- 1984’s politically incorrect Red Dawn
Posted on 09/15/2009 9:33:52 PM PDT by FrontPageMag.com
The nation is mourning Patrick Swayze, who passed away yesterday at age 57 after a long fight with pancreatic cancer. Everyone remembers his performances in Dirty Dancing and Ghost, but few if any obituaries will commemorate his role in one of the most politically incorrect films of the last 25 years: Red Dawn.
Leftists have always despised, and still revile, the film. For a quarter-century, the far-Left has claimed Ronald Reagan brainwashed the nation’s youth with this movie. Less than a year ago, David Plotz was so troubled by it that he assailed it in a full article in Slate. “Red Dawn embodies conservative nutterdom in a way few films not made by Mel Gibson have ever managed,” he wrote. “If Ann Coulter made a movie, it would look like Red Dawn. ” (Jonah Goldberg responded on “The Corner.”)
It is fun to remember the libertine Left fretting about its violence. The Guinness Book of World Records, through some reckoning system invented by Enron, named it the most violent film in history. (It was the first film rated “PG-13.”) Its real crimes were two-fold: it showed the Soviets as aggressors promoting an insidious agenda, and it depicted the potentially Orwellian implications of gun control.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...
We have not forgotten : WOLVERINES !!!!!
Good movie.
Obviously, Slate’s David Putz has never seen any Michael Moore movies. Talk about “nutterdom”.
Red Dawn should remain forgotten.
A truly horrible film.
Red Dawn ping!
John Milius kicks ass.
I haven’t forgotten either...
WOLVERINES!!!
I like “Red Dawn” because of its overwhelmingly politically incorrect perspective, but I do kinda agree...not a great movie.
It wasn’t that bad. I thought they could have done for a bit of a better script, but you have to admit it did give one hell of a creepy effect in the unlikely event of a Soviet-Bloc invasion in the American Southwest. Watching RPG’s close up heading straight for the camera was kick-ass special effects for it’s time.
The gun control implications were frightening, as well. The ending was a bit of BS, but at least ‘we won.’
For an 80’s movie, it fared well. You have to remember it was the decade of decadence. Superficiality was reigning supreme at that time.
Go Wolverines!!!
My son loved this film too. And the Rambos :)
That’s what I typed about him in one of the first posts here about him yesterday.
Too bad this didn’t rub off on Charlie Sheen a little more (he played Jed’s younger brother).
Watching it now, I’d probably wince at the acting. But, at the height of the Cold War, when I was young, I saw it at the movies with a group of friends, and it hit home for us. Now it’s interesting to watch because it’s so different politically from the films made in Hollywood today... I wonder how Hollywood will handle its remake. I don’t think young people today are fearful of China like we were of the Soviet Union. Ironically, the original actors probably are left-leaning.
We have not forgotten : WOLVERINES !!!!!
Agreed - the script writing could have been better. But whoever was the military advisor was right on. They used actual Soviet weaponry and uniforms, including vehicles (T-62, BMP-76, Mi-26 Hind, etc.).
Yes, we don’t like Red Dawn because it was an awesome movie by any standard of art of technical brilliance. I like the overall message. And some of the ambush scenes. It was the mid-80s. We had a bunch of movies that had series of montages in them, what do you people expect?
The media hated John Milius for the Conan films, too.
Milus co-wrote Apocalypse Now with Francis Ford Coppola. One reason why the film is semi-schizophrenic as Milius is a conservative warrior type and Francis is a lib. Not a totally overbearing lib.
The Soviet military details were perfect.
And you have to admit, it had one of the most scintillating history class lectures ever!
Best high school movie ever......period.
He has been an NRA board member for at least a decade or more.
Rockin Roll High School is #2.
Mainly because The Ramones and the real brains of the band, Johnny Ramone (John Cummings guitarist) was a conservative and loved Reagan and Bush.
Good news - second chance to make it.... better
Red Dawn (2010)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234719/
He also wrote “Dirty Harry.” I guess he’s the one who wrote, “Seeing as this is a 44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and could blow your head clean off, you have to ask yourself one question....”
The Soviet troops parachuting in during the middle of a high school lecture was (and still is) very creepy. An excellent way to establish the surreal in terms of our every day life.
I remember that being one of my favorite movies when I was in elementary school. I remember being very disturbed by it the first time I watched it, and that was a good thing. I remember it was what made me realize the dangers of the world for the first time, and why it is important to have an armed citizenry.
“The media hated John Milius for the Conan films, too.”
The media hates John Milius period.
I’m more of a Dirty Harry fan, myself. ;)
Western soldiers loved it. It personified the Reagan years and our efforts against the Soviet Union and was a huge snub to the media and the left in general, and an excellent action film.
It was also banned in many theaters of West Germany and we NATO guys loved it.
Milius even got the teacher’s description of the Mongol great hunt to his history class at the beginning of the film right on the money!
Oliver Stone wrote the script for “Conan the Barbarian”.
I don’t think I saw that movie.
I’ll have to get it from Netflix.
Really!? I never knew that. Harry Callahan would be on Prozac to work at the San Fran PD today. It is probably a lot more liberal today.
He also did that surfing movie. Big Wednesday???
I loathe Oliver Stone but one good thing he did was write Scarface. Not hard because it was a remake. I think it was Pacino’s over the top “Tony” that was so entertaining and not his script.
Yeah, there was a great line in “Scarface”: “I kill Communists for fun....”
The general consensus in the states in 1984 was, it was a lousy movie. Period. No one I knew associated it with Reagan in any way shape or form.
I am still stunned Oliver Stone wrote the script because:
1. We are remindd again what an idiot Carter was with the invasion aka “boatlift.”
2. Tony at INS getting interviewed going on how bad Cuba sucks under Castro. “eating octopus until it comes out of his ears” “holes in his cheap Russian(Soviet) shoes” “police watching you on every corner.”
The Reagan administration associated itself with the film; read the rest of the post at NewsRealblog.com.
Lets make some real movies!
better?
The libs are going to turn it into something leftist, you can believe that.
I was in an American National Guard unit that was part of NATO then but we lived in the United States although some of us spent a lot of time in Europe.
Everyone in the military that I knew loved it and in Houston Texas it was popular among the "right" crowd and I always knew it as tied to Reagan.
Red Dawn was a smash hit that grossed well and opened at #1, three weekends out it was still #3.
This is the first time I have ever heard someone try to separate it from President Reagan and our pro military stance back then. Having Red Dawn was like having a Reagan theme movie.
You may see Red Dawn as a sentimental favorite film, I don’t. No one I know does either. There is no reason to separate it from Reagan and for good reason. It was never linked with Reagan. It was a bad movie, with bad production values and bad acting. No revisionism.
No matter how many other roles he has or how many years pass, C. Thomas Howell will for ever be known as the high school kid who made a valiant last against a Russian Helicopter Gunship. After having his horse shot out from under him, he takes a stand and takes on one of the worlds best killing machines armed only with an Ak-47! As he cries, “Wolverines!” The machineguns on the Hind turn him into partisan tartar.
One of the most inspiring yet poignant moments on film!
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