red dawn movie review

Cast & crew
User reviews

Josh Peck, Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Isabel Lucas, and Adrianne Palicki in Red Dawn (2012)

A group of teenagers look to save their town from an invasion of North Korean soldiers. A group of teenagers look to save their town from an invasion of North Korean soldiers. A group of teenagers look to save their town from an invasion of North Korean soldiers.

Dan Bradley
Carl Ellsworth
Jeremy Passmore
Kevin Reynolds
Chris Hemsworth
Isabel Lucas
Josh Hutcherson
429 User reviews
237 Critic reviews
31 Metascore
1 win & 4 nominations

Erica Martin

Robert Kitner

Matt Eckert

Daryl Jenkins

Sgt. Tom Eckert

Captain Cho

Sgt. Maj. Andrew Tanner

Colonel Ivanov

Kevin Reynolds (1984 screenplay)
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

Trivia The encoded messages on Radio Free America are identical to those in the original Red Dawn (1984) .
Goofs An EMP-style weapon fried all electronics, but they seem to have a working cell phone.

Jed Eckert : I'm going to fight. I'm going to fight. Now, this is easier for me because I'm used to it. The rest of you are gonna have a tougher choice. Look, I don't want to sell it to you; it's too ugly for that. It's ugly, and it's hard. But when you're fighting in your own backyard, and you're fighting for your family, it all hurts a little less and it makes a little more sense. And for them, this is just some place, but for us? This is our home.

Connections Featured in WatchMojo: Another Top 10 Worst Hollywood Remakes (2012)
Soundtracks Oakland University Fight Song Written by Michael Mitchell Performed by The Oakland University Golden Grizzlies Band

User reviews 429

Theo Robertson
Jun 19, 2013

Reboots & Remakes

How long is Red Dawn? Powered by Alexa
When does this take place?
Are the Russians the bad guys like the original?
Was China originally the country invading the USA?
November 21, 2012 (United States)
United States
Official Twitter
Bình Minh Đỏ
Detroit, Michigan, USA
FilmDistrict
FilmNation Entertainment
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$65,000,000 (estimated)
$44,806,783
$14,276,668
Nov 25, 2012
$50,950,296

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 33 minutes
Dolby Digital

More to explore

Notice: All forms on this website are temporarily down for maintenance. You will not be able to complete a form to request information or a resource. We apologize for any inconvenience and will reactivate the forms as soon as possible.

DVD & Streaming
Action/Adventure , Drama , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

November 21, 2012
Chris Hemsworth as Jed Eckert; Josh Peck as Matt Eckert; Brett Cullen as Tom Eckert; Adrianne Palicki as Toni; Josh Hutcherson as Robert; Isabel Lucas as Erica; Connor Cruise as Daryl Jenkins; Edwin Hodge as Danny; Alyssa Diaz as Julie; Michael Beach as Mayor Jenkins; Will Yun Lee as Captain Cho; Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Col. Andy Tanner; Matt Gerald as Hodges; Kenneth Choi as Smith; Steve Lenz as Pete

Home Release Date

March 5, 2013
Dan Bradley

Distributor

FilmDistrict Distribution

Movie Review

It was a typical fall weekend in Spokane, Wash., with high school football teams dueling it out on the gridiron and residents flocking to their favorite watering holes after the game.

Then came a Saturday morning unlike any other.

First the explosions. Then the paratroopers. Only when it was too late did most of the good people of Spokane realize what was happening: the unthinkable. The United States was being invaded … by North Korea. In a world paralyzed by financial and political upheaval, a rogue regime had seized the opportunity to strike a physical blow.

The explosions wake Jed Eckert, a twentysomething Marine just home from Iraq, and his brother, Matt, quarterback of his high school football team. Lunging into Jed’s Dodge Ram pickup truck, the brothers race down their street, even as soldiers begin rounding up those who hadn’t moved as quickly.

Soon they spy their father, a police officer, racing toward them. “Get to the cabin!” he yells. A few members of Matt’s football team, the Wolverines, pile into the back of the truck. A few more jump into a car behind them. With bullets whizzing over their heads, they make for the wilderness to figure out what to do next.

The circumstances don’t give them much time to ponder their predicament. And when a turncoat named Pete steals their food and reveals their location to the North Koreans, the Eckerts’ woodland refuge quickly becomes a target. For Jed, there’s only one response: fight. And Matt wants to follow his big brother’s lead, never mind that the two siblings have some unresolved business that’s wedged between them. But Matt’s got another agenda as well: rescuing his captured girlfriend, Erica.

