Movie Review: 'Red Dawn' (1984 Original Version)

Red Dawn 
Release Date: August 10, 1984
Screenplay by: John Milius and Kevin Reynolds, based on a story by Kevin Reynolds
Directed by: John Milius
Starring: Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson, C. Thomas Howell, Ron O'Neal, Ben Johnson, Harry Dean Stanton, William Smith, Powers Boothe, Jennifer Grey



Director John Milius' 1984 Red Dawn is one of my favorite "what-if" action movies. Set in the late 1980s, Red Dawn depicts an invasion of the United States in a truly dystopian post-Reagan world.

"Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years. Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet troops invade. Cuba and Nicaragua reach troop strength goals of 500,000. El Salvador and Honduras fall. Greens party gains control of West German Parliament. Demands withdrawal of nuclear weapons from European soil. Mexico plunged into revolution. NATO dissolves. United States stands alone." - Prologue title cards, Red Dawn

Originally conceived by Kevin Reynolds (Fandango, Rapa Nui) as an anti-war picture titled Ten Soldiers, Red Dawn morphed into a patriotic (some folks might even call it jingoistic) Cold War-themed fantasy in which a handful of Colorado high school students wage guerrilla warfare against a Soviet-led invasion of the U.S. homeland. 

When Communist paratroopers descend on a high school football field in Colorado, a group of the school's students wages an all-out guerrilla war to save their town - and their country!  - From the 2012 MGM/20th Century Fox Blu-ray package blurb

 Set in the fictional Colorado town of Calumet and the surrounding mountain region, Red Dawn begins with a spectacular sequence in which Soviet airborne troops land on Calumet High's football field. In a shocking spree of violence, the invaders blaze away at students and faculty members alike as a handful of survivors (Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Darren Dalton, Brad Savage, and Doug Toby) flee from enemy-occupied Calumet in Jed Eckert's (Patrick Swayze) pickup. 

This rag-tag group of youngsters drives to a gas station/general store owned by one of the boys' father (Roy Jensen), who tells them to stock up on guns, ammo, canned food, and other supplies - and head (literally) for the hills. The boys grab everything they can - shotguns, bow-and-arrow sets, a football, canned foods - to ensure their survival. 

Darryl Bates: [he and the other Wolverines are gathering food, weapons and survival equipment from Robert Morris's father's store] And grab some toilet paper; I ain't gonna use no leaves.

Red Dawn switches back and forth between the Wolverines (the boys take the name of their high school athletic team as their band of brothers' nom de guerre) and the Russo-Cuban forces that try to "pacify" the Colorado Rockies. The commander of the occupying forces is a charismatic Cuban Army colonel named Ernesto Bella (Ron O'Neal), who co-opts the town mayor (Lane Smith) as a collaborator. 

At first the idealistic Bella seeks to win the Americans' "hearts and minds" to achieve his goals, but when the Wolverines turn from a group of scared kids into a band of deadly guerrillas, he finds himself using more bellicose methods, urged by his Soviet superior, General Bratchenko (Vladek Sheybal). 

Colonel Ernesto Bella: [in the now-occupied Calumet, Colorado] It would seem necessary to win the support of the people. As our opponents used to say in Vietnam: "Win their hearts and minds."

General Bratchenko: And they lost, Ernesto... Morale is crucial right now. Keep the men in the secured areas. You'll see how they forget about these "Wolverines."

Colonel Ernesto Bella: [Toni blows up a nearby "Soviet-American Friendship Center."] You were saying, Comrade?

General Bratchenko: Oh, shut up!

Meanwhile, the Wolverines' ranks increase by three members: two young girls (Lea Thompson, Jennifer Grey) who barely escaped vicious rapes by Soviet invaders, and later by U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Andy Tanner (Powers Boothe). 

As time passes and the Wolverines become more proficient at fighting a war, the invaders turn the full force of their fury against them. Through subterfuge and the use of Mi-24 gunships and T-72 tanks, the Communists declare all-out war against the persistent guerrillas. Led now by a cold-blooded commander, Col. Strelnikov (William Smith), the Russo-Cuban army unleashes its deadliest unit, the Spetsnaz force. 

Col. Strelnikov: [he lectures the Russo-Cuban Army about what must be done regarding the Wolverines] From this moment on... There will be no further reprisals against civilians. This was stupid. Impotence. Comrades... If a fox stole your chickens... Would you slaughter your pig because he saw the fox? No. You would hunt the fox... You would find where it lives and destroy it! And how do we do this? Become a fox. 

