Red Dawn

Finally I got a chance to watch Red Dawn and again I'm disappointed in the outcome. The new Red Dawn is pretty much like the old one, just replace Russians with Koreans, and adjust one young cast with another and WHAM, you have a remake. The only problem is with the original there was a complete film. With a short time span you had emotion contact with the story and with the characters to the point where you actually felt for those who fell and the manner in which they died. From Charlie Sheen to C. Thomas Howell, you memorized their stories, agonized at their loss, and in the end felt personal attach when they died. Sadly the new film has none of that. The characters are about as deep as a table spoon and have the emotional capacity of rocks. Though the cast is young and hip from Chris Hemsworth to Josh Peck, the feeling just isn't there. It's almost like MTV took care of this production, gave them skinny jeans and machine guns and then turned them loose. The bad guys? Well they're really not all that bad, at least not in the horrific way the Russians and Cubans were in the first film. There's a prison camp but its not really all that different then the prison cams that we have in Cube, they kill one or two civilians (The main character's father) but that's about it.

The plot? Well the key to the original plot was that a group of untrained teenagers decided to stand up and fight against the wave of tyranny that was forced upon them. It all happened quite by accident and the progression of their ability and action was slow but effective. In the new film you have the attitude of "America...F*ck yeah!", one training montage, and WHAM you have a pack of well dressed, well trained killers who are putting boot to ass for their country. Yeah.....I'll give you a second to consider watching that or not.

By the end of the film, if you've watched the original, you kind of feel cheated. Sure one of the lead characters dies, but the others that die barley say a single line in the film and are kind of like farts in the whirl wind. The original Red Dawn worked because it was small town America not fighting for glory or to accomplish a mission, they were just fighting for their town, for their home. Almost all of them died bravely and all of them were remembered on hero's rock and the lesson of bravery and courage is there. With the new film there's no depth, no tragedy, and little to no point. They throw a trained Marine in there, give them a mission of retrieving a magic box for the US government and by the end of the film all they accomplish is setting up for a sequel. So sad. With a little more effort this could have been a better film, but yet again we have a half assed effort towards a film that only succeeds in ruining new generations to an classic film.

Please Hollywood, please stop jerking with my childhood.

J.