Red Dawn Remake Casts Josh Peck

Here: I'm Going to Say It. Red Dawn Was a Bad Movie

By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Trade News | Comments (61)

We’ve known for a while that they’re developing a remake for Red Dawn. Chris Hemsworth, in fact, has already been cast in the Patrick Swayze role (he’s also been cast as Thor). But before I announce the new additions to the new cast, I think this has to be said, just to put it on the record: Red Dawn is kind of a bad movie.

No. It is a really bad movie.

Granted, I know many of you have a soft spot for the flick — you were 8 or 9 when you first saw it, and your brain had not fully formed. I don’t hold your nostalgic love against you. But it was a really bad movie. And in case you haven’t seen it in 20 years, just take a look at the trailer again and let it wash over you anew:

See? Soul Man is in it. Jennifer Grey is toting a machine gun. And there’s enough cheese in it to open up a Little Caesar’s franchise. All I’m saying is: The remake can’t be any worse. And stunt coordinator (Bourne Identity, Quantum of Solace) turned assistant director turned first-time director, Dan Bradley, has an awfully low bar here. (Oh, shaddup Slim — knocking the obvious doesn’t make me a Commie). And while I expect that Bradley will improve the effects (he can’t do much worse), it does look like he’ll keep the campy vibe — it’s kind of necessary when you’re talking about a group of high schoolers taking on an army of Chinese and Russian soldiers

Anyway, the latest additions are Josh Peck, who will be taking the role originated by Charlie Sheen (upgrade!) and Adrianne Palicki, who will be taking Jennifer Grey’s old role as the machine-gun wielding hottie who falls in love with Hemsworth’s character. It should be noted that Palicki is 26, but that hasn’t stopped her from convincingly playing a teenager in “Friday Night Lights,” and she’s probably the best actress among the younger cast on that show. And Peck too many of you may unfortunately know from “Drake and Josh,” but rest assured, he’s a good actor (have you seen The Wackness yet? How many fucking times do we have to ask you? Come on. Stop watching old “Buffy” episodes and Netflix it for God’s sake. ) Still: I expect it will be a lightweight action movie. You know: For the kids.

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Comments

The remake could not be worse, per se, but if it doesn't have a dead body counter that runs along the bottom to tally dead bad guys, dead good guys, and dead deer (I shit you not), then it can't possibly be better.

Posted by: boo at June 17, 2009 10:03 AM

Mr. Lower loves this damn movie. I am really sick of hearing, "Wrong, Commie, it's Houston!" every time he doesn't agree with something I've said. We'll just keep the rumor of this little remake between us, k?

Posted by: slower lower at June 17, 2009 10:12 AM

Of course the new one will be worse. It's not like they were trying to make a hilariously bad movie the first time. This one will amp up the explosions and the stupidity, but they'll never be able to recapture the unironically mindless red meat, two-fisted, double barreled "Amurica, Love It Or Leave It" patriotism of the first.

Hey, new comment diversion: Come up with the tagline for the new "Red Dawn."

Red Dawn: Communism is for faggots and commies

Posted by: Tracer Bullet at June 17, 2009 10:15 AM

Red Dawn: ...because The Lake House was for communist homosexuals.

Posted by: PissBoy at June 17, 2009 10:20 AM

This movie was perhaps the only one I ever saw where I was rooting for the Communists.

Posted by: Bd at June 17, 2009 10:21 AM

flashback humor rules!

Posted by: PissBoy at June 17, 2009 10:21 AM

Not for nothing, but watching the trailer just made me fall in love with the movie all over again.

Posted by: Cipher1331 at June 17, 2009 10:22 AM

This movie was perhaps the only one I ever saw where I was rooting for the Communists.

4 words. Best Of The Best.

Posted by: PissBoy at June 17, 2009 10:23 AM

"Red Dawn: Why is it called Red if the Cold War has been over for two decades?"

Posted by: twig at June 17, 2009 10:23 AM

Red Dawn: Now with 30% less flannel and mullets!

Posted by: malechai at June 17, 2009 10:25 AM

Amairicuh! Fuck yeah!

Posted by: Mella at June 17, 2009 10:25 AM

Stop watching old “Buffy” episodes

We just broke up. Again.

Posted by: Anna von Beaverplatz at June 17, 2009 10:27 AM

Red Dawn: Because We Haven't Gotten Around to Remaking Spies Like Us Yet.

Posted by: branded at June 17, 2009 10:29 AM

Red Dawn: Better Dead than Red. Unless you're a commie. You faggot.

I rooted for the Communist in Rocky IV.