Even as Jed whips the ragtag group of young men (and a couple of women) into an formidable guerilla counterinsurgency, Matt bides his time for the moment he can free his beloved Erica. But his determination to do that may be the complete undoing of this unlikely group of teen patriots who’ve come to call themselves Wolverines.

Positive Elements

Red Dawn is about fighting for our cherished freedom as Americans. As such, Jed, Matt and their Wolverine friends repeatedly exhibit courage and willingness to sacrifice as they take the fight to the invaders. “We inherited our freedom,” Jed tells the group. “Now it’s up to all of us to fight for it.” In a separate speech early on, Jed tells the group that they’ve each got a choice to make, whether they’re going to fight or whether they’re going to capitulate. They fight. When it’s demanded that they surrender, they refuse. Even when they have a chance to cleanly escape the whole ordeal, they elect to stand and defend.

Jed and Matt have issues that the war forces them to deal with. In the wake of their mother’s death years before, Jed fled to the Marines and quit communicating with his family—an abandonment that Matt felt sorely. Thus, Matt has turned into a renegade solo operative. And Jed calls him to account for the selfish actions his attitude triggers, admonishing him sternly regarding the necessity for unity and teamwork. Matt slowly comes around, of course, and the two takes steps to patch things up.

One guy (after being implanted with a tracking device) sacrificially separates himself from the Wolverines, putting himself in a serious amount of jeopardy (and in the way of death) to protect the rest.

Spiritual Elements

Jed brags, “Marines don’t die. They just go to hell and regroup.” He says of the country’s situation, “Pray like h‑‑‑ it doesn’t get worse.”

Sexual Content

Before the invasion, Matt and Erica kiss in her car. He begins to run his hand up her leg, but she slaps it. They kiss later as well. Jed reminisces about an old girlfriend being a good kisser. Passing references are made to “hot, sexy girls” and a guy’s hidden porn stash. A couple of girls wear low-cut shirts.

Violent Content

Numerous combat-related scenes—most of them, in fact— display all manner of mortal mayhem triggered by such weapons as machine guns, pistols, grenades, RPGs, C4 explosives and even tanks. North Koreans are repeatedly shown rounding up captives and herding them into a hastily erected POW camp. In turn, gunshots and explosions kill scores of North Korean soldiers. A teen girl baits a group of enemy soldiers into chasing her; she leads them into an ambush where several of the Wolverines pop out from beneath cover on the ground and shoot them. Later, Jed shoots and kills a wounded North Korean leader at essentially point-blank range.

Several Wolverines eventually get gunned down. A perilous assault on the North Korean headquarters involves jumping perhaps 20 feet from one building to another. The raid results in a prolonged firefight. Car chases end with various vehicles getting smashed. A plane crashes explosively into a house.

Jed and Matt’s father heroically resists being used by his captors, and he’s executed with a pistol shot to the head. (We don’t see the bullet’s impact.) Jed gets hurt, and the camera zooms in as one of his mates stitches a large wound closed. Jed and Matt teach Robert to hunt. And after Robert shoots his first deer, they tell him it’s a family custom to drink some of the deer’s blood (which he does, but just offscreen).

Crude or Profane Language

One f-word. And someone mentions detonating a “mother-eff bomb.” More than 25 s-words. A dozen uses of “a‑‑” or “a‑‑hole,” a half-dozen or so uses each of “h‑‑‑” and “b‑‑ch.” We hear “d‑‑k,” “pr‑‑k” and “b‑‑tard.” God’s name is abused five or six times (half the time paired with “d‑‑n”). Jesus’ is misused once. One character invents a slur, “motard,” and uses it twice.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Jed’s shown drinking heavily, with empty beer bottles around him as he sits sullenly on his front porch. He grabs a beer from a full six-pack and offers it to Matt, who’s presumably underage. Matt declines. Later, though, after much bloodshed, Jed has a beer again and offers Matt one again. This time the younger brother jokes about it being his first drink (but it’s clear that it’s not). A pre-invasion scene takes place at a bar.

Other Negative Elements

We’re asked to watch as an American combatant vomits after shooting and killing a North Korean soldier.

I can sum up my reaction to learning that Red Dawn was being remade with one word: Really?

The original version was released in 1984 and had the somewhat dubious honor of being the first film to be tagged with the new PG-13 rating. At the time, the Cold War was reality, and for many of us the film’s premise—Russians invading the Colorado town of Calumet, then the rest of the country—was eerily plausible. Toss in the all-star cast of Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson and Jennifer Grey, and Red Dawn had some genuine gravitas.