My Take

Red Dawn was one of my favorite movies of 1984. I watched it twice during its original theatrical run, and it was one of the first films I bought on videocassette at a time when VHS tapes cost, on average, $79.99. 

It might surprise some of you, but even though I support many liberal causes, I am a die-hard anti-Communist. Always have been, always will be. I also believe in a strong national defense and the need for a professional, well-equipped military. So this film, as flawed and gleefully pro-war as it may be, has always appealed to me.

Sure, its premise is a bit difficult to believe. It's hard to imagine any country, much less the former Soviet Union, invading the U.S. and occupying the heartland. But Red Dawn's scenario, which depends on a combination of events that include the dissolution of NATO and a Marxist revolution in Mexico, is partly based on a CIA study undertaken at the height of the Cold War. (According to the Internet Movie Database: "The plot, a Soviet/Cuban invasion from Mexico, was based on CIA and War College studies of US weaknesses at the time.")

Interestingly, Red Dawn was the only Cold War-turns-hot depiction of Soviet-American military clashes that doesn't incinerate the entire world in a thermonuclear war until Tom Clancy's 1986 novel Red Storm Rising. It doesn't say that nuclear weapons were not used. Both sides used them, but mostly the Soviets - against a few selected targets in the U.S., China, and Great Britain. But in contrast to the NBC miniseries World War III, the superpowers stop using nukes and wage a conventional war, mostly in the U.S. heartland. 

In our time, no foreign army has ever occupied American soil. Until now.

So, yes, Red Dawn's dystopian future was plausible enough for the movie to work as an "Afghanistan in America" scenario, which was the filmmakers' intention to depict.

Where the movie sort of gets things wrong is how American citizens might have reacted in a real-world invasion of the homeland. Milius and Reynolds show the Wolverines as an isolated band of guerrillas with little or no help from their fellow Yanks. So if the writers wanted to show the Soviets reliving their ghastly experience in Afghanistan against the mujahedin, they erred badly by not swelling the Wolverines' ranks with other residents of the Calumet area. Instead, they depict a seemingly futile David-vs.-Goliath war where the young rebels are gradually hunted down by superior forces. 

This flaw doesn't kill my enthusiasm for Red Dawn, since it's one of my favorite watch-for-the-fun-of-seeing-things-go-BOOM flicks. But it is something to ponder about, especially since the idea is to have the Resistance win the war for America's freedom. '

In any case, this version of Red Dawn is far better than the dreadful 2012 remake by director Dan Bradley. Sure, none of the cast members gives us an Academy Award-winning performance, but the acting is decent, the score by the late Basil Poledouris is exciting and powerful, and Milius creates a series of thrilling, even moving, setpiece battle sequences. 

The Blu-ray

Red Dawn's status as a cult favorite means that it has been issued several times on Blu-ray and DVD. There are, according to Blu-ray.com, at least three different Blu-ray editions available, including a 2012 MGM/20th Century Fox release which came out around the same time of the inept Dan Bradley remake (which depicted the invaders as North Korean). 

An imported edition of the 2012 MGM re-issue which was released to coincide with the remake. My copy is the U.S. edition and has similar cover art...without the big "15s" seen here. (C) 2012 MGM/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

I own the re-release that was issued in October of 2012. (There's an even newer re-issue being distributed by Shout! Factory.) It's a one Blu-ray disc (BD) set that brings viewers the 114-minute-long feature film, three behind-the-scenes featurettes, and the original trailer. It doesn't have an audio commentary track by the surviving cast members and creative crew, but I suppose the three making-of documentaries give viewers enough insights about the movie, why it was made, and how the filmmakers replicated Soviet Army vehicles (including the Mi-24 Hinds and T-72 tanks) so accurately that the CIA sent a team to the New Mexico locations to find out how Milius had acquired them.  

Blu-ray Specifications (October 9, 2012 MGM/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment BD)

Video

• Codec: MPEG-4 AVC (32.70 Mbps)
• Resolution: 1080p
• Aspect ratio: 1.84:1
• Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Audio

• English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
• Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono
• French: DTS 2.0
• Portuguese: Dolby Digital Mono
• Italian: DTS 2.0
• German: DTS 2.0
• Russian: DTS 5.1
• Spanish: DTS 2.0
• Czech: Dolby Digital Mono
• Thai: Dolby Digital 2.0

Subtitles

• English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, German, Cantonese, Dutch, Indonesian, Italian, Mandarin (Traditional), Polish, Thai

Discs

• Blu-ray Disc
• Single disc (1 BD-50)

Playback

• Region free