Posted by: Tracer Bullet at June 17, 2009 10:30 AM

Red Dawn: Revenge of Aunt Flo

Posted by: admin at June 17, 2009 10:30 AM

Red Dawn: You'll Have the Time of Your Life

Posted by: Julie at June 17, 2009 10:33 AM

Must be a nostalgia for the old days when you could have fun being on a war footing with a sovereign state and its military and get to invent crazy new technology and weaponry, but not actually have to fight and die.

These kids today? They just don't KNOW! It used to be so great! I mean, I suppose Kim Jong Il is gamely trying his best and being a sport, but it'll never be the same and he really knows it.

Besides, who the hell's gonna fill Powers Boothe's flightsuit? Who COULD?

Posted by: Jay at June 17, 2009 10:33 AM

Red Dawn: Cause if Bush Had Gotten His Way, This is What it Would've Looked Like.

Posted by: admin at June 17, 2009 10:34 AM

Red Dawn: These Colors Don't Run Because They Forgot Their Inhalers.

Posted by: branded at June 17, 2009 10:39 AM

Red Dawn: No one puts Baby in a corner

Sorry, I got my Swayze mixed up.

Red Dawn: Wolverines: origin

Red Dawn: Revenge of C. Thomas Howell

Posted by: Mrcreosote at June 17, 2009 10:39 AM

Red Dawn: "We're not sure who asked for this either."

Posted by: TylerDFC at June 17, 2009 10:47 AM

Jay, you answered your own question. Powers Boothe will fill out Powers Boothe's flightsuit. Try saying that three times fast.

Posted by: ed newman at June 17, 2009 10:49 AM

Red Dawn: Never "run the red"

Red Dawn: Sonja's Revenge

Posted by: logar at June 17, 2009 10:52 AM

Red Dawn: These Colors Don't Run Because They Forgot Their Inhalers.

Ha ha ha ha!

Posted by: Julie at June 17, 2009 10:59 AM

Red Dawn II: Jason Wakes Up

Oh, common, you were thinking it.

Posted by: BWeaves at June 17, 2009 11:01 AM

It is a really bad movie.

Well ... yeah. And? I would totally sit down and watch it right now.

Red Dawn: Revenge of Aunt Flo

I believe what you're looking for is Red Dawn: In My Pants! Just stick with the classics, man.

Posted by: socalledonlycousins at June 17, 2009 11:12 AM

Red Dawn: This time, there's period sex in the morning.

Posted by: Tracer Bullet at June 17, 2009 11:16 AM

In Soviet Russia, pants are in you!

Posted by: branded at June 17, 2009 11:16 AM

Stop netflixing Buffy?
Might as well ask 'em to start flossing.
And isn't this the same kind of nostalgia-loving b.s. that gave us the new Fame?
Red Dawn: Fuck You, Obama.

Posted by: Jim Doggie at June 17, 2009 11:18 AM

AVENGE ME SON...AVENNNNNNNNNNGE MEEEEEEEE!!!

Posted by: BarbadoSlim at June 17, 2009 11:18 AM

As I said when the remake news first broke, it is a Bad Movie We Love. Tracer Bullet nailed it right on the head up above.

Two problems: 1) Communism is so ovar. This might be solved by updating the enemy to the Taliban. The Taliban invades and takes over most of North America. Sure. 2) If they go for a PG-13 rating it will suck in the not-good way. It's gotta be a hard R or it won't even be laughably bad.

Oh--I nearly forgot Problem 3) Powers Boothe is irreplaceable. Matthew McConaghey would be really funny, though.

Posted by: Jerce at June 17, 2009 11:31 AM

I may have been watching Episode 5 x 11 "the triangle" as I was reading this review. How did you know?

Posted by: "luker" the barbarian at June 17, 2009 11:32 AM

Wait! Who is going to play the Harry Dean Stanton scene with the dad in the repurposed drive-in?

"AVENGE ME!"

I see some serious problems ahead.

Posted by: Jerce at June 17, 2009 11:34 AM

Just stick with the classics, man.

I fail to see the reason that I should be held to such a restriction when, clearly, nobody else is.
But, very well;

Red Dawn: In My Pants! But the Back, Not The Front

Posted by: admin at June 17, 2009 11:44 AM

Jerce, I read that China is going to play the Soviet role in this movie, which makes sense. Although they'll have to rewrite the whole "Who's on our side?" conversation with Powers. Oh, and Steven Segal can play that Powers Booth role. Oh yes he can.

Posted by: Mrcreosote at June 17, 2009 11:46 AM

Bad? It was godawful.

The premise, though, had some potential. If they had treated it in a serious manner - dealing with the cultural and political ramifications a Soviet occupation would imply (something like The Man In The High Castle) - it might have had some merit. Instead, they gave us St. Elmo's Commandos.

