet Cong would be replaced with a bunch of high-school kids.

Here in 2012, the contemporary remake Red Dawn is a superficial representation about what would happen should another country -- in this case North Korea -- invade the United States. 

Set in Spokane, Washington, the story centers around two brothers, Jed and Matt Eckert. Jed (Chris Hemsworth) is a Marine, home on leave after tours of duty in Afghanistan. Matt (Josh Peck) is Jed’s younger brother and quarterback of his high-school football team, the Wolverines. As the invasion begins, Jed, Matt and a small group of their friends escape the battle and head for the hills surrounding Spokane.

After setting up shop in the Eckert family cabin, Jed takes it on himself to train the ragtag lot of high schoolers in the art of insurgency. These newly trained Wolverines will take the battle to the North Koreans. What follows is a fairly formulaic action film straight out of Call of Duty. Which makes sense as this film is the first directoral effort for Dan Bradley, whose resume is full of stunt coordinator credits.

Red Dawn has numerous flaws that begin almost from the outset. The first set of flawed choices begins with the Jed Eckert character. It is simply too convenient that he happens to be a Marine. You cannot help but roll your eyes with this reveal. In the original film, the characters are thrown into their situation unintentionally and without any real training.

Another major issue with the movie is that it never gives the viewer the opportunity to develop any emotional connection to the characters. Every attempt to provide any emotional depth seems both artificial and forced. You never feel any loss when a character dies -- you half expect them to re-spawn for the next level of game play. 

Another missing element in Red Dawn is that of transformation. Simply put, people thrown into war are changed. Some change for the better, some change for the worse. No one, and I mean no one in this film changes. In the original film, we see brothers solidify their relationship, people sink into madness and others realize that war is a futile endeavor. In this movie, none of this happens, and the characters who are present at the start of the film never really move from their original state.

The original Red Dawn was an allegory on Vietnam. The freedom fighters represented in the original film would not be the Viet Cong, they would be ill-equipped teenagers fighting in the hills of Colorado. The 2012 version of Red Dawn is a hollow remake that completely misses the allegorical nature of its ancestor.