The remake sports a similar premise, substituting Washington for Colorado and North Koreans for Russians. And if that last bit sounds preposterous to you, you’ll be interested in this: During development, the new film featured more plausible Chinese invaders. But the studio realized that the Chinese movie market was too important to alienate, digitally changing all the Chinese symbols to North Korean ones in post-production. In a 2011 interview with the Los Angeles Times , producer Tripp Vinson said, “We were initially very reluctant to make any changes. But after careful consideration we constructed a way to make a scarier, smarter and more dangerous Red Dawn that we believe improves the movie.”

It doesn’t.

No one in America today is lying awake at night wondering whether the dawn will bring with it a red wave of North Koreans. In contrast, back in ’84 the idea that the Russians could spontaneously float down on parachutes was, while still unlikely, not utterly inconceivable. The result the second time around is a film that, despite its big-hearted messages about sacrificial patriotism and teamwork, feels just a bit ridiculous.

After I saw an advance screening of the new Red Dawn , I was inspired to revisit the original, in part to see how that very first PG-13 film stacks up to a film with the same rating 28 years later. Here’s my verdict: Both are saturated with war-related violence and imagery. And both have a high body count. The new one might actually be somewhat more violent—in terms of explosions, firefights, etc.—but it simultaneously and paradoxically feels more sanitized. The original is a more serious effort, showing us, for example, rows of American POWs being lined up and gunned down in reprisal for the Wolverines’ actions. A traitor in the teens’ midst is casually executed. It’s implied that one of the young women was raped by the Russians. And there’s talk of starving people in Denver resorting to cannibalism.

All of that makes the first Red Dawn a decidedly grimmer experience as it delivers an unmistakable message about the awful waste of war, compared to the more video game feel of the current movie. Indeed, I suspect that if the original were rereleased and rerated today, it might garner an R rating due to the harsh realities it explores. But, then again, it might also be true that if the new one had been released back then, it too might have been rated R for other reasons, say, the 70 or so profanities ranging from the f-word to anatomical crudities.

That trade-off is due largely to the fact that cultural perceptions and mores change in ragged ways, not precise ones. And things get pretty murky when you’re trying to pin down exact content quotients. But one item escapes the fog of war: Back in the day, Red Dawn was considered exceptionally violent, one of the most violent films that had ever been made up to that point. Now it’s just one of many.

And that applies to both of the films we’re talking about right now.

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

Latest Reviews

Spy x Family Code: White

Villains Inc.

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

Weekly reviews straight to your inbox.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

Upcoming Movies and TV shows
Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

What's the Tomatometer®?
Login/signup

Movies in theaters

Opening this week
Top box office
Coming soon to theaters
Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

Fandango at Home
Netflix streaming
Prime Video
Most popular streaming movies
What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

Abigail Link to Abigail
Civil War Link to Civil War
Arcadian Link to Arcadian

New TV Tonight

The Sympathizer: Season 1
Conan O'Brien Must Go: Season 1
Under the Bridge: Season 1
The Spiderwick Chronicles: Season 1
Our Living World: Season 1
Orlando Bloom: To the Edge: Season 1
The Circle: Season 6
Dinner with the Parents: Season 1
Jane: Season 2

Red Dawn Reviews

Filled with corny speeches and uncharismatic performances, there’s not one iota of dynamism to this dull action fodder.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 21, 2022

Throughout the movie you’ll find huge gaps in logic, glaring plot holes, and numerous moments where all you can do is bury your face in your hands.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 24, 2022

With its over-hyped bravado, laughably machismo dialogue, and stilted performances, the film often feels like a high school acting class

Full Review | Original Score: 2.0/4.0 | Sep 21, 2020

The whole point of "Red Dawn" is to blow up a lot buildings, shoot off a lot of bullets, and prove, once and for all, that jocks, sluts, nerds, and every other high school social caste can come together as one to battle a highly trained invading army.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jul 12, 2020

A blend of fun popcorn entertainment, resonating characters, and balls to the wall basic action with bullets, car chases and blowing things up, it's the dawn of a new era for Red Dawn. Lock, load and howl. Go Wolverines!

