Bad Moviethon #14 – Red Dawn

in which I examine if bad movies really deserve their woeful rotten tomatoes score

Red Dawn | IMDB

When North Korean troops invade U.S. soil and take over the city of Spokane, Wash., a recently returned Iraq War veteran (Chris Hemsworth) and a group of teens (Josh Peck, Josh Hutcherson) flee to the woods and form a band of freedom fighters. Dubbing themselves the Wolverines, the youths launch guerrilla attacks against the invaders — but how long they can sustain the fight in the face of the enemy’s superior numbers and firepower remains in question.

Rotten Tomatoes: 13%

I’m not even going to get into it. This is one of the dumbest movies I have ever had the misfortune of half-watching I fell asleep at some point and never bothered to finish it. I didn’t need the headache. The plot was farcical. Not even Chris Hemsworth could save this mess.

How would North Korea troops get to the US without being intercepted somehow? Via the TARDIS? Oh and the bad guys were initially Chinese but they altered it in post production so that it wouldn’t affect the film’s performance in China. This monstrosity shouldn’t even be available outside of the US, let alone China. Not only that why would North Korea take over one little town? What about the rest of the US? Was the entire military on a retreat all at once? Where was Obama? In an underground bunker, hiding from North Korea?

Yeesh.

The acting was awful. The cast were wasted. I have never seen such stupidity in my life. And once again, the people of colour were literally killed off for no real reason. How do you not read your script and notice that you’re killing off the three token characters. At least pretend to care. Unless of course they only became token characters after the casting process. Makes sense.

Towards the end of the movie, or the halfway point at least, Jeffrey Dean Morgan turned up and I think that was the point at which sleep came calling.

Verdict: 0/10. What a waste of Chris Hemsworth and also why did Josh Peck look like he’d been method acting for a role on Breaking Bad for ten years and just never stopped? His performance might as well have been sponsored by crystal meth. His friendship with Drake Bell had probably taken a huge toll on him so I’ll give him a pass. The movie, though? Horrible. Horrible. C’est horrible!

Even foreign experts were confused by this movie. That says it all.

All of that being said, if they remade this with Trump as President it would probably make sense.