Ask me what some of my favorite movies from the eighties are and I will respond with Top Gun and Red Dawn. I was both excited and leery at the thought of a new Red Dawn movie. One of my favorite movies being redone? Awesome! But could it stand up to the high standard I have on the 1984 version?
Answer: It could.
The 1984 version of Red Dawn is about a group of teenagers who group together in a World War III setting while hiding out in the mountains. Going by the name “Wolverines” (as was their high school mascot), they take on invading Soviet forces despite no one having any military training. Plus who can deny a movie starring Patrick Swayze? On imdb.com, Red Dawn (1984) was rated 6.1 stars out of 10. Not bad for a rating, but I felt it should have been higher.
Red Dawn (2012), however, has a slightly different story line. Yes, it is still about a bunch of teenagers trying to save their town, but there was one major difference that bothered me. It was the North Koreans invading with aid from the Russians! (However, due to current tensions with North Korea, I forgave the movie.) The oldest brother—the original leader of the Wolverines—was also a trained marine. However, it made up for it’s losses despite having a 5.2 out of 10 rating on imdb.com. It also did include a few famous scenes from the 1984 version like the deer hunting scene.
Where it lacked:
The movie was too military based for my tastes. Remember that the Wolverines were a group of teenagers, so it felt out of place for them to suddenly have all sorts of military training from big brother marine guy. I felt they should have been more of a guerrilla group and less of a militia.
While it was a good short-term hiding place, it was weird for the Wolverines to be hiding in an abandoned underground railway. I’m surprised they weren’t discovered sooner. That railway had to have been on a blueprint for that town, which the Mayor had access to. If the hostage Mayor had access to it, then surely the invading forces had access to it.
The strong points:
The invasion was realistic for our time. It was epic when the plane crashed into the neighbor’s house in the beginning of the movie. If they would’ve did the invasion scene the same way the 1984 version did, it would’ve looked extremely fake. The North Koreans also didn’t put everyone into consecration camps.
I liked how the 2012 version discovered explosives and used a skateboard to blow up a borderline patrol. It was an improvement from the shop explosion in the 1984 version. Each bomb was carefully planted and played out in a more realistic wartime fashion.
In all honesty, I liked the ending of the 2012 movie better as opposed to the 1984 where pretty much everyone died. The guy with the tracker lived and sent the invaders on a wild goose chase, the marine members lived and delivered important intelligence back to their headquarters, and the Wolverines spirit lived on and grew stronger at the end of the movie instead of just ending abruptly.
The best scene, however, was when two Wolverines robbed Subway for food. That was an amazing addition.
Overall, the new Red Dawn movie is surprisingly good. However, the diehards of the 1984 version will have trouble accepting that.
