Red Dawn (2012)

Chris "Thor" Hemsworth and Josh "Drake and Josh" Peck star in this substandard remake of John Milius's paranoid Cold War propaganda film. The film starts off on the wrong foot by trying to give Josh Peck a legitimate, "serious" character (hot-head high school football player). The problem is that not only is Josh comically bad at acting, he looks way too old to be a senior in high school. He is so comically bad that he pulled everyone watching out of the picture every time he was on screen! Just one split-second cut-away to Josh would send all those viewing into fits of laughter. Hemsworth does a decent job, but he doesn't deserve any special treatment for being the only competent actor in the film. The supporting cast is annoying at best, irritating at worst, and the plot just doesn't quite work without the Russians being the main threat. North Koreans are lame. The villains have no shred of humanity like in the '84 film--they are just generic action movie automatons that are there to get shot and blow up for cheap thrills. The remake is stripped of the darker themes of war and the attempts at muddying up the lines of morality. Red Dawn 2012 is another pathetic entry in the unending line of generic remakes designed to cash in on the original's reputation.

4/10