Red Dawn (2012)

Rating: 1 / 5

This film comes from the "Popular on Netflix" selection on Netflix.

I'd like to think of myself as a guy who's in the know when it comes to what people like in movies, but after watching this remake, I'm not quite sure about that. The opening sequence doesn't even try to hide that this is a movie based on another bad movie, "Red Dawn" (1984). Instead of going with something like, "Based on a book by Kevin Reynolds," it simply states, "Based on the movie Red Dawn." I'm not quite sure how much work needs to go into making a movie based on a similarly bad movie, but from what I've seen, not much did. The highlight of the film was in the first 5 minutes when ESPN's Mark Schlereth is the head coach of the Wolverine's football team. Seriously, it's the best part of the film. I watched the rest of it so you don't have to. It's like somebody at MGM said, "Let's remake a bad movie with bad actors but not ironically." I love Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Josh Hutcherson as Peeta, but here they fall flat. Red Dawn had such a great chance to be a "so bad it's good" movie but was simply a "so bad you turn it off" movie.