L'Aube rouge

The United States gets invaded by North Korea. That pretty much sums up the ludicrousness of the film. I mean, the original had Soviet Union being the invading force, which at least played to the fears and politics of the time. This didn't have the guts to go with Russia - although they kinda did - but couldn't they haven chosen anything else but North Korea?

Not that it really matters. The whole premise is silly, but so is the movie as a whole. And the worst thing is that it tries to take itself way too seriously. The tone is grim and dark, the characters suffer, there's death and dismemberment, the whole gruesome nine yards. And throughout this whole ordeal were supposed to believe that North Korea successfully invaded the only superpower of our time. Yeah... no.

And the worst thing is that I've seen this idea done much better. I haven't seen the original film, but there's a film called Tomorrow, When the War Began, released a few years before this one, which takes place in Australia and has China as the invading force. Well, they don't explicitly specify the nation. But it's China. And yes, it's a stupid, silly film as well, but it acknowledges it. It's a teenage action-comedy and has much greater camp value because of it. The main characters are teenagers, like in this film, but the ludicrousness of the situation is turned to the film's advantage through decent writing and characters. And it still gets to have its guns akimbo action scenes and character deaths needed to sell the point that war is not actually such a hot idea.

So, to summarize, if the premise interests you, see Tomorrow, When the War Began instead. Enough said.

I'm sure this movie shows more or less how it looked when US forces dropped in to say hello in Iraq and Afghanistan. The 30 year old teenagers in this movie throw out mercilessly sub par dialog like "This is not their land. This is our back yard and we're going to fight for it," or "they killed our father, we have to fight or die." I'm sure that's what they said in Fallujah too when good ol' George W. sent his invading army to destroy their country. Aaameeerica, Aaameeerrrrriiiicaa!! God save them all, they do make me laugh and cry at the same time.

Enough has already been said in previous reviews about the wildly idiotic plot and lazy directing. Rather get the 1984 version. At least it had some heart in it, though the plot was just as ludicrous, playing on the strange fear of communism America has always fostered.

One more thing! Modern movies (this one being no exception) way overuse the lazy technique of compressing together various sorts of character growth sequences into a few minutes. It's very annoying and shows a lack of skill on everyones part.

And I'm mostly talking about Josh Peck... if a better actor had played his role I think the movie could have been saved.

Hemsworth was solid as usual, Josh Hutcherson wasn't bad, Friday Night Lights girls was good...although she was overly dramatic towards the end... and Isabel Lucas was a total smoke show like she usually is.

But Peck made every scene he was in seem like a horrible high school play or a really bad acting class where the students are trying to "out drama" one another.

Also, the ending of this movie was stupid as heck. At least the original movie gave us some closure and let us know the outcome of the resistance and the war.

A few of the positive reviews for this film were probably written by real people... like 13 year old boys, and frustrated, wannabe soldiers who failed the IQ test.

The rest can only have been added here by a cubicle farm of movie studio marketing drones, who really earned their pay trying to think of good things to say about this sad, career-damaging waste of time.

Josh Peck is one of the all-time worst casting calls, and should become a cautionary tale amongst casting agents.

Agent 1: 'What do you think of this guy for the main character?'

Agent 2: 'Are you trying to 'Josh Peck' this film?'

He looks about 20 years older than his older brother, and even in the most dramatic scenes - has a mopey expression on his face that makes you want to slap him. All I can imagine is that he helped fund the film, because there's no other logical reason for him playing this part.

I would have liked to be in the screening room when they showed this to the studio head. There was probably a long silence when the curtain fell, as half a dozen people were fired by text.

If you're thinking, hey wait a minute, how can the country with some of the worlds most malnorished troops, where middle class couples rent food for wedding photos, invade the us.

It's because the director couldn't use china, which was the invading country in the source material, which makes infinitely more sense, little bit ironic. Considering the premise of the movie.

XD.