Just for the hell of it, I’m going back to thirty-five years
ago—1984, the year that gave us striking but baffling advertisements for Apple,
the unholiness of the MTV awards was born, and in some places, certain
political figures may have made the ghost of Orwell slightly uncomfortable
after all. Above all, ’84 was certainly an interesting year for cinema—be it popular
blockbusters like Ghostbusters and Temple of Doom, but there were also many
distinct flicks, good bad or weird, in the middle. I’ll be making a series of
cursory looks at some of the ones that stand out…
First up comes one that in many ways encapsulates one of the
great concerns of the decade, besides ballooning budgets for hair stylizing and
the debilitating effects of bad Atari games: Red Dawn. It touched on the
omnipresent fear in the west of COMMUNISM, and the accompanying sword of
Damocles that was a potential World War Three. The man who decided to take on this
topic, having given us Brando-bought ramblings on Vietnam in Apocalypse Now,
was John Milius. As I mentioned in my retrospective of that film, Milius may be
a little bit unhinged, but an interesting person nevertheless—sometimes coming
off as jingoistic yet deeply cynical about his country at the same time.
But the movie itself doesn’t go for such introspection, at
least not immediately—no, we’re immediately greeted to our group of high schoolers
led by heartthrob of the time Patrick Swayze, whose ass would be a desired
trophy for bad guys by the time we got to Road House. Barely moments after
that, Soviet paratroopers land and start shooting up the school—expending thousands
of rounds of ammunition and rockets deep behind enemy lines for a not very
strategic target. You could assume some very dark comedy in that they went off
course and assumed it to be an oddly set up SEAL training facility or something,
given that military competence on all sides isn’t shown to be that great.
Swayze and his group of course escape and hole up in the
mountains, while their sleepy Colorado town becomes, inexplicably, a major
point for a massive Soviet-Cuban invasion force. While the realities of the USSR’s
military capacities weren’t fully known at the time, it’s not hard to laugh at
the scenario presented even as given in the film—the Cubans somehow drove tanks
600 miles all the way from Mexico without even getting stuck in traffic around Albuquerque.
There’s some handwaving, but the movie paints the US armed forces as oddly
impotent. All we ever see of them are a single helicopter, jet fighter, and
tank apiece, with allusions to front lines that don’t seem to move.
Nevertheless, what makes Red Dawn interesting is that it isn’t
really an ooh-rah commie shooting fest all the way, believe it or not. There’s
conflicting reports as to whether the studio toned down Milius’ jingoism or indeed
added more in, and honestly, I feel it’s closer to the latter. In Apocalypse
Now, Milius certainly didn’t mince words about the madness of war and his thoughts
on the US prosecuting it; likewise, Red Dawn actually has some sympathetic
moments for the communist invaders that contrast Swayze and co mowing them
down. There’s soldiers goofing off at tourist landmarks, and the main antagonist
is a Cuban colonel who’s just kind of doing his job for the most part, writing weary
letters back home and all. This all contrasts sharply with the cartoonishly evil
paratroopers at the start and other moments, but while this means a not
entirely consistent tone, it’s not as comically black and white as say the
Rambo sequels or any Chuck Norris movie.
Anyhoo, Swayze turns out to be a good hand at being a guerrilla
shooter because he hunted some deer a couple of times or something, and as such
he and his teenage partisans officially name themselves the Wolverines, because
litigation from Marvel is a moot point when the Reds are everywhere. There’s
many scenes of them mowing down Warsaw Pact soldiers and being hilariously
badass, with performances ranging from ‘alright’ to ‘cornier than a Reagan speech’.
A downed pilot gives them an extra helping hand, leading to one moment that’s
definitely Milius where the group agonizes over executing a captive Soviet who
remains defiant to the end. Once again, the film veers from flag-waving
commie-hunting to something that tries to be surprisingly dark and poignant—with
mixed results.
Eventually, shit gets real, the Reds buy a clue, and just
hunt down the Wolverines with helicopter gunships, leading to a bloody ending.
There is an ending that shows the US eventually won—well, I guess despite their
uselessness, the Soviets were little better—but that the monument to the heroes
themselves is barely visited, once again leaving us with that feeling of the
studio making a good patriotic film for the Ronnie Ragyun era kludged with the grimness
Milius liked so much. The film is more than a little silly, veers around in tone, and very
much a product of its time, but you can get some chuckles out of it in the way
you can some good ol’ eighties action--and at least a little insight into the diciest years of the Cold War.
There was a pointless remake in 2012 that didn’t even have the
excuse of a zeitgeist where people were actually afraid of a conflict with the
Red Menace; indeed, the filmmakers had to shift invaders from China to North
Korea of all people. The original wasn’t high art either but at least there was
something there, and it gives you a look at the feelings of an era gone by.
Whether you want to laugh at Swayze mowing down Spetsnaz or genuinely cheer the
Wolverines on, this one might be worth a beer-infused watch.
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