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From: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: "Red Dawn"
Message-ID: <773@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 11-Aug-84 21:17:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.773
Posted: Sat Aug 11 21:17:46 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Aug-84 00:40:42 EDT
Organization: UCLA CS Dept.
Lines: 74

"Red Dawn" is a movie that's going to upset a lot of people.  It's already
upset quite a few reviewers, and columnists are going to get a lot of copy
out of it, especially if it becomes popular.  "Red Dawn" is probably the
most blatently right-wing movie to come out of Hollywood in the last five
years.  Not unexpectedly, critics, who are mostly more liberal than not, 
have been dumping on it.  I think that many of the reviews I've seen of
it are more informed by ideology than aesthetics, which, in a sense, is a
pity.  It would be a lot more of a pity if they were trying to bury a really
good film.

For those who don't see coming attraction trailers or read reviews or look at
newspaper ads, the film concerns a Russian invasion of the United States in
the near future.  As far as I'm concerned, this makes it science fiction.
The sequence of events which the film implies lead up to the war are
implausible; the belief that the Russians could nuke a few US cities and
not cause an escalation to thermonuclear war is, in my opinion, ridiculous.
However, good films have been made on stupid premises before, so I was willing 
to suspend disbelief and go along for the ride.

John Milius, the film's director, is a genuine reactionary.  The last film
he made was "Conan the Barbarian", whose philosophy he apparently takes
seriously, and the last President he seems to have approved of was Teddy
Roosevelt.  It should thus come as no surprise that the film is set in a
conservative Western area.  (It might have been more interesting to see how
New York or Los Angeles would react to a Russian invasion.)  The main characters
are a group of high school kids who light off into the mountains when the
Russians drop paratroops on their Rocky Mountain town.  After a suitable set
of Communist atrocity scenes, they become guerillas, fighting the Soviet and
Cuban troops behind the lines.

That's about it for plot.  They are successful, then they are unsuccessful,
then they are mostly dead.  There is no current of dramatic tension here,
no sense that they are foredoomed, or that they are even doing anything
terribly important, other than slaughtering commies basically at random.
This is the film's greatest weakness.  It has incidents, not plot.   A
stronger story would really make a big difference.

The second biggest problem is characterization.  Only two or three of the
young guerillas stand out as individuals.  Milius might have done better
to choose more distinctive looking actors.  He might also have included
more scenes which shed light on their characters.  (This really is his 
fault, since he wrote the screenplay, too.)  The leader of the guerillas,
played by Patrick Swayze, makes some impression.  C. Thomas Howell has the
best part of the young folks, and he too is easy to place.  The rest are
a largely indistinguishable mass.  I had difficulty telling which of the
two young women was doing what, and I only recognized the actor playing
Swayze's brother when Milius took time to remind me.  The adults, mostly
played by veteran character actors, escape this by their familiar faces,
not by virtue of the script.  

One talent Milius does have, and displays in extravagent fashion, is the
ability to choreograph action scenes.  A lot of screen time is spent on
shooting and blowing up things and people, and Milius gets much visceral
excitement into these scenes.  However, since the significance of this
is never really explained, action can't save the movie.  Moreover, there is
a problem with consistency.  At one point, the kids are incredibly clever
guerilla fighters, at another they are idiots.  The only reason for this is
to give them a chance to get killed, as I see it.

There were enough points of interest in "Red Dawn" to keep me satisfied,
if not thrilled.  The audience I saw it with, though, loved it to an
extent that is frightening.  Any anti-Communist, or anti-Russian, sentiment
uttered met with wild cheers, as did the gunning down of Soviet troops.
They even cheered when the word "California" was mentioned in passing.  
I found their wild enthusiasm for mayhem to be a bit too akin to ancient
Romans cheering on gladiators (or more appropriately, cheering the lions
which were rending the Christians).  If this is any indication, "Red Dawn"
will be a big hit and we will be at war in Central America in no time at
all.
-- 

					Peter Reiher
					reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
					{...ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!reiher