I don’t think I’ve ever watched anything this stupid before, it’s almost insulting how stupid and bad this thing is. Sure, there is Chris Hemsworth who is very very nice to look at, but to do that you can buy a poster and save yourself from watching this terrible movie. And I mean, really terrible, because this is not a B-movie, one of those that are so bad they become actually enjoyable in a funny way, because you can laugh at those. No, this sounds like it takes itself very seriously, for no reason at all, because there’s nothing reasonable in it. Everything is bad, the story, the directing, the shooting, the acting.. I mean, maybe the lights were ok, but you know what I mean.
Hemsworth plays Jed the hero (give Thor a rifle and take away the humour, et voilà=Jed). Josh Peck was his brother Matt ( a double no), Josh Hutcherson was Robert, Adrianne Palicki was Toni and Isabel Lucas was Erica, Connor Cruise was Daryl the mayor’s son, and someone more. Nothing to say about them really. The only one I knew other than Thor was Brett Cullen playing Sergeant Tom, Jed’s father, but he gets himself killed very soon for nothing.
THE STORY, so if future me gets curious, reading this will be enough to stay away from it forever.
Jed is a soldier and Matt a high-school football player. Suddenly there’s a blackout and soon the sky fills with plains and parachutes. North Korea is invading America! Just like that, apparently. No word on how they got so close and so many without raising the slightest alarm, or on how they took hold of such a big firepower, of the tanks and vehicles they used… they fall from the sky and take over the small town Jed lives in (why are they even bothering with it? There are so many big important cities, much more crucial if anyone wants to get the power…). Jed, Matt and a few others escape, and no one else. They get to some kind of cabin in the woods, and obviously Jed takes the lead. One of the kids, Pete, is the usual moron/bully that’s all ‘who put you in charge?’ and very soon he betrays them, leading Korean Cho (Will Yun Lee) to their cabin, but luckily they’re out. They look from a distance as the enemies search the place, and then have the mayor and Tom call for them to come forward and surrender. The mayor does just that, and maybe it’s not simple cowardice, maybe he saw that those who tried to run were killed but those who stayed quiet survived, so he thought he’d liked his son alive, we’ll never know because the movie doesn’t care about him. When it’s Tom’s turn, he tells them to fight against those s.o.b.s, and obviously gets shot right away, under his sons eyes. Wow, did he think he was being brave? Not stupid at all? Did he think that his sons actions depended only on his words? Did he think it a good idea to have them look at him executed? If so, applause applause. Stupid :-/ He should have tried to stay alive to help them in some way :-/ instead he left them alone.
Apparently they think he was a hero and the mayor a traitor, a collaborator, only because he’s still alive… they never tried to talk to him.
Jed tells the kids that they are the only ones who can fight against the enemy, so they must prepare themselves… he trains them, we don’t know for how long but they become expert guerrilleros ! And to think that Full Metal Jacket made it look so hard, how about that!
They start doing acts of sabotage here and there: they kill some soldiers to take their weapons, blow up places and cars… they come and go as they please, it would seem, and are able very easily to place any bomb they like wherever they want, no surveillance at all… plus they seem eager to kill Cho, and yet they insist on doing it with bombs. They have good rifles, they seem to be like good enough sniper rifles since they are not far at all, just across the street, and yet they never try to shoot him…
Matt can only think of his girl Erica that was taken, and leaves them to rescue her, and doesn’t even notice that a member of his group died trying to help him (don’t know what he proposed to do by running on the street like that, but still, good intention).
All of a sudden they reunite in their hideout and talk quietly as if never was happening in the world.. Toni reminds Jed of the time he kissed a girl during camping and she was jealous and tried to be noticed by him at school but he didn’t, and it’s so annoying how she insults the other girl without any reason at all, and he agrees with her that she was just a cow or something, and this is disgusting, and even more so since this is supposed to be their romance scene…
Jed and Matt talk about their life, of how Jed was away for years when their mother died leaving brother and father alone…
two quick scenes and they can say that they gave the characters a background and a soul… Seriously??? Bleah.
They are attacked, the woods burned down, and yet only two die. There’s been no word on the army throughout the movie, and now they find three Marines (yes, 3!!!) looking for them, to ask their help (…no words, really) who say that the American Defense has been neutralized (just like that? Is it so easy then?) because of the blackout the enemy caused or something, and they need to retrieve a device that allows the enemy to communicate, or something. Anyway, they simply enter the enemy headquarters and try to steal it. They need to shoot someone here and there, until Jed is face to face with Cho, who seems to be winning but it’s Tom’s office so Jed takes his hidden gun and kills him. They probably think it’s all over but they are found and Jed gets shot and the others run away, and Matt is the new leader, but by now nothing’s a problem anymore to me, it’s so terrible, Matt can be the leader why not… Robert realizes somehow that Daryl was not shot but they implanted a sort of tracking device in him so they can follow him everywhere, so he stays behind while they go away.
Now that they have the device the Marines go away ‘to the land of the free’ but Matt and his friends stay here because they will fight and save their Country, of course… it’ll be easy now… sure, why not? Of course. And they do, too.
Jed’s group is called “The Wolverines”… and this alone is sad enough.
It’s said that Russia helped North Korea, but only one Russian man is shown, like twice or something, and he never did anything else that stare ahead…
The great American Army, any part of it, is non existent, it was apparently neutralized with a click of fingers, and yet the North Korean Army seems full of incompetents: they have no surveillance at all, they can’t shoot their targets, they are complete inept.. while a bunch of high-school kids defeats them all.
There are really no words for how bad this film is. And the ending, with Matt’s speech on how they’ll keep on fighting, with music and atmosphere of a hero-movie… incredible.
Nothing can be saved. The action scenes were bad or non-existent, the car-chasing scenes were annoying (please keep that camera still, I don’t want to jump with the cars, thank you), the dialogs were pitiful, the romance useless and badly done anyway, nothing can be saved really, not the characters, not the acting, not any part of this work.
ITA red dawn - alba rossa
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento