Red Dawn review

Red Dawn (12A, 93 mins)
Director: Dan Bradley
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

by Steven Neish

Arriving home to Spokane, Washington on leave, U.S. Marine Jed Eckert (Chris Hemsworth) meets his father, Police Sergeant Tom Eckert (Brett Cullen), at a football game being played by younger brother Matt (Josh Peck). Following a blackout at the after-party, Jed and Matt wake to find the sky full of invading soldiers paratrooping from overhead transport aircraft. Forced to flee without their father, the brothers pick up a number of Matt’s peers on the way out of town, moving into the family retreat as they try to decide what to do next. Opting to fight rather than flee, the young rebels name themselves after their school football team and wage guerrilla warfare on the enemy forces.

A remake of John Milius’ 1984 film of the same name, Red Dawn finally arrives in cinemas after years spent on a shelf at MGM due to the studio’s financial troubles. Due to the emergence of a lucrative Chinese market in the interim, director Dan Bradley used this prolonged post-production to manipulate the film’s antagonists, changing their ethnicity from Chinese to North Korean. As a result of this delay, any momentum that the project might have built has long since dissipated.

Luckily, this has done the finished result something of a favour, as Red Dawn is best viewed on a whim with little in the way of preconceptions or expectation. Just as the original Red Dawn was far from a revelation, so too is this Red Dawn a nuts and bolts actioner that will entertain you across its running time only to unceremoniously vanish from memory shortly after the credits have rolled. Good thing really, as any further thought would only serve to reveal how ridiculous the film actually is. And my word is it ridiculous.

Opening with a football game so loud it may well register on the Richter Scale, Bradley does his best to bludgeon audiences into a sort of drooling submission to presumably stop them from questioning the plot as it unfolds. Why is the music louder outside of the car than inside, he doesn’t want you to ask. What sort of Mickey Mouse military would ever attempt to colonise America? How do The Wolverines enter and exit the captured zone with such ease, and why does nobody else exploit this obvious enemy oversight? Also, wasn’t this remade already as Tomorrow, When The War Began?

If all war movies were summarily dismissed for being silly, however, there wouldn’t be much of a genre left. You’re not meant to take it seriously, and it is hard to imagine how anyone could possibly be offended by a film so readily ridiculous, yet a number of reviews have accused the film of being jingoistic and hateful, citing the same rhetorical speeches and racial stereotypes that litter most of these films. Strange, really, as you don’t exactly have to read between the lines to hear Chris Hemsworth compare his Wolverines to the freedom fighters battling against U.S. forces in Iraq or calling out a local girl for her geographical ignorance. And then there’s the absolute gem of a one-liner: “Marines don’t die, they go to hell and regroup”.

Red Dawn is not a good movie, but neither is it anything to get worked up about. A capable cast (bolstered in the third act by a late appearance from Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and a laughable script will likely keep its target audience entertained, but even the most undemanding viewers will be as hard-pressed to distinguish 2012′s Red Dawn from the original, or any other action film from the 1980s. Or, for that matter, their subsequent remakes.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps review

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (PG-13/12A, 133 mins)
Director: Oliver Stone

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

When we left Gordon Gekko at the end of 1987’s Wall Street, it looked very much like he was on his way to prison for insider trading. Michael Douglas reprises his Oscar winning role as the former superstar corporate raider, and we meet him at the start of this belated sequel just as Gekko is getting out of jail in 2001, penniless and a man out of his time.

Fast forward to 2008 and he’s written a book called ‘Is Greed Good?’, a riff on his most famous line from the original movie, and doing the lecture circuit. Meanwhile on Wall Street, Jake (Shia LaBeouf) is a young analyst living the high life on his huge bonuses with his girlfriend Winnie (Carey Mulligan), who just happens to be Gekko’s daughter.

But as the depth of the bad times hit and shares plummet, Jake’s mentor (Frank Langella) loses a fortune and kills himself when his business is consumed by rivals. Jake goes toe to toe with Josh Brolin’s rival investor whom he blames for Langella’s death, hoping to take him down from the inside, with the aid of some advice from Gekko who hopes to reconcile with Winnie.

Given the monumental financial upheaval of the last couple of years, this seems like the ideal time to revisit these themes. The flash and vulgarity of the 80s is gone, replaced with the subprime excess of the 00s, and the overriding theme is that greed is not good.

Oliver Stone directs at a clip, delivering stunning photography of the New York cityscapes and boardroom scenes that are lit like something out of The Godfather, while clearly having something to say on the issue.

Gekko believes we are all to blame for this but the movie is not really about his comeback as such, nor is it simply a retread of the original with a new protégé in place of Charlie Sheen. It’s more a character study than a thriller but it’s still tremendous fun.

LaBeouf is charismatic though he has a tendency towards mumbling and Douglas is just as good as he was first time round, with an added dose of mischievous humour, plus fine support from a slimy Brolin and a sly cameo from an old friend for fans of the original.

