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Released by: Fox
Released on: March 5, 2013.
Director: Dan Bradley
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Josh Hutcherson, Adrianne Palicki, Isabel Lucas
Year: 2012
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The Movie:
The original Red Dawn is a lot of fun, but let's face it, it's also more than a little goofy. It's not one of those sacred cows of cinema, the kind that should be untouchable as far as remakes are concerned simply because as enjoyable as it is, the movie left some room for improvement. Enter director Dan Bradley, a prolific stuntman making his directorial debut with the 2012 remake of John Milius' eighties action favorite. You'd think a stuntman would, if nothing else, be able to deliver some pretty decent action scenes, right? Right. And Bradley does, but then there's that whole 'nothing else' side of the equation…
Set in modern day America, the film begins at a high school football game. What could be more American than that? War, that's what! The lovely town of Spokane, Washington (it really is lovely) enjoys their sports but wakes up the next day to the sight of North Korean forces invading their town. The Wolverines, that's the football team we're rooting for here, look outside and yeah, there's dudes coming out of the sky in parachutes and they are obviously up to no good.
So, lead by Matt Eckert (Josh Peck) and his older Marine brother, Jed (Chris Hemsworth) the Wolverines and their respective hottie girlfriends, Erica (Isabel Lucas) and Toni (Adrianne Palicki), do what any red blooded American teenagers would do in this situation. They grab some guns that they manage to steal away from a few unwitting North Korean paratroopers and give'em Hell! From here on out, lots of people shoot machine guns and lots of stuff blows up and blah blah blah blah blah.
The point of a remake should be to take an existing film and put a new spin on it, maybe improve on some of its shortcomings and make something at least marginally original out of something familiar. Instead, it seems that the point of a remake is to hack out a pre-existing storyline and regurgitate it with modern stars to cash in on a new audience and the existing audience for the original film alike. Which is exactly what it seems that this 2012 is, just a quick regurgitation of something that was already done. There are no surprises here, no real human drama, just some cool explosions and some well choreographed shoot outs. It's all fairly inoffensive (unless you're North Korean) and completely generic. It's passable entertainment if you dig generic action films, but wholly unmemorable. If you're able to look past the fact that a bunch of high school kids are able to take on a bunch of trained soldiers skilled enough to land on American soil undetected, by all means, give this a shot. If you don't need interesting characters and can get by with mere stereotypes played by a completely interchangeable cast, this is the movie for you. If you don't mind the time frame bopping to and fro and you like your explosions big and loud but devoid of any real consequential damage, then you're in luck. This new version of Red Dawn offers all of that… but nothing else.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Red Dawn arrives on Blu-ray in an anamorphic 2.40.1 widescreen presentation with AVC encoding in 1080p high definition. The locations look nice and offer occasionally impressive use of color and texture to ogle in the background, but a lot of times the colors look intentionally unsaturated. Skin tones are good, if leaning towards the hot side of things periodically, while black levels remain dark and pretty strong. There aren't any compression artifacts or edge enhancement issues of note, but there are instances of ringing throughout and some of the darker scenes look a bit noisy. This has got to be an upgrade over the SD release, you can see a pretty impressive level of detail in close ups and sporadic medium and long distance shots. All in all, the movie looks pretty good here in high definition.
The English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix on this release is solid. The lower end is nice and strong and the plentiful explosions and gun shots all hit pretty hard from every corner of the front of the soundstage. Note the use of the word front there - surprisingly enough, rear channel activity here is a bit subdued. Otherwise, dialogue is well balanced and mixed in nicely ensuring that you won't have any trouble understanding the performers while the score has some nice liveliness to it. Not much to complain about here, really, it all sounds quite good. An alternate French language dub is provided in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and subtitles are provided in English, Spanish, and French.
Outside of menus and chapter selection, there are no extra features on this disc though it is a combo pack and as such comes with a DVD and digital copy versions of the film.
The Final Word:
This new take on Red Dawn is a pretty looking movie made with a pretty looking cast that offers plenty of shoot outs and explosions but no actual substance of any kind. It's a slick and polished but completely by the numbers action film - it's passable entertainment if you like brainless action, but don't expect much more than that. Fox's Blu-ray is completely barebones, but it looks and sounds terrific.