Full Review | Nov 27, 2019

This is a corny bit of fluff that grows more preposterous as it goes along.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Apr 11, 2019

Red Dawn is horribly dull throughout, with no pace or vigour to its action, no purpose to its story, and no investment in its characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 13, 2019

For people who are remake completionists...Red Dawn may be a fun diversion. For others, it will be an assault on valuable time and film-viewing sensibilities.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jan 30, 2019

[It's] a fun piece of escapism -- thanks mainly to the talents of Hemsworth.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 19, 2018

Notably, this wretched remake sat on the shelves for about a couple of years before the movie studio salvaged it in hopes of capitalizing on the ham-fisted hedonism of John Milius's 80s hit actioner...no need to rise at Dawn for this rancid reboot.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 19, 2018

Red Dawn, whose heroes are teens, will be most appreciated by the teen audience. But adults will lose interest pretty quick.

Full Review | Nov 29, 2017

It's hardly worth the wait.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 1, 2017

More like Red Yawn.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 14, 2016

A picture of slight charms and minor successes, but they're definitely there for the right audience to discover.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 17, 2016

... intricately designed to not offend any subset of its audience. It's as impotent as Milius' original was ballsy, and despite a brief running time and passable action, it ends up a frustratingly pointless experience.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 25, 2013

As stupid as the original, yet modernized to include the Subway product placement that today's audiences crave.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Jul 27, 2013

Ridiculously violent for the certificate and wholly implausible in its set up, Red Dawn is the kind of gung-ho action thriller for people with sawdust for brains.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 19, 2013

In the wake of the Oscars, we have an early contender for worst film of the year.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 17, 2013

It is a foolish, ill-considered undertaking, the unexpected topicality of which makes it all the sillier.

Full Review | Mar 17, 2013

This dismal remake of the overrated '80s cult flick is littered with the type of nausea-inducing patriotic dialogue lampooned by the likes of Team America: World Police.

International edition
Australia edition
Europe edition

Red Dawn – review

I n 1984, towards the end of Ronald Reagan's first term as president, John Milius, a gifted, rightwing maverick writer-director, made Red Dawn , a "what-if" thriller in which a division of Soviet and Latin American troops takes over a small Colorado town where they're confronted by a band of local teenage guerrillas. Milius's unfashionable patriotism and old-fashioned regard for honour and heroism, as well as his considerable cinematic gifts, gave the movie a certain distinction – in my eyes at least, though not in those of most colleagues. This remake was embarked on three years ago with Chinese invaders, and after a change in Sino-American relations it was reshot to make North Koreans the enemy. The directorial debut of a well-known specialist in stunt work and second-unit action sequences, it is a foolish, ill-considered undertaking, the unexpected topicality of which makes it all the sillier.

The Observer
Action and adventure films
North Korea

More on this story

Beyond the Hills – review

The spirit of '45 – review.

Maniac – review

Welcome to the Punch – review

Shell – review

The Paperboy – review

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone – review

Comments (…), most viewed.

Red Dawn Review

13 Mar 1984

109 minutes

Made at the height of the Reagan Era, with the then-monolithic Soviet Union tagged as ‘the Evil Empire’, Red Dawn is at once a mainstream shoot ‘em up action picture and an ideologically demented exercise in American paranoia. It opens a high school class being lectured about Mongol Hordes as Russian paratroops land on the playing field and set about gunning down innocents and taking over the town. Our junior heroes, mostly members of the loser local football team (‘the Wolverines’), stock up on guns, snack food and toilet paper and head for the mountains to keep fighting.

It’s pretty much hard-bitten camp, with Harry Dean Stanton shouting ‘avenge me’ behind the wire at a drive-in turned into a ‘re-education centre’, but the It Happened Here business of an unfamiliar, invaded backdrop (Alexander Nevsky at the local movie-house, Russian troops in McDonald’s) still has a frisson. Weirdly, as in the Rambo movies, the wish-fulfilment fantasy is that Americans get to be underdog, freedom-loving rebel guerillas, whereas the other side are big bullies crushing the will of the people.

To John Milius’s way of thinking, America *needs *to be attacked, invaded and overthrown for Americans to regain any sense of purpose – even if it means teenagers becoming mountain men and outright psychopaths. Though C. Thomas Howell does something almost subtle with the role of the youth who comes to enjoy summarily executing prisoners, other ‘80s teen icons (Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey, Charlie Sheen) just look glum and are upstaged by ‘guest stars’ Powers Boothe (downed pilot) and Ben Johnson (grandfatherly plot-explainer) or contrasted commies Ron O’Neal (sympathetic Cuban) and William Smith (nasty Russian). A guilty pleasure.