The Hole review

The Hole (12A, 92 mins)
Director: Joe Dante
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Has it really been 26 years since Gremlins was released? Indeed it has, but what’s just as astonishing is that its director, Joe Dante, has barely made another movie of note in the time since.

Sure, Innerspace was fun and Gremlins 2 had its moments, but outwith forgettable efforts like Small Soldiers and Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Dante has more or less been working on TV ever since. Which is a shame, because he proves with The Hole that he’s still more than capable of making a cracking family horror, albeit one with a distinctly 80s vibe.

Gremlins, along with another 80s horror classic, Poltergeist, was produced by Steven Spielberg, and The Hole is a film that seems to have his hand all over it. So it’s a surprise to learn he’s not actually involved given the Spielbergian setup of a single mother moving with her two sons to a new small town.

The boys are Dane (Chris Massoglia) and Lucas (Nathan Gamble) who discover a trapdoor in the floor of their basement not long after they move in that has a tendency to open by itself and seems to be bottomless. It’s not long before its contents and secrets are causing all manner of terrifying incidents and the result is a very well paced adventure that builds and escalates steadily, though it doesn’t quite unleash the funhouse you might be expecting, preferring to go even darker and stray into deeper themes that tap into childhood psychological trauma.

The relationship between Dane and Lucas of brothers who spend most of their time tormenting each other is wonderfully drawn and there are neat cameos as well as some nice updates on Gremlins gags. What lets it down is the 3D effects that are pretty much redundant for a good hour in the middle and then underutilised when it comes time for the action climax.

But Dante knows exactly how to deliver scares and fun in equal measure, although The Hole probably does lean more towards frights than frolics. In fact it’s profoundly creepy and really quite intense in places and though it has a child-friendly rating, be warned that youngsters could be terrified. Coulrophobes need not apply, with the scariest movie clown since Poltergeist terrorising Lucas in what is probably the best scene in the best horror of the year.

Lebanon review

Lebanon (15, 93 mins)
Director: Samuel Maoz
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Set on the first day of the Lebanese war in 1982, and based on the director’s own experiences as part of an Israeli tank unit, Lebanon is a tense and admirable but slightly unsatisfying attempt to convey the insanity of war. Set entirely within the tank, it follows four soldiers as they're given orders that take them on perilous missions through bombed out villages like the levels of a video game, an impression reinforced by any action outside shown only through the gunner’s sights. While it forcefully portrays the inexperience and terror of the men, they're never really allowed to stand out or develop as individuals. The unique points of view both inside and outside the tank keep things fresh for a while and the cramped conditions are convincing, but the claustrophobia eventually becomes oppressive . And much like The Hurt Locker, the repetitive nature of the drama can become trying. So while Lebanon is nerve shredding in patches, it can also be a little dull and rambling, and the attention may wander as we stick with these men without really having a clear objective or destination.

Hot Tub Time Machine review

Hot Tub Time Machine (15, 99 mins)
Director: Steve Pink
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

It quite often turns out to be the case that movies with the most enticing, on the nose titles are writing cheques that those titles can’t cash. See Snakes on a Plane or Lesbian Vampire Killers for proof of films where those very titles actually end up being the best thing about them.

Hot Tub Time Machine just about manages to break the curse, even if its premise isn’t quite exploited to the full extent of its potential. The joke here, as the title very much suggests, is a hot tub that turns out to be a time machine, discovered by three forty-ish friends all unsatisfied and trapped in their lives. There’s Adam (John Cusack) whose girlfriend has just left him, Nick (Craig Robinson) a frustrated singer and Lou (Rob Corddry), an alcoholic who’s just had a half-hearted suicide attempt.

To help Lou recuperate they decide they need a break, and along with Adam’s nephew Jacob, head to a ski resort where they partied in their youth. It’s here they encounter the titular jacuzzi portal, and end up back in 1986 in a world of leggings, pastel and enormous hair. They can’t mess with the timeline and must make sure they redo the things they did back then in order not to change the future.

This leads to copious Back to the Future references, up to and including the casting of Crispin Glover as a one-armed bellboy, the subject of a nice running joke where everyone is desperate for him to lose the arm back in 1986.

Having one of the greats of 80s cinema like John Cusack in the lead is smart, and at first it seems a trick has been missed by not casting some other 80s stalwarts as his buddies. But then you realise Cusack doesn’t really get much to do and isn’t responsible for most of the funniest stuff, which actually comes from an unhinged Corddry, taking on a role similar to the one Zach Galifianakis had in The Hangover.

The best laughs tend to be small throwaway gags rather than any big set pieces and most of the humour mined is of the ‘weren’t the 80s primitive?’ variety, so jokes about mobile phones and the internet figure highly.

And yet it mistakenly thinks that constant vulgarity for the sake of it is funny, when a well placed bit of crudity could have been much more effective. But it’s best not to forget that this is a movie about a hot tub time machine and, on those terms, it offers chuckles enough to satisfy.