L'Aube rouge

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.

Man o man. This movie is great. As a history student its awesome to look back on these types of things and see what the buzz was around the time of the movie's release. The plot is insane, acting over-the-top, but the historical commentary is amazing. People actually believed that such a thing as this was possible in the mid-80s, pre-Gorbachev. This is not "low-level propaganda," its the most obvious pro-American movie I have EVER seen.

On the movie alone, the "film" shouldn't even rate. But as a Cold-War barometer, every interested person should see this to peer into the height of US-Soviet tensions.

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.

'Far Off Gone' is right on with that summary.

As a teen when this movie came out, us kids had grown up with Cold War news every night on TV. All these ICBMs being made, the 'Star Wars' defense initiative (SDI), even movies like 'War Games' contributed to a overall climate of concern about Russian/USA relations.

Then this movie hit theaters and us teens and younger adults felt we weren't so powerless after all. I can only speak for myself, but the opening scene was very sobering to a 18 year old kid who could relate to the dumbfounded kids in the classroom watching Soviet paratroopers hitting the schoolyard. I guess its one of those things where you had to be at the age and grown up in that era to really understand how the movie was received for its time.

The cast is chock full of stars in their younger years, and acting isn't bad either. Great movie and certainly worth watching at least once.

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.