Red Dawn

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.

Anyone who has seen Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph Des Willens" (Triumph of the Will), the documentary about the Nuremburg Rallies, understands that even the vilest propaganda can attain the status of great art. Without a doubt, Nazism was a force to be despised and resisted, yet "Triumph" remains a fascinating, even great film.

That said, I will not put "Red Dawn" on the same plane as Riefenstahl's work. It is neither as good a film nor as vile propaganda. But it does underscore a point I see running through many of the criticisms of "Red Dawn" that have been posted here. Many of the movie's detractors reject the film out of hand because of its undeniably conservative overtones. This, I believe, is lazy criticism. The movie has an excellent pedigree. I suggest you search on ImDb under John Milius' name to see what other films he has been involved in. Some of his more notable accomplishments include the screenplays of "Jeremiah Johnson" and co-authoring "Apocalypse Now", as well as the notably UNconservative adaptation of "Clear and Present Danger". Basil Poledouris' score is fantastic, with its Copland-esque homages. The touches of authenticity in the film are also admirable, including the indoctrination camp (see the recently published "Gulag" or Koestler's "Darkness at Noon")and "Radio Free America" scenes, not to mention the efforts the filmmakers went to to make the military hardware look Russian (as opposed to Russians flying American aircraft in dismal movies like "Iron Eagle II" and "Rambo"). Yes, Red Dawn is propaganda, but just because it may be, from your perspective, the wrong kind of propaganda, you are not justified in invalidating the whole enterprise. It is slick, well-made, and memorable.

The problem with people/critics now days, is they take themselves way too serious. Just grab some popcorn and relax! And yes, those of us that grew up during the cold war sometimes took our patriotism to the limit even with good old fashioned corny action flics.

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.

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.