Review by: Andrew Chan FCCA AACTA
Review Date: 7th December 2012
Releasing in cinemas across Australia from December 2012

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Maybe it is just me, but “Red Dawn “contains every notion of bad filmmaking from directing, acting, script writing to the editing floor that left me bewildered at how this justify a cinematic release. Fans of Chris Hemsworth and Isabel Lucas should be warned, this is not just your normal bad film, and it is contagious to watch.

“Red Dawn” begins with almost every atrocious events that have occurred which somehow relates to North Korea, the premises looks positively promising. However from that moment onwards, the film not just falls from grace, but drops directly into hell. I am not sure how much the actors and director agent actually hated them to star in this kind of film, but if bribery is not involved, then they should be fired on a pan.

Chris Hemsworth is a bad actor and in “Red Dawn”, he is worst than ever. With the already paper thin role, Hemsworth is empty and his character is so uninteresting to follow that when he dies, the audience feel nothing but laughter. The one key issue is that the actors take themselves too seriously. It is a good thing if this is a half decent thriller, but when you can’t even claim the film to be so bad that it is funny. It is just terrible. Isabel Lucas continue the casting trend of empty characters and like the rest of the cast, their roles are more unbelievable than involving. This is fault of the filmmaker as why the hell can a bunch of amateur kids suddenly can hold a gun and shoot at North Koreans like professionals. In fact, even if they put in some tactics or strategy, I might have half followed through, but when there are no defined strategies, the film is just stupid and idiotic.

All in all, “Red Dawn” is a film that is brutally edited in almost every wrong direction you can imagine. You can blame the enemies being changed from Chinese to Koreans as much and you want, but the villains or invaders are far too one dimensional and soulless. For a far better film and novel try the Aussie film “Tomorrow When the War Began” and as for “Red Dawn”, it should never have left the editing floor.

I rated it 1/10