Red Dawn (*1/2 out of ****)

Red Dawn is a remake that does next to nothing right. Patrick Swayze's 1984 original wasn't a great movie by any means, but there was nothing really wrong with it. The first version worked as a patriotic propaganda message in a time where invasion of the United States was a concern on some minds. The remake substitutes the Russians for North Koreans. So instead of making a movie about some what relevant fear, they decided to introduce a laughable enemy. A country that as around 1/15 of the United States population occupying land in in this gun crazy country seems absolutely ludicrous. The choice of  introducing North Koreans was done after post production as the original enemy was the Chinese, but they will more likely see this film so the change was done to make foreign money. So much for strong american ideas when the producers are worried about the concerns of the Chinese. Enough ranting, time to look at the actual film.

Much like last time a foreign country invades a small town surrounded by wildness. Several high schoolers and a few older siblings escape into the woods and decide to use guerrilla tactics to make occupation impossible for the North Koreans. Instead of going into depth of what it would be like to learn a guerrilla fighter, they mastered the process in two minute montage over a undisclosed period of time. Calling themselves Wolverines, the young adults run around town in action scene after action scene. They outsmart the experienced soldiers at every turn as well as make full sprints while holding large automatic machine guns. It would have been interesting to see how inexperienced youngsters  show concern and debated over what would be the best way to tackle this fight. Discussing key places in their town and talking about the details on how they could tackle this large opposition. Of course as I said before it's simply just the hero's jumping from ambush to ambush for the most part. This all leading to a un-climatic conclusion.

The cast is largely young and good looking people who have some basic acting talent. They don't really add to the problems of the film since they aren't told do much talking anyway (I swear Isabel Lucas maybe has two lines for 90%  of the time she's on screen). Chris Hemsworth and  Josh Hutcherson are working below their talent but I'm sure they and the other actors are happy enough to collect a pay check. Some of the action scenes aren't half bad but most suffer from shaky camera work (Bourne style) that make it hard to follow the sequence of events. If your going to make a movie, let alone remake one, don't phone it in. 

*1/2 out of ****