Red Dawn [Blu-Ray]

Of all the superfluous remakes that have been invading cinemas in recent years, this bottom-feeding update of John Milnus's militant right-wing '80s warsploitation flick, Red Dawn, reigns supreme. Fuzzy logic meets fuzzier politics in a script with even fuzzier direction — the barely coherent result feels like it was left out in the sun to rot for as long as the movie sat on MGM's shelf. Demonstrating how little specific intent beyond the payday of a nostalgic property revival was put into this project, the aggressors were changed from the Chinese to North Koreans in post-production when the studio realized they'd be alienating a significant market place. With such an indistinct and malleable approach to world politics, the communist threat might as well have come from giant squid beasts from Saturn or a merry band of sulphur-breathing, inter-dimensional, robotic unicorns from beneath the ocean floor. The team behind this insufferable farce couldn't even manage to nail believable special effects for paratroopers dropping from the sky, so it's probably wise they stuck with humanoid caricatures. After a clumsy introduction that vaguely fingers economic imbalance as the chink in America's armour, using sloppily edited newsreel footage, we meet this generation's Wolverines: a crew of generic high school students and a young Iraq war vet home on leave. Chris Hemsworth (Thor) takes on the Patrick Swayze role as Jed Eckert, as well as the thankless task of being the unlikely group of insurgents' dour de facto leader. When the red menace strikes, he gathers his brother (an atrocious Josh Peck), the cute girl he'd been flirting with the night before (Adrianne Palicki, doing what she can with horrible material) and any neighbourhood kids quick enough to jump into the back of his truck before he speeds off to a cabin in the woods at his father's behest. During the poorly shot escape sequence, the youngsters incur the wrath of North Korean commander Cho—what else does the leader of a serious war effort have to do other than personally hunt down a small group of unarmed teens who scuffed his ride? Logic is stretched thinner than the characters through the use of lazy montages to explain how this ragtag team acquires supplies and train with Jed to become the indomitable flea that nips the shaggy dog that's pissing all over their home into submission. Ostensibly, we're supposed to be learning some flag-waving hokum about making tough choices and sacrifices, but those sentiments are as bloodless as the victims of the film's massive body count. It's not a tough choice to avoid sacrificing your time to this completely unnecessary tripe. Unsurprisingly, there are no special features.