Red Dawn
Dir: John Milius
1984
**
When I was a kid watching red Dawn I thought it was the coolest thing ever. That worries me somewhat now that I think about it as an adult. John Milius was and is very childlike in many respects, his films are all fantasies that most 10 year old boys can relate to. There are lots of things going on with Red Dawn but probably less than is usually discussed. Before anything, I believe the scenario is what came first, Milius and Kevin Reynolds are a couple of 'Wouldn't it be cool if...' writers before they are political speakers. However, Milius is well known to be pretty right-wing (although he claims he's a new-age hippy at heart) and the film can't hide from the fact that it's an overblown and fairly ridiculous piece of patriotic cold war propaganda. The problem with blind patriotism is that often very little thinking is involved. There is more to it than pointing a gun at who you are told the enemy is and pulling the trigger. Putting aside how ridiculous Russia invading America is, the film is riddled with NRA references but then also, the Russians are forcing captured Americans to watch Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky - a very famous anti-Nazi film. Maybe it's more obvious now but when watching the brilliant documentary Milius you'll see that he did loose many friends and much work because of it. I don't think Milius is a right-wing devil though, I see Red Dawn as more of a war-porn movie from before the phrase was coined. Kids like playing solder, Red Dawn takes it one step further but for me the film was about Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen looking cool and being heroic, it's sad to see how seriously it was taken by some, indeed the operation to capture Saddam Hussein was called Operation Red Dawn and the team called themselves the Wolverines like in the film. An illegal War operation on a country that posed no threat. The irony is somewhat unnerving.