Why should and shouldn't watch 'Red Dawn'

'Red Dawn' arrives at theatre after few years of delays involving bankruptcy and switch of the film's central villains from the Chinese to North Koreans. This film is a remake of the 1984 film with the same name.

The original “Red Dawn,” released in 1984, is little more than a Reagan-era curio, one whose longevity has been assured, not because of some cult status or critical reevaluation, but because of the starry cast (Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen and Lea Thompson) and the fact that it runs every few months on TNT.

The first half concerned Russia invading America, which left a group of teenage resistance fighters to lead the charge and defend their home. It was dripping with Cold War paranoia and ultra-conservative rhetoric and, today, is barely watchable.

There are some good aspect to watch the film too. The opening of 'Red Dawn' was set at a high school football game, where we first meet the various ragamuffins who will lead a super-violent fight against invading Asian forces. This is “Red Dawn” at its best and most intense, mainly because it reminded me of “Fright Night Lights,” Peter Berg’s beloved, criminally under-watched series about a small-town Texas football team defined by their pluck and folksy earnestness. The freedom fighters even name themselves the Wolverines after the football team’s emblematic mascot. It also doesn’t hurt that wonderfully adorable “Friday Night Lights” alum Adrianne Palicki shows up, which is always appreciated and sort of bittersweet. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.

We can also see one of the charming and handsome Chris Hemsworth.  And he’s proved that three times already, in horror movie deconstruction “Cabin in the Woods,” that little art house flick “The Avengers” and the marginal but gorgeously stylized “Snow White and the Huntsman." Even though “Red Dawn” was made before all those films (more on that in a minute) by a more inexperienced, less hunky Hemsworth, his star wattage is still blinding here.






Hemsworth is ill defined in 'Red Dawn' as other character. His reasons for leaving the army are never truly explained and the interpersonal dynamics of the family left unexplored, mostly because in the movie’s rush towards plot-plot-plot, it doesn’t fill in any of the characters.
All of the kids look the same in that anonymously Photoshopped, Abercrombie & Fitch model way, and their defining characteristics are interchangeable and bland.


An excellent song called by Dragonette by a Canadian electro-pop band -- pumping out of her car stereo is there. It is a moment that’s more exciting than any of the listless action sequences.