Red Dawn ** (2012, Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Josh Hutcherson, Robert Kitner, Adrianne Palicki, Isabel Lucas, Jeffrey Dean Morgan) – Movie Review

The then Observer film critic Philip French told me recently that he was the only journalist to praise the 1984 Red Dawn (well, that’s not quite true, but you see what he means). Praising it got him into hot water with Observer readers who couldn’t stand the film’s politics and called him a ‘fascist’ for liking it. Well, that was then and this is now. Times change, people care less, sometimes couldn’t care less.

Times change, but apparently, the movies remain the same. It’s a very conservative-minded industry. Maybe we don’t approve of this, but it has to be, I suppose. I understand that they have to be ultra-careful. The films cost so much to make. There’s no room for failure.

We’re in the middle of a dull cycle of remaking film hits from the 70s and 80s, most of the latest versions being less good, usually much less good than their originals, which we can confirm by catching up with them when they appear regularly on TV. I haven’t checked but I guess Philip liked this new remake of Red Dawn a lot less than the 1984 one, so there was no flack from readers this time, not even the possibility of any.

However, it must be said that, made on what looks like a pretty big budget ($65 million, apparently), the remake is entirely professional and competent, even occasionally exciting. Today’s teenage audiences might well be as happy as those back in 1984, especially with Chris (Thor) Hemsworth cast in the star role, originally taken in the old days by Patrick Swayze.

Made out of oak, Hemsworth is a real man’s man, a hero you can believe in, and he shows his star appeal in bucket-loads, even here in this humble enough offering. In fact he’s so classy, credible and convincing, he’s simply so much better than everything else around him. They all seem like pygmies in his presence. He plays a GI, Marine Corps veteran Jed Eckert, conveniently home from the war to help out by organizing the teenage resistance when North Korean troops jump out from the skies and take over the city of Spokane, Washington, in the American heartlands.

Josh Peck doesn’t do very much as his moody younger brother Matt who frets about his girlfriend when he’s supposed to be fighting the foreign fiends. I suppose it’s the role, but Peck is very wet and annoying and so is Josh Hutcherson as another of the sulky kiddie freedom fighters, Robert Kitner (C. Thomas Howell’s role in the original). They call the guerrilla resistance group they’ve formed the Wolverines.

The gals, Adrianne Palicki and Isabel Lucas, look good but this movie really isn’t about them, even if it sometimes pretends it is. Jeffrey Dean Morgan has the stuff to rally things up as one of the real American troops who break through to the boys. But his arrival on screen’s too late and he’s given too little to do even then.

The movie follows the old yarn pretty closely, apart from Russian and Cuban troops being the invaders. But this fidelity only produces a sense of staleness and déjà vu for anyone who’s seen the original. The film’s paranoid anti-foreigner, anti-Korean stance is every bit as worrying as the Commie bashing in 1984. More so, actually. But who cares? Is the movie fun? Is it entertaining? Enough.

The film was made a couple of years or so back around 2010. Hemsworth has become a big star since then and I guess he wouldn’t sign on for this now. The film got caught up in studio financial problems, and now it’s finally been released, they’ve changed the baddies from the Chinese to the Koreans so as not to damage box-office receipts in the lucrative China market. It’s getting harder and harder to find good villains in the movies.

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(C) Derek Winnert 2012 derekwinnert.com