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It's on TV now, the one from the eighties, and someone please answer something for me. This was.....NOT meant to be satire?

I've never watched it but based on the other movies of the era with similar themes, I'd have to go no. It was supposed to be a serious dramatisation of what would really happen.  :bouncegiggle:

Having half-watched a little more, I think you're right. This was made with serious intent.

Movies like this are all woven from the same " super patriot" cloth as TOP GUN, RAMBO, and ROCKY 4.

I have been told that that one movie is responsible for generating more Freedom Eagles than anything else the US has ever produced.

"What's the difference between us and them?"

"because we live here!"

No, not meant to be satire. John Milius was dead serious, even in the scene where C Thomas Howell tastes blood and says that it didn't taste bad.  :buggedout:

Red Dawn

By Murray N. Rothbard


    

This review originally appeared in the Libertarian Forum, July-August 1984.

Red Dawn, directed by John Milius.

It's not only the Supreme Court that follows the election returns. Hollywood, too, does its bit, and movie theatres have been increasingly filled with right-wingy patriotism, like the rest of the media this endless summer. I went to see Red Dawn expecting a bout of anti-Soviet warmongering, but instead was pleasantly surprised. This is hardly a great picture, and is indeed flawed. But Red Dawn is an enjoyable teen-age saga, and, apart from right-wingy pro-NATO credits at the beginning of the film, it is not so much pro-war as it is anti-State. The warfare it celebrates is not interstate strife, but guerrilla conflict that the great radical libertarian military analyst, General Charles Lee, labeled "people's war" two centuries before Mao and Che.

The beginning of the picture is exciting, if idiotic. Cuban, Nicaraguan, Mexican and other Commie Hispanic troops, headed by Soviet advisors, parachute into and successfully conquer the entire prairie Mid West, from the Rockies to the Mississippi. In the opening sequence, the Red paratroops swiftly invade and, for some reason, annihilate a high school in the mythical town of "Culver City," Colorado, presumably somewhere in the East Slope foothills of the Rockies. In a neat touch, gun control has made it easy for the Commie occupiers to round up all the registered guns in the area. But a half-dozen high school kids escape and set up a guerrilla camp in the Rockies. Jed, the older leader and a former school quarterback, whips the other reluctant lads into shape, and soon the tiny guerrilla band, using light arms, mobile tactics, and superior knowledge of the terrain, strike terror into the Red occupying forces while brandishing the rallying name of "Wolverines." There are some revoltingly macho touches at the beginning, especially when one of the young lads receives his mystical baptism into the guerrilla rites by drinking the blood of his first kill – fortunately a deer rather than a Commie. These touches subside after a while, although they are hardly softened by the appearance of two young lady guerrillas who are fierce and androgynous enough to pose for a Viet Cong or Algerian guerrilla poster.



One of the best parts of the picture is the graphic portrayal of how the Red response to the Wolverines runs the gamut of the U. S. counter-revolutionary responses to the Vietnamese. That is, at first the Russian commander decides to hole up in the cities and military bases, into the "safe zones," whereupon the Wolverines boldly demonstrate that in guerrilla war there are no safe zones, and that the "front is everywhere." At that point, another crackerjack Russian commander takes over, and replicates the "search and destroy" counter-guerrilla response of the Green Berets. This is more punishing, but still does not succeed.

One big problem with the picture is that there is no sense that successful guerrilla war feeds on itself; in real life the ranks of the guerrillas would start to swell, and this would defeat the search-and-destroy concept. In Red Dawn, on the other hand, there are only the same half-dozen teenagers, and the inevitable attrition makes the struggle seem hopeless when it need not be.

Another problem is that there is no character development through action, so that, except for the leader, all the high school kids seem indistinguishable. As a result, there is no impulse to mourn as each one falls by the wayside.

But whatever flaws the movie has are redeemed by one glorious – and profoundly libertarian – moment. The Nicaraguan-Cuban insurgent leader is increasingly unhappy acting as a State occupying force. He tells the implacable Russian commander: "Once I was an insurgent. Now I'm a policeman" – the last word spoken with profound contempt. He writes his wife: "What am I doing in this cold and lonely spot, so far away from home?" So that, in the climax of the film, as one people's war guerrilla to another, he saves the hero, Jed, and allows him to slip out of the Russian net. Ideology, left and right, gets swallowed up in hands-across-the-sea of people's guerrillas against their respective States.

In all war pictures there is the annoying pacifist nudge, griping about "how do we differ from them," since both are shooting and killing. (The LeFevre-Smith motif.) Jed's answer is satisfactory enough, even though lacking profound argumentation: "Because we live here!"

Another fine touch is that the evil informer who almost does the Wolverines in is, naturally, the son of the town Mayor, who is identified by friend and foe alike as "the politician." The Mayor, who directs the betrayal, cringes fawningly if despairingly in carrying out the orders of the occupation force.

Even as a kid, I couldn't help but wonder about that part...

Honestly I was amazed at how far-fetched this movie was.... And I'm someone who thinks some Scooby-Doo villains had good ideas.

About the only excuse I can come up with for that movie was:

"Hey, it was the '80's."

I last saw this when it was first released: time for a rewatch, so avenge me boys, avenge me.  :teddyr:

Iron Eagle too.  :smile:

It's downright plausible compared to the 2012 remake.

Or how an American teenager is enough to deal with a Gadafi clone. Diplomacy be damned! The sequels are so-soo, except for number III. I mean, it has Nazis, Sonny Chiba, Rachel McLish and s Bond series director that tries too hard not to look incompetent with that budget.

I last revisited "Red Dawn" about ten years ago, around the time the remake was about to come out. I thought it was bad-ass when I was a kid, but as I watched all I could do was roll my eyes at how easily impressed I was when I was fourteen. :D

I had a history teacher in high school who was obsessed with that movie, though. He seriously treated it as an instructional film on what to do when the Russkies come. We watched in in class and discussed it in depth. For the rest of the school year, if we wanted to get him to go off-script and abandon his lesson plan for the day, all someone had to do was mention "Red Dawn" and he'd be off and runnin'. :D

Every single time somebody mentions Red Dawn, I get it confused with the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jim Belushi movie Red Heat.  It makes for some confusing conversations. 

Every single time somebody mentions the Schwarzenegger/Belushi movie RED HEAT, I get it confused with the Linda Blair and Sylvia Kristel movie RED HEAT.

Given what the Ukrainians are doing against the Russians right now, maybe RED DAWN wasn't that farfetched after all?

Speak of the devil:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88gpm3/red-dawn-becomes-bizarre-reality-in-ukraine-with-wolverines-graffiti (https://www.vice.com/en/article/88gpm3/red-dawn-becomes-bizarre-reality-in-ukraine-with-wolverines-graffiti)

...and now we got another TOP GUN movie.  :bluesad:

The trailer looks awesome.  :smile:

^ It looks like if I watch it I might throw up in my mouth. Maybe on the rug.
Vapid garbage is ok, as long as it isn't pushed like some kind of event.
And it's Tom Cruise. AND Val Kilmer! Oh yeah!  :bluesad:
Are folks really that nostalgic for this sh!t?