I was sick with a cold (courtesy of my 4-year-old nephew) for most of the Thanksgiving holiday (yay me) so I pretty much laid low for three days and drank\u00a0Dr. Pepper\u00a0(just what the Doctor ordered), downed\u00a0DayQuil, and read copiously (a book a day, but who\u2019s counting). But I did manage to sneak out and catch a couple of movies.<\/p>\n
One of them was\u00a0Red Dawn<\/i>.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s probably\u00a0not a huge surprise\u00a0to you that I went and saw this movie considering my boyf- I mean, Chris Hemsworth is in it. But I had other motives as well. I\u2019m a sucker for patriotic action films and this one seemed like it would deliver.<\/p>\n
*Obligatory spoiler warning*<\/strong>\u00a0I try not to, but ya never know\u2026oh, and because I\u2019m still a little under the weather this review is probably a little snippier than usual. I blame it on my throbbing headache.<\/p>\n [youtube:http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=k6T2Q4bBcUU]<\/p>\n \u2013<\/p>\n The movie starts out with news clips about a Russian\/North Korean communist uprising that no one was paying attention to, apparently. Then it switches gears and gets all\u00a0Friday Night Lights<\/i>-ish. Especially once\u00a0Adrianne Palicki\u00a0pops her pretty little head in. The big High School football game is happening. The after-partying and underage bar hopping is happening. Little bro is pissed at big bro for joining the Marines and ditching him for 6 years after their Mom dies but he has a smokin\u2019 hot girlfriend so whatevs. Girl who had crush on big bro spots him and makes contact by reminding him how adorably awkward she was, but hey, check it out, she\u2019s super hot now. \u00a0It\u2019s all very over dramatic and I\u2019m not using their names because I didn\u2019t even know them for most of the movie. I had to look half of them up on imdb just to write this review. (Something else that look at imdb informed me of? Apparently this is a\u00a0remake of a 1984 movie\u00a0I didn\u2019t know existed. Weird, since I was pretty sure I knew about every movie made in the 80\u2019s, especially the ones starring\u00a0Patrick Swayze. And ESPECIALLY ones that also star\u00a0Jennifer Grey\u00a0making googly eyes at Patrick Swayze a full 3 years before\u00a0Dirty Dancing<\/em>. Seriously.\u00a0How did I not know this???<\/em>\u00a0That fact stressed me out for exactly 3.5 seconds.)<\/p>\n Then the power goes out and gets everyone even more pissy. The next morning they wake up to loud booms and when they go outside it\u2019s literally\u00a0raining men. This is where the movie gets its name. Communism = Red, Morning = Dawn. Chaos ensues but a ragtag bunch of teenagers manage to escape with big bro and use guerilla-style fighting tactics courtesy of big bro\u2019s Marine Corps training (oorah!) to fight the big bad Communists.<\/p>\n Chris Hemsworth\u00a0plays the big bro aka Jed Eckert. He\u2019s gorgeous, of course. Way more gorgeous than he has any right to be. He\u2019s recently returned from a deployment to Iraq and he\u2019s a jack of all trades when it comes to weaponry and explosives. I\u2019ll have to ask my real life\u00a0USMC brother\u00a0if that\u2019s true to life or total bullshit. During the movie I found myself believing he could know most of it but probably not all of it. He\u2019s the oldest and therefore the de facto leader of the bunch. The only kid that puts up a fight about that doesn\u2019t last very long. We really don\u2019t learn much about Jed other than the fact that his little brother is resentful yet respectful of him and Adrianne Palicki\u2019s character wants to jump his bones. Despite that, you can\u2019t help but care about the guy because he\u2019s doing everything he can to fight the Commies while keeping his kids alive.<\/p>\n Josh Peck\u00a0is little bro aka Matt Eckert. I had absolutely no idea who Josh Peck was. After looking at his imdb page, I still don\u2019t. Apparently he was on a Nickelodeon show or something. To be honest, I didn\u2019t care for him or his character all that much. He\u2019s cocky and disobedient and sneers a lot. And when I say sneer, I mean he has a weird little stoned-looking half smile that he uses when he really wants to piss you off. And it works. A total pesky little brother.<\/p>\n Josh Hutcherson is the whimpy kid that ends up being a badass. Sounds kind of like Peeta in\u00a0The Hunger Games<\/i>\u00a0but it\u2019s not. It\u2019s totally different. He was probably my favorite character in the film because he seriously rose to the occasion. His BFF was none other than Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman\u2019s kid,\u00a0Connor Cruise. I assumed that this was his acting debut but when I looked him up I saw that he played Will Smith\u2019s younger self in\u00a0Seven Pounds<\/i>. I never saw that movie though so I ceased to care. He did ok. His character had a certain dignity that I found appealing.