Red Dawn (2012) - A propaganda movie - 5/10 (12/01/13)

"Red Dawn" is a lukewarm remake of a classic with an incredibly stupid story line when North Korean invaders attack the United States of America with the help of the Russians and impose their ideology. A few young men seek refuge in the forests and try to fight the invaders by organizing a guerrilla. In the beginning, they are very unexperienced and a few of them won't survive their brave acts which leads to important tensions within the team but the guerrilla gets better and better and finally decides to attack the main building of the enemies.

The positive thing about the movie is its short length and the fact that it never gets boring. The dialogues and the acting are a little bit weak but better than I would have expected. The action scenes are a little bit ordinary in the beginning but get better and better towards the explosive and entertaining end. I also liked the fact that the ending was rather surprising and dramatic. It's not your usual happy end and included two rather sad scenes even though the final message happens to be positive and warlike again.

On the negative side, the story is completely stupid and unreal and the movie's intentions are not a far call from propaganda movies of the Cold War which feels rather inappropriate in modern times of globalization. The American screenwriters still seem to think that their government is the best in the world and that anybody who disagrees such as communists are automatically evil. This kind of movie only supports the propagandistic ideas of the North Korean government who takes the Americans for their worst enemies. While the North Korean government slowly opens for economy, diplomacy and modernization, Americans are still stuck in the past and release this kind of questionable movie. Some people might identify with the closed minded attitude to fight anything and anybody who attacks your country at all costs and that's what creates more and more conflicts but I simply can't agree on that point. As a German I can only say that I'm glad that my own country which I still love and respect a lot got defeated during the Second World War and I wouldn't have defended it if I had been able to chose. It's always a mistake to blindly follow a government and accept anything it asks you to do. American governments have created lots of wars, sometimes with good, sometimes with bad intentions, and it's strange that such a story line comes from this country because they haven't been the victims apart of 9/11 which was a terrible incident but definitely not a year long war as what happened in Korea or Vietnam. When arts and politics mix, the final result is always extremely biased and that's also the case of this movie. I'm surprised that these kinds of stories are still written today and one simply can't ignore this aspect if one watches this film. If there wasn't the political dimension of this movie and if the invaders would have been anonymous, I would have given one more point to the flick but this movie is still only of an average quality.

In the end, I can only recommend this movie for those who are looking for a patriotic action flick. It's quite entertaining and gets better and better towards the end but the acting and the story are rather bad. Anything who expects a thought out story line or a strong acting shouldn't watch this movie. If you like war movies, you should go for the Korean "Tae Guk Gi" who shows you a very balanced and realistic view of what happened during the Korean War.