Red Dawn : A Politcially Incorrect Vision of Guerilla War by John Milius

When Hollywood decides to make a "controversial" film, it is usually about a subject or theme that the Hollywood community, which tends to be to the left of the political spectrum, agrees on and the movie watching audience does not. In 1984, director John Milius, fresh from successful films like The Wind and the Lion and Conan the Barbarian, decided to create controversy in a different way. He made Red Dawn, a film depicting the Soviet invasion of the United States and the efforts of partisans, mainly high school kids, to fight them off. Hollywood has never forgiven Milius for doing this.

Red Dawn starts in the "near future" (from circa 1984), when NATO has collapsed, Mexico has fallen to Marxist revolution, and America, in essence, "stands alone." A High School history class in a small town in Colorado is being treated to a lecture about Geingas Khan. Quietly, almost unobtrusively, a Soviet parachute unit is dropping down in the footfall field outside. The teacher is killed, students are killed, and pandemonium breaks out.

A group of students, along with an older youth played by Patrick Swayze, flee into the wilderness, armed with hunting rifles and supplies taken from a gas station/convenience store owned by one of their fathers. At first they survive by hunting and fishing, but soon find that their town is occupied by a Soviet Army that is also comprised of Cubans and Nicaraguans. An incident with some Russians soldiers occurs with the Russians winding up dead, weapons are captured, and the guerilla war is on.

Using captured weapons of greater and greater sophistication, the youthful partisans turn their part of occupied Colorado into their version of Afghanistan (a country where a real guerilla war was bleeding the Russians dry at the time) for the Soviets. Yet Red Dawn is not a feel good evil commies vrs pure Americans story. In Red Dawn, the war changes the young guerillas in ways that are often not pretty to look at. And major characters die one by one due to the awful logic of war. It is implied rather than shown that American won the war in the end, but one must reflect that it must have been at a grievous cost.

One amusing scene, which must have been an attempt by John Milius to stick his finger in various eyes, was when a Soviet soldier literally pries a pistol from the cold, dead hand of an American gun owner. Milius is a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association.

Besides Patrick Swayze, the cast of young partisans reads like a list of young Hollywood at the time, when several who would become more famous in the future. These include C. Thomas Howell, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Grey, and Lea Thompson. Ron O'Neal, a star of blackploitation films of the 70s, does a good turn as a guilt ridden Cuban officer who has more sympathy for his American opponents than his Russian allies. Powers Booth is a gruff, but oddly appealing fighter pilot who is shot down behind enemy lines and is succored by the young partisans.

Red Dawn is dated these days, of course. The Cold War ended entirely different than depicted in the movie. But it does remain a marvelous example of political incorrectness and a study into what war, even a just war, can do to the people waging it.