Red Dawn (2012)

Y'know it probably isn't a good idea to remake a bumptious xenophobic anti-communist "classic" with a cast seeded with all too pretty Australians. I mean you haven't heard sheer irony in a flat mid pacific accent until your hear Chris "Thor" Hemsworth inspire his scrappy band of American guerillas with a cataract of Patriotic sentiments. I mean sheee-it can't the commies invade and occupy Canberra for once? Then maybe some American actors can stumble into some work... *** The problem with "Red Dawn" (2012) is plain and simple it is a famously anti-appeasement plotline, alas the people who made this misbegotten mess chickened out completely and went the Munich route digitally reconfiguring the film in post production to excise the original Chinese invaders and replacing them with...North Koreans. Oh and the big McGuffin in this script, Chris Hemsworth's scrappy rebels have to steal North Korea's unhackable walkie-talkie system. *** It seems The People's Republic of China is a biii-ig export market for US Films so everyone had nice Neville Chamberlainish second thoughts about offending the Middle Kingdom to say nothing of awakening their terrible wrath. You can't denounce appeasement by...appeasing, that sort of cognitive dissonance is strictly Mitt Romney in form and content. *** The current version suffers from the angst of Modern Conservatism, sans communism to denounce & exploit today's wingnuttery are reduced to pumping hot air into the ruptured envelope of Muslim Extremism, North Korean Irredentism etc, all pale shadows of the original Red Threat. Hell the original anticommunist films of the 1940's & 50's are counter cultural classics compared to this bilge..."The Red Threat" (1948), "My Son John" (1952) or the utterly demented "Red Planet Mars" well worth screening in revival. Not so "Red Dawn", cowardice fairly leaks off the screen, what would R. Emmett Tyrell & Bill Safire say about such truckling before Peking?? Anyway NORTH KOREA??? Give me a break the Minuteman Council of the Boy Scouts of America could take them down in a week who are these mooks kidding???