Warning: Spoilers have been sprinkled in.
That's the biggest reason I'm writing this review, if you're wondering; that and I don't review as many older movies as I should, and this was the last one I saw, so yeah.
So Red Dawn came out in 1982, the height of the cold war, and so naturally, a movie comes out that's about an alternate version of history in which the Soviet Union and Cuba begin invading the United States. A large amount of troops are stationed in a small Colorado town, which parachute into and take over (the black guy died first, like always. groan). They force the entire town into submission, except for a bunch of kids led by Patrick Swayze who managed to escape into the woods while the invasion was happening. After that, they start waging guerrilla warfare on the enemy, calling themselves the Wolverines, and we have our movie.
So how is the movie: it was alright. Seriously, I don't know how else to describe it. I'm usually not the type of person who says a movie is okay, you know, for me it's usually it sucks or I love it. But this one is different. So the three main kids are Patrick Swayze who looks weirdly like Kurt Russel in this, his brother whose name escapes me, and Charlie Sheen (thirty years and 300 pounds of crack ago). There are a bunch of other kids too, but most of them either don't get lines or you just don't care about them. Honestly, the only character you care about is Patrick Swayze; the rest of them get killed off in truck loads and you don't care. That's how underdeveloped they are. Heck, even Patrick Swayze dies at the end of the movie, you still don't care, or at least I didn't, because to someone of my generation, Swayze's already been dead for what, five years now. Reliving it doesn't bring tears to my eyes.
So, you don't care about the characters, which is bad because most of them die, and most of them are really good actors. This is Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen here, folks. But that aside, lets get into the real reason I, you, or anybody is gonna watch this movie: all American action! (America! Hell yeah!). This whole movie starts with the actual invasion of the town, and its a huge, awesome, and a little bit terrifying action sequence. It was cool. And then we fast forward to more action against some comically stupid Russians (one of whom dies because Swayze goes Hawkeye. After that I kept expecting Captain America to come riding in on the Hulk to save the day), and the guerrilla warfare begins and there's an explosion every twenty minutes. Seriously, at one point, Charlie Sheen blew something up, and I said "CHARLIE SHEEN FOR THE WIN!!!" After that, someone went FTW every a big fireball came on screen, and my friend said this movie should have an FTW meter at the bottom of the screen. And then when there was about twenty explosions in thirty seconds, well lets just say the FTW meter broke. So lots of explosions, and that was awesome. As far as being All American, you do get jazzed a bit when by the whole Americana thing, so the movie does its job there. The thing is that beyond those two things, the movie kind of falls flat.
There are a few more problems though: a bunch of scenes have what I call '80s logic (watch any '80s action movie and you'll see what I mean), and there are a few slow scenes, and I found myself cracking jokes throughout most of it (if I really like a movie, I'm dead silent the whole time), but like I said, you really just don't care a lot of the time. If this movie had much better characters that they took the time to make us care about and then killed them off, I would've been much affected.
The bottom line is that this is great action mixed into a mediocre movie that you don't care about half the time with a great premise.
Ladies and Gents, Red Dawn is A Fun Way to Kill A Few Hours (if you're with friends you can make commentary jokes with and have plenty of snacks :))
So, you don't care about the characters, which is bad because most of them die, and most of them are really good actors. This is Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen here, folks. But that aside, lets get into the real reason I, you, or anybody is gonna watch this movie: all American action! (America! Hell yeah!). This whole movie starts with the actual invasion of the town, and its a huge, awesome, and a little bit terrifying action sequence. It was cool. And then we fast forward to more action against some comically stupid Russians (one of whom dies because Swayze goes Hawkeye. After that I kept expecting Captain America to come riding in on the Hulk to save the day), and the guerrilla warfare begins and there's an explosion every twenty minutes. Seriously, at one point, Charlie Sheen blew something up, and I said "CHARLIE SHEEN FOR THE WIN!!!" After that, someone went FTW every a big fireball came on screen, and my friend said this movie should have an FTW meter at the bottom of the screen. And then when there was about twenty explosions in thirty seconds, well lets just say the FTW meter broke. So lots of explosions, and that was awesome. As far as being All American, you do get jazzed a bit when by the whole Americana thing, so the movie does its job there. The thing is that beyond those two things, the movie kind of falls flat.
There are a few more problems though: a bunch of scenes have what I call '80s logic (watch any '80s action movie and you'll see what I mean), and there are a few slow scenes, and I found myself cracking jokes throughout most of it (if I really like a movie, I'm dead silent the whole time), but like I said, you really just don't care a lot of the time. If this movie had much better characters that they took the time to make us care about and then killed them off, I would've been much affected.
The bottom line is that this is great action mixed into a mediocre movie that you don't care about half the time with a great premise.
Ladies and Gents, Red Dawn is A Fun Way to Kill A Few Hours (if you're with friends you can make commentary jokes with and have plenty of snacks :))
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