Review: Tomorrow When The War Began

Are you old enough to remember 1984's Red Dawn? The movie that had teenage girls drooling over Patrick Swayze and C Thomas Howell as mid western teens who band together with the friends to fight off the Russians who invade their town?

Fast forward 20 some odd years and you have Tomorrow When The War Began.

Tim's been after me to watch this movie but you know, I'm well past the age of drooling over young studs (*cough*) banding together when their town gets rolled over by a foreign army.

OR so I thought.

With nothing else better on the horizon, I conceded.

And I'm glad I did.

After spending the weekend in the bush, seven friends return home to find the families gone and their town and farms deserted. They quickly find out that a foreign army (not named but Asian by the actor portrayal) have invaded their place in Australia.

So what do they do? Do they hide? Do they become martyrs? What CAN they do?

Well, of course they do something. It wouldn't be a movie otherwise.. but what was intriguing was how morality played with their minds and hearts.

I'm not going to get into specific plot scenes for a reason. Researching the movie, I found out that the story came from the first of a seven book series written by John Marsden. I had thought that the movie ended rather abruptly but realized that the end left the window open for sequels.

Although I thought that some scenes were unbelievable, the story centers more on how these kids had to cope with losing their families, stepping out into a war and relying on their instincts to carry them through.

It was a good movie.. so good that I'm going to order the series to find out what happened. Definitely 2 thumbs up.