Caught the RED DAWN remake at the dollar theatre, and oh boy. This is one of those movies you might have low expectations going into, and it still finds a way to fall short of them.

The original RED DAWN was flawed and at times unintentionally cheesy, but at least as a TWILIGHT ZONE fantasy I found it compelling as a 'what if' where small town USA is military occupied by a foreign power. Remember in such a comic book fantasy, realism isn't as important as believability. I mean Batman is ridiculous, but you never realize that if you accept this movie reality.

But this remake bypasses anything remotely anecdotally interesting in favor of mindless action. Worse it's not even compelling, thrilling mindless action, but the shakey cam post-action kind where you're unaware most of the time what the hell is going on. Would you be surprised this was helmed by a 2nd unit director who worked on QUANTUM OF SOLACE and the Paul Greengrass-helmed BOURNE sequels?

Yes this remake will invite a positive re-evaluation of the John Milius-directed original. North Koreans, the Prince of 3rd world dictatorships, can't feed themselves or do anything militarily except deter a foreign invasion, yet they can attack the American Pacific Northwest and maintain a stable foothold. (To be fair the movie originally was produced with Chinese as the invaders. But Beijing, and it's lucrative box-office for Hollywood, complained and post-production digital magic transformed them into North Koreans.)

Why do the Russians invade too? I get back in the Cold War us being ideological foes fighting to the death, but the corrupt oligarchal faux-republic Russia? Where's their profit in this endgame? Why does this remake make less sense than the original, never exactly respected for any sense of realism?

This movie is lucky that both Chris Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson did this movie 3 years ago (locked up until very recently due to MGM's financial troubles) when they were still relative nobodies for this movie would've (and deserved to) bomb in theatres even more.