Posted by: DarthCorleone at June 17, 2009 11:49 AM

Yeah, it's a bad movie. I tried to watch it a couple years ago, and got about 5 minutes in before it got so stupid, I couldn't take any more.

I was amused that anyone would think that the first place the Russians would go to take over the U.S. is the nation's high schools (or at least, that's how it appeared from the 5 minutes I saw). Yes, because America's real military strength lies in its high schools. Or did I miss the part where the Commies bombed every military base to shit and then moved on to phase 2 of the operation, where they have enough soldiers to storm every high school in America (all 35,000 of them)? I guess phase 3 would have been a march on all the elementary schools.

Posted by: Slash at June 17, 2009 11:53 AM

Red Dawn: Because Fuscia Sounds Gay

Red Dawn: Wolverinies Take Manhattan

Red Dawn: She Was Asking For It

Red Dawn: Bend Over For Another "Hollywood Hug", America

Posted by: Kballs at June 17, 2009 12:08 PM

Trailer looks awesome. Can't wait.

Posted by: zito at June 17, 2009 12:21 PM

The comments posted above mine prove that none of you were actually alive when the movie came out, or if you were you were WAY, WAY, WAY too young to have ANY understanding of how politics and Hollywood at that time period intermingled or what the world situation actually was and what it felt like.

Oh, and Dustin, get it fucking right. there were NO Chinese in cahoots with the Russians, it was the USSR, the Cubans and Sandanistas. The Chinese if they were mentioned at all, it was only in passing.

But this whole piece is yet another example of Gen X/Gen Y trying to make revisionist history and failing horribly. At the time Red Dawn was NEVER seen, by anyone as a great movie. I don't know of anyone in my crowd who said, "Hey, Red Dawn is opening this week, let's all go see it!!" It was a modest box office success AT BEST. Most of the actors/actresses were still comparative unknowns and C- grade stars, such as Stanton and Boothe.

The biggest amount of attention the movie got was for it's being the first movie to come out with a PG-13 rating.

Posted by: ILikeWhores at June 17, 2009 12:21 PM

Oh, and only a hardcore Pinko would stoop to using this relatively unknown website to rag on this classic piece of AMERICAN cinema.

Posted by: BarbadoSlim at June 17, 2009 12:30 PM

there were NO Chinese in cahoots with the Russians

He's talking about the remake. This post is about the remake, see?

That's the problem with acting like a condescending asshole, you're always also wrong about something.

Posted by: Jay at June 17, 2009 12:33 PM

How did your crowd feel about Terminator, The Last Starfighter, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Sixteen Candles, all of which grossed less than Red Dawn? Or how about Splash, Purple Rain, and Amadeus, all of which grossed more?

Posted by: branded at June 17, 2009 12:44 PM

"it’s kind of necessary when you’re talking about a group of high schoolers taking on an army of Chinese and Russian soldiers"

Uhhh Jay, you got that wrong... you're the condescending asshole now.

Shoulda been 'Cuban'

Posted by: nerf at June 17, 2009 12:52 PM

He's talking about the remake. This post is about the remake, see?

Posted by: Jay at June 17, 2009 1:02 PM

Plus, I didn't write that sentence. Dustin did. His name's up top, see? He wrote this post.

Posted by: Jay at June 17, 2009 1:04 PM

"unironically mindless red meat, two-fisted, double barreled 'Amurica, Love It Or Leave It' patriotism"

Exactly. I saw it in high school, and while I was a liberal, I hadn't been to *college* yet or anything--and the movie was so ham-fistedly dumb and offensive that it is, to this day, the only movie I actually almost walked out on. Probably the only reason I didn't was that its stupidity outweighed its offensiveness. And my friends didn't want to.

But I'll tell you this: A remake of that shitcake is the last thing a certain gun-toting nationalzenophobalist segment of our population needs to be seeing right now.

Posted by: pk at June 17, 2009 1:33 PM

Jay, you keep bleating that "he's talking about the re-make." Funny but I haven't heard him say a fucking thing. However, he has written some shit, very litte of which is about the remake, and even if the Chinese and Russian stuff was about the remake, the whole piece is so horribly written it's impossible to tell.

So, epic fail for him, and Galaxy Fail for you. Now get back in the alley and finish giving that dude a blowjob. he threw $20 in your face and by damn you're gonna give him his money's worth, which means you swallow and say "Thank you sir, will you please fuck me in my butthole?"

branded, The only movies you listed which had any sort of impact on my crowd back in high school was Purple Rain and that was because Prince was ALL OVER THAT SHIT. He was even bigger then Michael Jackson and tied with Springsteen as far as popularity.

