Red Dawn (2012), directed by Dan Bradley (Jenn)

Peeta Mellark, Thor, and the chubby kid from "Drake & Josh" walk into a bar...but seriously. Red Dawn (dir. Dan Bradley, 2012) is a remake of the relatively famous war movie from 1984 in which Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen fight off invading Russians and Cubans. In the remake, the year is 2012 and the United States' primary enemy is North Korea*. After a cheesy high school football game and unexplained power outage, brothers Jed (Chris Hemsworth) and Matt (Josh Peck) are forced to band together with their ragtag group of high school friends to save their small Washington town from a land, sea, and sky invasion by the North Korean* army. Jed- older brother and former Marine- must teach his kid sibling and friends how to fight and survive if they are to make it back to normalcy again. 

I love this film probably more than I should. I've seen it about five times already. There's humor, action, and a smidge of romance (that I don't really care about but other people seem to enjoy). It's a lot more fun than the original Red Dawn which I think was intended to be a more serious type of film. Alternatively, the portrayal of women in the original is far more feminist than the women in the new flick. Thankfully, I didn't go into this expecting anything other than mindless action, so it didn't bother me much this time. Either way, I'd highly recommend this movie to anyone who loves simple action flicks.


*Originally the film was slated to portray China as the invaders but after some real-life tensions between the US and China, the studio thought it would be a better idea if they didn't aggravate the Asian superpower. If you look closely, you can tell the actors' voices have been dubbed over.