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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.