Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!sri-unix!RAcosta.ES@XEROX.ARPA From: RAcosta.ES@XEROX.ARPA Newsgroups: net.movies Subject: "Red Dawn" Message-ID: <12479@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Wed, 15-Aug-84 15:16:46 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12479 Posted: Wed Aug 15 15:16:46 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 18-Aug-84 01:07:59 EDT Lines: 46 Welcome to 1984. A time when the President of the United States tells a joke about having signed "...legislation to outlaw Russia forever...the bombing will begin in five minutes.", when Soviet SS20's demarcate Western Europe like a picket fence and the combined din of U.S. and Soviet sabre-rattling has reached an unbearable level for most people of the world. What we really need is a good ol 'mericans vs. the Reds flick, right? I mean the kind of movie John Wayne would have made had he stuck to war movies, not those dumb cop movies he made towards the end of his career, like "Green Berets". The kind of movie that gives jingoism a good name. "Red Dawn", directed by John Milius and starring Patrick Swayze and C.Thomas Howell (they of "The Outsiders" and the also recently released "Grandview, USA") is such a movie. It takes place in the town and surrounding mountains of Calumet (Montana?), USA. It seems that the combined communist forces of the Soviet Union, Cuba and Nigaragua have driven up through Mexico and paratrooped into America's beloved Big Sky country, splitting the United States into two parts: Free America (west of the Rockies and east of the Mississippi) and Occupied America (everything else). Why they chose this strategy and not a preemptive nuclear strike is not clear. In fact why World War III started in the first place is not clear, but in this movie that ain't the point. The point is how much body count we get. And boy do we get body count -American bodies and Communist bodies in almost every scene. What we have is the American resistance force, a group of 8 kids called the "Wolverines" (after their high school football team) ,fighting a well-equipped, well-trained division of Angola/Afghanistan/Nicaragua battle hardened Red troops. Given those circumstances the outcome is obvious -the American teenagers usually win. This neo-cold war turkey is on the whole ridiculous and brainless, though it does have some merits: C.Thomas Howell is a standout as the commie-hating-psycho, a fine cameo by that character actor nonpareil, Harry Dean Stanton ("Alien","Repo Man") and the roles written for the two teenage girls in the movie, who are strong, intelligent and equal to the boys in survival skills. There is also a small and interesting twist in the plot as a Cuban officer exhibits conscience when he realizes he has gone from being oppressed to the oppressor, but in general the Reds are portrayed as cruel barbarians. "Red Dawn" is playing at theatres and drive-ins everywhere. Speaking of drive-ins, the definitive review of this movie will probably come from Joe Bob -or maybe Pravda. /Rod.