Red Dawn

I saw this movie when I was in college in Colorado Springs, Colorado when it came out in 1984. Many people dismiss this movie at best as either a teen fantasy or at worse as a right-wing maniac's delusional vision of the future. Yes, it is a teen movie, but there's a bit more to it than that. I'm basically writing this for those of you who either weren't born or too young to remember those days. I grew up in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Anything mildly patriotic was regarded in bad taste. So when John Millius and his friends decided to make this patriotic teen movie about resistance fighters fighting invaders from the Evil Empire, he was just tapping into the frustration that many people (including myself) felt at that time. The scene I remember most vividly is the one when Patrick Swazye shoots the young Russian political officer in the Chevy Blazer. The audience consisted mostly of guys from nearby Fort Collins and Peterson AFB, and they gave this scene a standing ovation. In this post 11 September world, it's hard to imagine a time when, during the Cold War, flying the flag or loving your native land made many people think you were either a Nazi or a member of the John Birch Society. Now this film isn't "Seven Days in May" or "Fail-Safe." It's just a movie that was made at a time after we had lost a war and many in the world regarded the USA as a paper tiger. That's all.

I saw this movie as a teenage not long after it was released on video for the first (and not the last!) time. I watched a large part of it tonight on TBS, and while watching, I tried to recall my initial thoughts when I saw it as a youth.

I do remember liking it as a teenager, though I also remember that I did find the premise a bit hard to swallow. (America placed in such a vulnerable position and without any real allies? And being overrun so quickly?) Still, there WAS still a threat of some kind between the two superpowers. Seeing people my age forced to flee, and then fight back for their freedom was something I'd never seen before - usually teenagers were characters in sex comedies. I suppose that's why this movie stuck so much in my mind, and I'd imagine myself in such a situation, fighting and killing those damned bloodthirsty commies!

Seeing the movie again was very interesting. The action scenes are still good, the movie travels at a swift pace, the cinematography is impressive. I also saw signs that writer/director Milius, though right-wing in real life, wasn't taking everything seriously here. Witness the scene where a tank pulls up to a small gas station and we hear "ding-ding!"

While watching, though, I was struck by my change of viewing, due to the end of the cold war. Did I really feel any kind of fear or threat? Of course, times are different now. But still...quite interesting to see how different your feelings are fifteen years later.

It makes you wonder: In 15 years, how will we react to the politics of action movies in the late 90s, with our enemies now being Arab terrorist. Could we be thinking differently in 2014? Quite possible.

Someone else before me wrote that a lot of people don't understand how believable this movie was in it's day. I have to agree with the author. I remember this movie as being pretty scary and pretty violent. I haven't seen it in a while but there's a lot of scenes that haunt me. One in particular is when several of the kids look for their parents at a concentration camp. Harry Dean Stanton gives a powerful performance that serves to show that he's a genuine actor. That scene is heartbreaking, as well as a scene that follows with Patrick Swayze breaking down in the snow covered woods. C. Thomas Howell vs. the helicopter. The ritual of the deer blood. Powers Boothe. The final battle and resolution. Yeah, it's a little much and these days, it wouldn't exactly fly but dammit Jim, I dug it at the time and I still do. I think everyone should see it, just so you can either remember or learn what it was like to live in a time when the general thinking was a little paranoid. I think the movie manages to capture at least that, being what it is, a paranoid fantasy of someone who probably has a huge gun collection in his concrete reinforced cellar. Rating: *** out of *****.

By the time Powers Booth's Air Force Lt. Col. Andy Tanner is found near his crashed jet fighter plane, and then begins helping a band of teenage rebels fighting against an insanely unanticipated World War III, it seems like John Milius is finally directing the film he wanted to make all along...

Which is basically an old-fashion war picture, in this case beginning with a high school's perspective of being attacking by commandos, destroying and ultimately taking over the rural small town...

Because Milius, unlike his APOCALYPSE NOW co-writer Francis Ford Coppola's THE OUTSIDERS and RUMBLE FISH, never seems entirely game with RED DAWN being a movie about kids... with a bombastic, farfetched twist of Russia taking over America, and much of the actual war... of course involving nuclear weapons... we only hear about from one of many monologues by Powers Booth...

Who's a hypnotic oratory performer and yet, other than leader Patrick Swayze... who seems around twenty-seven (or brother Charlie Sheen, barely important after the plot's underway)... we lose touch with the other youthful side-characters, while almost equally focusing on comparably dull enemy leaders Ron O'Neal and William Smith...

And RED DAWN nearly becomes even more of a violent body count flick than Walter Hill's SOUTHERN COMFORT... where Booth himself survives after practically everyone else is gone...

And frankly, too many people wind up dead (as unimportant ones survive)... while only Swayze's future DIRTY DANCING partner Jennifer Grey and token gung-ho nutjob C. Thomas Howell really stand out in this controversially maligned vehicle, negatively considered right wing, being that Russia's an actual physical threat (perhaps spooking Hollywood liberals that the ongoing Cold War may get thawed out)...

But that's where THE WIND AND THE LION auteur Milius (with stock grownup actors Frank McCrea, Ben Johnson and Harry Dean Stanton) genuinely feels at home... with nostalgic themes of modernized Americana... while RED DAWN succeeds as an entertaining war-genre throwback yet somewhat fails as what should be more strategically character-driven...

Overall paling to a terrific opening scene, where enemy paratroopers land outside a classroom, making everything else feel like a hectic outdoors survival guide...

But with Swayze in a surprisingly effective/literally commanding role within creatively-shot sequences of nifty guerilla warfare, it's a pretty decent way to spend two-hours, the 1980's way.

You can either sit there and pick plot holes in this or just enjoy the ride, I did the latter. Had never heard of this until recently, when I saw a synopsis, and thought it would be my kind of thing. As someone who grew up, during the cold War, it was a time where you never knew what could happen, so those that find this far fetched couldn't have been living at the time, anything was possible back then (is it much different now?).

The film is decently acted, and you're dropped into the action within minutes, there's very few places where the film drags.

I bought the blu ray to see it, and as an aside, if you can get it cheap fine, but don't pay over the odds as it's one of the worst blu rays picture quality wise in my collection.

Definitely worth seeing once and making your own mind up about it.