Sixteen Candles was shown by some teachers during the last days of they year, no big deal. No one identified with it or any of the characters in it.

Posted by: ILikeWhores at June 17, 2009 1:41 PM

"I rooted for the Communist in Rocky IV."

Didn't everybody?

(1980's era) DOLPH!

Posted by: malechai at June 17, 2009 1:44 PM

That's good advice for you Jay. But don't use the word butthole, it might kill the moment.

Posted by: Julie at June 17, 2009 1:48 PM

Trust me, you're not WAY WAY WAY older than "everybody here".

You're just presumptuous, stubborn, inattentive and, well, wrong. That's all, no big thing.

I don't know what the rentboy interlude was about. That was weird. Jeepers.

Posted by: Jay at June 17, 2009 2:06 PM

Galaxy Fail, ILikeWhores? Really? What's that in Light Year fails?

Posted by: admin at June 17, 2009 2:43 PM

I went to see Red Dawn on my 14th birthday with all my friends. It was a free early evening preview for anyone who was going to see the late showing of 'All of Me'. Even though it had what we teenyboppers would have considered a "A-list" cast at the time, we were pretty ambivalent about seeing it.

I remember we liked it for the cute boys, but thinking we were far more likely to be destroyed by nuclear war than by Russian and Cuban guerrillas. Then we went for ice cream and cake and forgot all about it.

Posted by: malechai at June 17, 2009 2:46 PM

shutupshutupshutUP!!! You guys...acting like it's totally okay for Dustin to rag on one of my, like, favorite movies EVAR...it's like, so cool because Jennifer Grey was totally tragic, and the friends were really, really cruelly broken up, and like, did you SEE what happened to Ponyboy?! That hurt me. It HURT me. It hurt ME.

I'm not even being ironic, I'm just, like, really, really, really sad and stuff.

Posted by: replica at June 17, 2009 3:23 PM

"Now get back in the alley and finish giving that dude a blowjob. he threw $20 in your face and by damn you're gonna give him his money's worth, which means you swallow and say "Thank you sir, will you please fuck me in my butthole?""

Wow. You sir, have a way with words. My eyes literally waltzed over that beauty. Do you have a newsletter or a subscription of some sort? Brilliant prose like that comes along far too little nowadays... Surely, over the years you've collected little treasures like that? I'd be way, way, way grateful if you could send me the best of the best!

Thanks again!

Posted by: Skitz at June 17, 2009 3:55 PM

I had some similar thoughts, Slash .
1: Where was the vaunted American Army?
2: A High School = America? Lamest takeover ever!
3: No nukes?
4: Why the Mid West? Why not something .. coastal? The Mid West is awfully far inland..
5: Should the kids have maybe picked a name a little more conducive to graffiti than "Wolverines"? I could see them taking all that time to write it. "WOLVERI...." BANG! High School Spirit is great and all, but really.....
6: I couldn't help but draw a parallel to the Afghan Rebels. Even more so with the passing of time. And I am confused about the message. Isn't all "terrorism" bad?
7: My "willing suspension of disbelief" is on a bungee cord for this one. A "fun" movie, yes. but one that gave me a headache, and still does.

Posted by: Odnon at June 17, 2009 4:11 PM

I could see them taking all that time to write it. "WOLVERI...." BANG!

I'm doing my "office laugh", which just sounds like a respiratory problem, with lots of shaking.

Isn't all "terrorism" bad?

Yes, but these boys are Freedom Guerrillas, like Lexington and Concord, which bears no resemblances to Sandinistas or Chechens. Those are bad guerrillas. Shut up, I said it's different!

Remember when the Afghans were the good guys? Man....it's like I said, everything was great back then! Damn president's even trying to get rid of MAD now! Spoilsport.

Posted by: Jay at June 17, 2009 4:28 PM

Thanks Jay. you made my day.
And speaking of "Guerillas gone bad":
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Travel/Gorilla+knife+scare+Calgary/1702418/story.html

Posted by: Odnon at June 17, 2009 4:48 PM

In other shocking news, the sun is hot.

I don't want to emasculate you or anything Dustin, but I'm pretty sure the Pajibans who like this ridic Cold War POS would agree it's a bad movie. You aren't exactly going out on a limb with that statement.

Posted by: Sarah at June 17, 2009 5:03 PM

Stop watching old “Buffy” episodes and Netflix it for God’s sake.

No! I don't have to listen to you! YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD!

Posted by: Melissa at June 17, 2009 7:05 PM

What's a flank?

Posted by: Dristan at June 17, 2009 11:02 PM

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Here: I'm Going to Say It. Red Dawn Was a Bad Movie

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