To me, this movie is perfection.

It is a performances centric movie

From my favorite movies..

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

This movie is grossly underrated by everyone. I think it's great.

Have you seen it? No? There is likely a very good reason for that...it stinks.Like nearly ALL the endless remakes and reboots that have been plaguing movie goers for the past decade or so....all this is, is a heartless version of the original.It has no heart.It has no soul.It is a retelling of a film that we all love and cherish...and it adds nothing to the story. It improves nothing but the special effects--which held up very well over time--and in some cases belittles the fans of the original...particularly in the fact that they remade the movie at all, without adding anything clever to it.Like so many other remakes it is a hallow shell of the original.

The United States gets invaded by North Korea. That pretty much sums up the ludicrousness of the film. I mean, the original had Soviet Union being the invading force, which at least played to the fears and politics of the time. This didn't have the guts to go with Russia - although they kinda did - but couldn't they haven chosen anything else but North Korea?Not that it really matters. The whole premise is silly, but so is the movie as a whole. And the worst thing is that it tries to take itself way too seriously. The tone is grim and dark, the characters suffer, there's death and dismemberment, the whole gruesome nine yards. And throughout this whole ordeal were supposed to believe that North Korea successfully invaded the only superpower of our time. Yeah... no.And the worst thing is that I've seen this idea done much better. I haven't seen the original film, but there's a film called Tomorrow, When the War Began, released a few years before this one, which takes place in Australia and has China as the invading force. Well, they don't explicitly specify the nation. But it's China. And yes, it's a stupid, silly film as well, but it acknowledges it. It's a teenage action-comedy and has much greater camp value because of it. The main characters are teenagers, like in this film, but the ludicrousness of the situation is turned to the film's advantage through decent writing and characters. And it still gets to have its guns akimbo action scenes and character deaths needed to sell the point that war is not actually such a hot idea.So, to summarize, if the premise interests you, see Tomorrow, When the War Began instead. Enough said.

I really ought to re-watch the original 1984 version of "Red Dawn" again, even if it were only to see if that one annoys me just as much as the remake does. I saw the original already, but it must have been nearly 20 years ago or something, and back then my standards for plausible plots and misplaced patriotism must have been set a lot lower. The only things I remember from the 1984 "Red Dawn" are awesome action sequences and performances from the utterly cool Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen. The 2012 version has pretty much the same plot, except that the evil Soviets have been replaced by evil North Koreans for obvious political reasons. I can imagine how that brainstorming session at United Artists headquarters must have gone: "Let's take North Koreans as the opponents. We don't know anything about them except that they are not allowed to watch American movies on television, so they'll never find out anyways…" The "Red Dawn" movies have the most implausible and ridiculous plots imaginable, but only like this they can shamelessly glorify the true American patriotism! History has made it unmistakably clear that warfare through ground troops invasions are guaranteed suicide missions. If you want to claim another nation as your own, you drop bombs – preferably nuclear ones – from planes. Those awful North Koreans clearly didn't learn anything from Napoleon's or even Adolf Hitler's defeats and nevertheless decide to invade America's heartland by dropping thousands of soldiers with parachutes. In Spokane, a sleepy little Washington State town, a handful of teenagers fight back. They call themselves the Wolverines and exist of the two Eckert brothers and their girlfriends, the mayor's son, the town nerd and a few other members of the football team. The self-acclaimed leader is a former mariner, so I can still accept his killer instincts, but the other teenagers' transformation from regular American kids into relentless military killing machines by far surpasses my suspension of disbelief. All the American born actors with distant Asian roots (Will Yun Lee, Steven Chan, Cindy Chu…) must have been desperate for work and the tagline "Heroes are made in America" nearly makes me nauseous.