Remakes in general are mostly bad. For example you only have to look at last year's Total Recall to realise that, and whilst most of these remakes are terrible, occasionally we get the odd one which is good, but only very rarely.

Now I've never seen the original Red Dawn, and upon hearing most of the fan backlash regarding the remake I initially thought that it may not be so bad seeing as I have never seen the 1984 film, and by God was I wrong. Because whether you've seen the original or not, there's no denying that this remake is terrible.

The basic premise of Red Dawn is simple. The film follows a group of teenagers looking to save their town from an invasion of North Korean soldiers.

Arguably the most interesting thing about Red Dawn is that it has been sitting on the shelf since 2010, and although three years is not a relatively long period of time, it definitely feels out of date. To me despite its rather large budget the film does feel like one of those appallingly bad straight to DVD action movies starring the likes of Steve Austin. In all honesty a small portion of its hefty budget could all come down to the ridiculous cutting the film suffered. Originally the opposition that the kids were supposed to be facing were the Chinese, but due to China being a relatively good earner in terms of foreign box-office, the opposition was changed to North Korea, and when a film has been changed that drastically you could only expect for something to go wrong.

The film is incredibly cheesy, and I couldn't help but shake my head in disgust at how lame some of the scenes in this movie were. For example there is one scene in particular in which the kids go and rob Subway? Personally I don't understand the need to put that in the film whatsoever, it's just came across as a really poor attempt at product placement, and during some of these unimpressive action sequences that the film boasts, I personally was hard pushed to actually see what was going on, as the camera is continuously shaking, which really makes you dislike the film even more. I think it's rather safe to presume that the people involved in this film are far from passionate about the project, hence the delay, cuts and final result. The only real reason for its existence is to make an easy buck.

Now for me the two biggest problems with Red Dawn are this, the acting and understanding the enemy's motives. The latter was just confusing and as a result made a simple movie, seem incredibly stupid. As a viewer I was sitting their constantly trying to figure out why North Korea wanted to invade the US, but it remained silent about the whole thing, as to why I don't know, it's just one massive plot hole, that was probably cut due to the change in the oppositions nationality.

In terms of acting there's only one redeeming quality and that would be Chris Hemsworth, apart from him no one else stands out; however there is Josh Peck who for all the wrong reasons gives possibly one of the worst performances of the current decade. Throughout the films entirety all Peck does is give appallingly bad motivational speeches, shout, scream and cry as well as creating some rather strange facial expressions that are the total opposite as to what any normal human being would be doing if in similar circumstances.

The key ingredient with a movie like this is the characters, and if you don't like them, then really that's the whole movie ruined, hence my resentment for Red Dawn.

Red Dawn is just a shocking movie. It's infuriatingly bad and it has to be the most idiotic action movie since Taken 2. My advice would be to steer well clear.

2/10

JBool

Release Date: 15th March 2013 (UK)