<\/p>\n Adrianne Palicki\u00a0played Toni Walsh, the girl with a hard on for my boyf- I mean, Chris Hemsworth. I like Adrianne. I think she\u2019s cute and she was the best part of\u00a0Legion<\/i>\u00a0(after\u00a0Kevin Durand, of course). She becomes a bad ass chick fighter who\u2019s really good at hiding her fear. Maybe because she\u2019s trying so hard to impress big bro. She steals his beer and that causes problems so I\u2019m a little pissed at her right now.<\/p>\n The other hot chick is\u00a0Isabel Lucas\u00a0aka Erica Martin. The object of little bro\u2019s obsession, she seems way too pretty for this movie from the get go. They try to ugly her up a bit but it doesn\u2019t work. The girl is crazy gorgeous. She fit in perfectly in\u00a0Immortals<\/i>. In this movie, she\u2019s distracting. Plus, she doesn\u2019t have much to do besides be the damsel in distress. She holds her own when given the opportunity though and I respect that in a fictional character.<\/p>\n The other kids are kind of nameless and faceless, to be honest. You\u2019re supposed to care about them just enough that you\u2019re bummed when bad stuff happens to them but you can\u2019t remember their names so you don\u2019t care as much as you probably should. Really, the only ones who really pass as High Schoolers are Hutcherson and Cruise. The rest of them are obviously in their 20\u2019s.<\/p>\n At one point some \u201crecently un-retired\u201d Marines led by\u00a0Jeffrey Dean Morgan\u00a0show up looking for the Wolverines (this\u00a0 is the High School mascot and the super original name they give their guerilla group). I\u2019m pretty much in love with JDM. First he played\u00a0Denny\u00a0on\u00a0Grey\u2019s Anatomy, a<\/i>\u00a0show I haven\u2019t seen in years but that I used to be addicted to. Then he showed up as\u00a0Comedian\u00a0in\u00a0Watchmen<\/i>\u00a0and his fate as a hunk was sealed. But who am I kidding? I have a list a\u00a0mile long\u00a0of men I\u2019m in love with \ud83d\ude09 He has a few great lines and a few great smiles. Which is all I really need from him anyway. One of his buddies is\u00a0Kenneth Choi\u00a0who is seriously adorable and gaining quite the reputation as a\u00a0military sidekick. I have no idea who the third guy was but he was cool.<\/p>\n The baddies were led by\u00a0Will Yun Lee\u00a0aka Captain Cho of North Korea. He zeroes in on big bro within minutes of landing and knows he\u2019s going to be trouble. He\u2019s so determined to smoke him out, he does some pretty dastardly (wow, I can\u2019t believe I just used that word, what is this, a Disney movie?) things to make it happen. But he seriously underestimates who he\u2019s dealing with and you can guess what becomes of that.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not going to say that this movie was bad but it wasn\u2019t great either. The emotions were obviously forced at times, even from Hemsworth and Hutcherson who I consider to be pretty talented in that regard for such pretty men. And some of the dialogue was so cliche as to be laughable. The one major thing it has going for it is that no one is safe. Not even the pretty people. That led to some truly shocking death scenes, one of which I expected but that still made me gasp audibly when it happened.<\/p>\n But who am I kidding? I love gratuitous violence and I have a thing for watching American\u2019s kick some ass (even if those \u201cAmericans\u201d are imported from Australia). So I enjoyed it.<\/p>\n 3 out of 5 Sci-Fives!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was sick with a cold (courtesy of my 4-year-old nephew) for most of the Thanksgiving holiday (yay me) so I pretty much laid low for three days and drank\u00a0Dr. Pepper\u00a0(just what the Doctor ordered), downed\u00a0DayQuil, and read copiously (a book a day, but who\u2019s counting). But I did manage to sneak out and catch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[28,11],"tags":[47,182,212,442,469,495,520,521,539,779,1080],"class_list":["post-5892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","category-reviews","tag-adrianne-palicki","tag-chris-hemsworth","tag-connor-cruise","tag-hot-nerd-girl","tag-isabel-lucas","tag-jeffrey-dean-morgan","tag-josh-hutcherson","tag-josh-peck","tag-kenneth-choi","tag-red-dawn","tag-will-yun-lee"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hotnerdgirl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}