Red Dawn (1984): Avenging Before the Avengers Made It Cool

Red Dawn might be about Soviet/Cuban soldiers invading America, but it’s also about MAN STUFF! I’m talking about growing up too fast, eating raw meat, killing without flinching, refusing to process trauma, not showing any emotion other than anger and all sorts of other things that lead to severe, lingering emotional problems. MAN STUFF!

Directed by John Milius, Red Dawn follows a group of high school students who, like I said, grow up really fast when a group of Cuban and Soviet soldiers invade their town and take it over. Red Dawn follows an alternate timeline where World War III began in the ‘80s. Seems like movie makers in that decade had a pretty bleak outlook on our future. Thank goodness everyone’s united peacefully today so we don’t have to worry about such terrible things, ha-ha!

 Let me stress this to you- this is a very serious movie. It’s not one that you laugh at and cheer because the good guys are completely annihilating the baddies. No, this is a gritty, gloom and doom-kind of film. It’s still enjoyable, but not in the ha-ha pumped up fun way. In fact, this movie seems like every conservative/survivalist’s dream come true. One memorable shot in particular is of a bumper sticker that says, “They can have my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.” And then, said bumper sticker’s owner is lying dead beneath it, and a baddie pries the gun out of his quite cold and equally dead fingers. I bet the he saw that bumper sticker and was like “Pry it from your cold dead fingers? Don’t mind if I do!”

Anyway, part of what’s notable about this film is how many cast members went on to become big stars. There’s P-swayze himself, Patrick “Road House” Swayze, Charlie “Tiger Blood” Sheen, Jennifer “Dirty Dancin’” Grey, and Lea “I kissed my time-traveling son” Thompson in the core cast, not to mention countless great character actors like Powers Boothe, Harry Dean Stanton, and Lane Smith.

Red Dawn was the first movie ever to be released with a PG-13 rating. It was also considered the most violent film at the time it came out. Which is pretty friggin’ crazy, considering how not violent it seems when compared to modern action movies like Rambo or Saving Private Ryan or Trolls World Tour. There were a lot of explosions and a lot of people getting gunned down. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it had 134 acts of violence per hour, equaling 2.23 per minute. Now that is a lot of violence, you might think. Well, director John Milius had another take, saying: “I see this as an anti-war movie in the sense that if both sides could see this, maybe it wouldn’t have to happen. I think it would be good for Americans to see what a war would be like. The film isn’t even that violent – the war shows none of the horrors that could happen in World War III. In fact, everything that happened in the movie happened in World War II.”

Red Dawn: Delivers on the action, but not on the feel good vibes. If you are in the mood for a serious action film, pick this one up.

Time until real action starts: ~ 5 minutes.

Baddies: The Soviets and the Cubans

Best Line: “If I hide, they’ll never find me.” Um, I think someone is missing the point here.

Best Kill: A lot of the kills were just by gun shot, but Jennifer Grey put a little extra spin on it when, in an early fight, she tries to defend herself with a powerful machine gun. She pulls the trigger but she doesn’t have a good grip, so the gun is spraying bullets all over the place with Grey holding onto the back of it, still managing to kill the baddie but looking like a doofus in the process.

Best Explosion: Wow! There are a metric butt-ton of explosions in this film. One explosion that stood out was when the Wolverines attacked one of the “reeducation” camps where the baddies where holding civilians, a.k.a. concentration type camp. They throw some explosives in a jet, which explodes so friggin’ hard that it blows the pilot straight out of his seat, setting off a chain reaction until the whole camp explodes!

Action Rating: 4 Rebellious Wolverines, out of 5

Disclaimer: Just because I am the Action Flick Chick and love action movies does not mean I condone real life violence in any way. Everyone has their own shit to deal with, be nice to each other.