Review of Red Dawn (1984) by Black S — 05 Apr 2009

This was no "Propaganda movie of the 80's" as all too many shallow thinkers purport. Director Milius had an agenda no doubt, however it is the same agenda as for his other film "Dillinger": To make a blood & thunder action film with historical riffs.

I love the beats he slips in throughout. The visual nod to Teddy "Strenuous life" Roosevelt's "Rough Riders" (who were saved in battle by Black Cavalrymen). The allegory with American Revolutionary War martyr Crispus Attucks, when the history professor (Frank McRae) is the first to buy the farm.

..The radio messages being the same as used by French Maquis partisans in WW2 (as portrayed, and lifted from, the film "The Longest Day"), and the knowing smites at American firearms infingements, when we see the enemy commander (A dashing beret & mustachioed Ron "Superfly" O'Neal) order his troops to grab the BATF "Form 4473"s from the sporting goods store so they know the names and addresses of everyone who owns guns in the area so they can be "dealt with" (paperwork forced on citizens with threat of prison by the Fed Gov to legally buy a firearm, a wink by Milius who knows there are many in our own government that would love to do the same with this paperwork as the communist tyrants portrayed in this film).

...and of course the scene where we literally see a Soviet paratrooper wrest a 1911A1 Government Model .45 from the "cold dead fingers" of a fallen citizen militiaman. "Red Dawn" is simply a cracking good "shoot-em'-up" with melodramatic interludes and nothing more, as was "Dillinger".

Milius wanted to make a combat movie, earned the right, and this is it. (It is also the reason he is blackballed in hollywood to this day). So drop your snobbish pretensions, take it for what it is, grab the salted & buttered and have fun with it.

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