Tomorrow When The War Began (2010)

Now I was kinda on the fence about seeing this because it looked a bit naff; it looked in the same sorta young-adult-lot vain as I Am Number Four and the pain of that, remains raw. But then Animal Kingdom was so amazing that Australia gets another shout aaaand it's Australian Red Dawn. Just call it that; people would want to see that. This title is whaaay too many words.
I should say i've never seen Red Dawn but 'John has US teenagers combat invading Commies'... i can guess how that'll play out.
I had a pervading thought all the way through Tomorrow When The War Began was this is totally the young adult novel, my girlfriend's housemate Sapphy would write. And no, not cos of the Antipodean setting; it's got a strong force of female characters and especially, the main character-Ellie.
As you might guess from the young-teen novel origin and the '12' cert, this is all very reminicent of the kinda thing that used to be on CBBC older kids drama before Neighbours, ironically- except this much bigger budget, lil too violent,  sweary and druggie for tea-time. But that's all there is- the way the kids act belies their ages of 18; they're closer to 14-15mins and there's a kids alone aspect, where there's only one adult that they come in contact with after the invasion of non-descript Asians. Written and directed by Stuart Beattie, a prolific Hollywood screenwriter-most famously, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and that Baz Lurhman-Australia movie, this surprisingly well directed but fairly poorly written. Like being set in the Aussie Outback, making that look picturesque is like shooting fish but he does really well with shooting action and building tension but any scene where there's characters sharing or intimacy, it just feels really false.
There was a moment in the trailer, where Ellie voices her concerns about the murdering, she has inadvertently done in the groups' guerrilla retaliations becuase no one seems to be able to give a straight answer about how the conflict started;where she says, 'i don't even know if these people are bad or if my actions were wrong...'- I was hoping the film would kind of fun with that idea; where you wake in the middle of a military conflict and have to save yourself but have no idea, who is 'good' and who is 'bad'? but it makes it quite clear how the sides are drawn. To be fair, all these actors in their late-20's do good as the group of teens (why do movies do that!??)-especially the woman playing Ellie, Caitlin Stasey.
Overall, this movie is alright but it's not exploitative enough to be a good genre pic and too violent for the tween crowd. You could never take your kids to see this- it would either be not appropriate for them or too boring for them...

I watched Tomorrow When The War Began (2010) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Death Race 2000 (1971)...