Movies that fall into the action genre aren’t traditionally the brainiest fare that Hollywood releases every year. More often than not, there’s a suspension of disbelief or a concession for bare bones storytelling that a viewer has to make in order to enjoy all of the gun fights and explosions. This new remake of John Milius’ 1984 cheesefest Red Dawn takes things a step too far though. This is a rock stupid movie that refuses to make any sense at any moment, that is almost completely structureless as a piece of storytelling, and that falls apart completely under even the slightest sniff of scrutiny. In order to enjoy this movie you don’t just have to suspend your disbelief, you have to drop trough and poop on it.
What’s the main problem? Mostly that the script is awful. There are a handful of strong actors here, like Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, but they’re given absolutely nothing to work with. The dialogue is atrocious, the character development stops at Americans versus Asian people, and an amount of material that would have been more at home in a two-and-a-half hour epic gets crammed into a ninety minute popcorn movie. Consequently, nothing gets the development or focus necessary to really resonate. Maybe that’s a blessing in disguise though, because any more of what this one was offering up would have felt like a real assault on the viewer.
The silver lining in this dark cloud is that the big climax goes so over the top and gets so implausibly ridiculous with teenager-on-invading-army violence that it’s actually quite a bit of fun. If you’re willing to accept the fact that the movie you’re watching was so poorly conceived that the makers had to go back and digitally change who the bad guys were because the story was so stupid and jingoist (Chinese economic interests complained, so North Korea took the hit), and that what you’re watching is absolutely the flimsiest of excuses to shoot big action scenes and create some melodramatic moments involving attractive young actors, then there’s about twenty minutes or so in here that are fun enough to not be offensive. The rest of the movie though... pretty offensive.
