Red Dawn

Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Adranne Palicki, Josh Hutcherson

What was the most popular war movie sold on the streets of Baghdad after the American invasion? Nope. It was Red Dawn. Many insurgents were inspired by the film to resist what they saw as their occupiers. The Wolverine symbol has appeared in the midst of Iraqi graffiti. Ironically, it was also the name given to the operation to capture Saddam Hussein, with specific targets given the operation names Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2. Army Capt. Geoffrey McMurray came up with the names because it was “a patriotic, pro-American movie.” The movie was also extremely popular with the average American foot soldier. Wolverines and the symbol were stenciled on armored vehicles, gun turrets, and bombs. Pretty impressive for a film that was only the 20th highest grossing film in 1984 and was hammered by critics as Cold War paranoia and ridiculous, jingoistic claptrap. The only reasons it seemed to be of any historic importance is that it was the first film released with a PG-13 label, was named by the Guinness Book of Records as the most violent film ever made up to that point with 134 acts of violence per hour or 2.23 per minute, and it starred a who’s who of young up-and-coming Hollywood including Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey, and Lea Thompson.

The plot was laughable to the point of absurdity. Without Sarah Palin to protect us from the USSR, the Russians and Cubans fly over Alaska and up from Mexico to seize Colorado, particularly the little town of Calumet. Who is our last line of defense? Not the military special ops teams. Not even former vets who had returned to civilian life. Taking all the knowledge gained from being a teenager, the main resistance to our Soviet occupiers comes from high school students, with two hotties in tow. Basically it was visual Viagra for NRA members and conservatives, and a teenage power fantasy. Little Susie might think you are a complete loser, but she will think differently when you are eating a deer’s heart and ambushing a Russian soldier.

Red Dawn was what it was, like Rambo, a product of Reagan era America, where fear of the Soviet threat was exaggerated. The folly of Vietnam was becoming a distant memory, especially with a victory in Grenada. The Cold War was being expanded to space with Star Wars, the Strategic Defense Initiative, even though the Russians were bogged down in Afghanistan. Less than five years later, the “evil empire” was no more. The Berlin War was torn down. The Russians had pulled out of Afghanistan with their tail between their legs and the Soviet Union was whittled down to no more than a dozen countries that most people could not spell, let alone find on a map.

Red Dawn was a product of the Cold War, a reality that few ticket buyers could understand today, so a remake of this propaganda case seems quaint and as timely as a buggy whip store opening at the local mall. Who could possibly replace the mad dog Soviets in a remake of this paranoid fantasy? Our Chinese landlords are whom. Lilly white kids, mainly Australians playing American teenagers, battle an Asian horde. This film has xenophobia written all over it. MGM studios felt a remake would be perfect for a post- 9/11 world. Plus, probably more importantly, the Chinese do not purchase many tickets to American films and pirate DVDs. Damn those Communist Chinese, how can we take the moral high ground, when they are making us buy their cheap commercial goods and giving us a governmental credit card?

So how does this visual Toby Keith song go down? (I half expected for Keith to pop up with his guitar in the middle of action scenes and sing some ditty about loving the flag. Wait! There is a Toby Keith song in it. Never mind.) Much like how the original was shot in Las Vegas, Nevada, with New Mexico substituting as Colorado, this version was shot in Michigan pretending to be the state of Washington. (If Hollywood has taught us anything, it is that we have no concept of our own geography. Iowa, Mississippi, Arizona, Montana, what is the difference? If it was important TMZ would report on it.) Just remember that the Chinese are the bad guys. What? The main bad guy is played by Korean actor Will Yun Lee? Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican, what is the difference? They all look the same. So, we have got Australians playing Americans, Koreans playing Chinese, and Michigan masquerading as Washington? I’m confused. Just remember being white is good, except for the token minority kid, he is a good guy too. Chinese bad, bad, baddy, McBad! What lead to the invasion? Tensions over Taiwan, anger over our huge financial debt, jealousy over our large American daddy parts, I forget, some reason. Again, Chinese bad, bad! Russian bad! NRA good! Thank God, we beat back those liberal wussies from taking our guns away from us. In fact, if more us had guns, those Philipino, um, Chinese baddies would never think about invading this country. There wouldn’t be school shootings if, instead of condoms, we passed our handguns to kids… Sorry, I’m ranting, I just love this country so much. God bless Rush Limbaugh.

Back to the story. Our heroes are brothers, Matt (Josh Peck) and Jed Eckert (Chris Hemsworth). Matt is the high school quarterback (Note to Hollywood: The high school quarterback is usually the biggest jerk in the school. It is like making the heroine the head cheerleader.) and Jed has just returned home after serving in Afghanistan. Wait, the brothers have issues? You don’t say. Shocked. Of course, they must come together the next morning when they wake up to find an occupying army in the streets of Spokane. Armored vehicles drive up and down the streets. Parachutes float in the sky. Foreign looking guys carry machine guns. You get the picture. This army of Laotians, I mean Chinese soldiers is calling itself the “People’s Liberation Army.” How dare they try to fool us with their propaganda? That is Fox News job. Then the missiles smash into houses. Citizens are rounded up. No one rounds up our citizen. We have a Bill of Rights. Oh, the Patriot Act, so no one rounds up our citizens, but our government. This yellow menace even rounds up Matt’s hot girlfriend (Isabel Lucas). How dare they drag away our women? We have the American daddy parts, not them. The town is overrun with these bad guys with their strange looking eyes.

Is that a Russian I see? These boys are a lot of things, but French is not one of them. Time to be American bad asses. Daddy (Brett Cullen) is dead. His sons escape into the Cascade mountains, where they assemble their teenage heroes to fight against this evil horde, that wants to give us universal health care. They are socialists, right? Jed as a war hero knows what to do. Training montage. Nicknaming themselves after their high school mascot, they are Wolverines!!! Let the butt kicking begin. Soon they become a symbol to the nation of resistance, not like Iraqi resistance because our occupation is good. Matt is not going to let Erica remain in the hands of those evil Cubans with their opium dens, ponytails, and eating with chopsticks. A real man uses a knife and fork like God intended. There is no way he is going to let his girlfriend be soiled by men whose names sound like change being thrown down a flight of steps. If you have seen the original, you can write it from here. All I can say is, “Wolverines!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Verdict: Watch The Original