The city of Spokane, Washington is awakened by a North Korean paratrooper invasion. Marine Corps veteran Jed Eckert and his civilian brother, Matt, escape with a group of friends to an isolated cabin in the woods, where they witness the execution of their father at the hands of the ruthless Captain Cho. The brothers unite with their friends to form a guerrilla resistance group–the Wolverines–to drive the invaders from their home.
Plot
An introductory montage shows the fallout of an economic crisis in the European Union and a weakened NATO alliance, amid collaborative dealings between a progressively militant North Korea, now led by the young Kim Jong Un, and ultranationalist-dominated Russia. The increased deployment of U.S. troops abroad leaves the mainland vulnerable, and American infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable to the threat of a cyberattack.
U.S. Marine Jed Eckert is home on leave in Spokane, Washington. He reunites with his father, Spokane Police Sergeant Tom Eckert, and his brother, football player Matt Eckert, as well as his childhood friend Toni Walsh and her cousin Erica Martin, Matt’s girlfriend. The morning after a mysterious power outage, Jed and Matt are shocked to see swarms of invading North Korean paratroopers and transport aircraft. Their father tells them to flee to their cabin in the woods while he helps the townspeople. They are joined there by Robert Kitner, Daryl Jenkins, Danny Jackson, siblings Julie and Greg Goodyear, and Pete, and later by Toni; Erica is captured by the North Koreans. Tensions build as the teens try to decide whether to surrender to the invaders or resist, with Pete ending up betraying their position. North Korean soldiers, under the command of Captain Cho, bring Sergeant Eckert and the mayor out to convince the group to surrender; while the mayor persuades the boys to give up, Cho executes Sergeant Eckert after he refuses to cooperate and actively encourages them to resist.
Later, Jed announces that he intends to fight and the others agree to join him, calling themselves the Wolverines after their school mascot. After acquiring weapons, establishing a base in an abandoned mine, and being trained by Jed, the Wolverines begin a series of guerrilla attacks against soldiers and collaborators, including Pete. As Matt manages to free Erica from her imprisonment, he jeopardizes the mission resulting in Greg’s death. The North Koreans retaliate by bombarding the surrounding woods to destroy the Wolverines’ base, killing Danny and Julie, with the remaining survivors fleeing deeper into the woods.
The Wolverines eventually encounter Marine Sergeant Major Andrew Tanner and two other Marines, Corporal Smith and Sergeant Hodges. They reveal that the Russian-backed North Korean invasion used an EMP weapon that crippled the U.S. electrical grid and military, followed by landings along the east and west coasts (Camp Pendleton is hinted by the Marines as having been destroyed in the invasion, as most likely was the rest of coastal Southern California), with American counterattacks eventually halting their advances, leaving an area stretching from Michigan to Montana and Alabama to Arizona as “Free America”, using the Rocky Mountains in the west and the Appalachians in the east as geographic buffers, as pockets of patriotic guerrillas in the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada mountains continue to fight. They also reveal that Captain Cho’s suitcase contains an EMP-resistant radio telephone, that if captured would enable the U.S. command to listen in on enemy communication, and gain a tactical advantage in a counter-offensive. The Wolverines assist Tanner, Smith, and Hodges in infiltrating the local police station, the North Koreans’ center of operations. They succeed in stealing the suitcase with Jed avenging his father’s death by killing Cho, though Hodges is killed in the firefight.
After they successfully escape with the suitcase, the Wolverines and Marines regroup in a safe house. After a brief conversation between Jed and Matt, however, they are ambushed by Russian Spetsnaz and Jed is killed in the firefight. Visibly shaken, Matt and the rest of the group escape with the suitcase. Robert realizes that during the escape from the police station, Daryl was tagged with a subcutaneous tracking device that the Russians used to find them. After some thought, Daryl accepts the fact that he cannot go on with them and decides to stay behind, his fate unknown. The rest continue on to the Marines’s extraction point.
Tanner and Smith depart in a UH-1 with the suitcase. The remaining Wolverines decide to stay behind and continue to fight, recruiting more members and raiding prisoner camps, with Matt now leading the effort to continue opposing the occupation and aided by the helicopter’s minigun which Robert took. The flag of Free America is carried by patriots in a daring raid on a North Korean concentration camp in the final shot of the film.
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Trivia
- The film was shot and completed in 2009, and originally scheduled for release on November 24, 2010. It was shelved for almost two years, due to MGM’s financial troubles.
- The invading army was originally Chinese. It was changed to North Korean in post-production to maintain access to China’s box office.
- Dylan O’Brien auditioned for a role in this film.
- Isabel’s co-star Josh Peck presented her the award Young Female Talent at the 2011 Young Hollywood Awards, and joked about the film’s delayed release in the introduction speech.
