“Red Dawn” begins with a riveting high school American football match which Spokane Washington is rudely disrupted when bombs start falling on the city. The teenage football stars, the Wolverines, run out to witness enemy jets in formations and parachutes being dropped from the sky.
While this sounds shocking, during the movie, we are assured that an invasion by communist North Korea can be fought off by the members of the team and their girlfriends with guns taken from their North Korean captors.
Trying to understand how North Korea, with a population of 25 million, could raise enough invaders to attack the United States, which has a population of 315 million is easier when one understands the original screenplay for the believed to be reworked version. Step back and take a close look at the movie. You will realize a major casting error where the invaders are referred to as Chinese. The flags, the uniforms, and even the tanks’ insignia were photoshopped. The evidence is in the flags and the uniforms and the digital adjustments made to the trucks and tanks. Three years ago when the principal photography of this film was completed, the studio MGM went out of business and during reshoots to improve upon the movie after the fact, the identity of the enemy was switched to North Korea, which led to several scenes needing to be modified. All of this reshooting needed to be done just so they matched American perception. Did this involve any alterations in the ideology of Hollywood? Not really. Everything boiled down to marketing. A genius came up with the conclusion that China is a great market for American exports, while North Korea does almost nothing for Yank product, as trade papers like to call them.
Anyway, let’s get back to football. The home team Wolverines’ star is Matt Eckert’s brother, Jed (Chris Hemsworth), a marine who has just came off active service. His sibling is Matt Eckert & he plays for the middle school football team. What a great way to have someone with military experience on your side! Jed takes unofficial command as the Wolverines mobilize to fight against the invasion. Matt’s girlfriend is a cheerleader named Erica (Isabel Lucas) and Toni (Adrianne Palicki) is a sassy local girl who develops a crush on Jed.
The scope of the invasion becomes apparent very rapidly. The North Koreans make their move and seize control of the police department as their HQ and enlist the incompetent mayor to issue proclamations. Daryl (Connor Cruise), the son of the mayor, obviously is going to join the Wolverines who also have Josh Hutcherson in the cast (very good as the son in “The Kids Are All Right“). There is no mention of other Spokane high school teams, so it must just be this one heroic team and its recruits who do manage to turn the invasion back.
The sequence is out of context in terms of time. How long does it take for North Koreans to land, bring in their heavy machinery and vehicles, recruit local traitors, and begin controlling the region? What is their strategy? Is this a national intrusion? How do they plan to deliver petrol? We are left wondering how things are in the rest of the United States.
Things get speedily interesting during an endless, unfocused combat sequence in which the Wolverines turn out to be vicious fighters while the North Korean troops are rather incompetent. The kids, even the girlfriends, are adept at fighting using heavy automatic weapons mounted on top of captured vehicles or machine guns cantered out of the windows of their cars.
They are also brilliant subterrain ducks, taking the time to leap high and free themselves from the floor while shooting negative bullets at the sexually uncoordinated opponents which are often accurately lined up on the bottom. With little to no dialogue, they do this and that in commendable ease. They constantly shout orders to each other while experiencing the famous words of the enemy commander, Capt. Cho (Will Yun Lee).
I definitely did not witness any important characters from Wolverines getting killed. As for North Koreans, it seems I must have seen many of them dying in some shape or form. However, the movie turned out to be PG 13, so the deaths were pretty non graphic. There is, however, one scene that is extremely pro American that occurs in a stadium. Now I believe that I understand the reason why the Chinese were never considered an important target audience for this movie.
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