Red Dawn (1984)
Wolverines!
THE SUMMARY: A Cold War coalition of commies invades the United States, and a band of Colorado high schoolers fights to repel them. It’s cool in concept, but terrible in execution. Clumsy action, boring characters, and very little of philosophical interest combine to make a very sleepy action movie.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER JASON: A gritty movie about how regular Americans fight back after an invasion of the US - this movie is a conservative’s fantasy about how they would act if shit really hit the fan.
JAMIE AND JEANNE’S AI FACESWAP ART:
If I had been a triplet.
A fat commie - that’s how you know this movie is fake.
We all know the show ends with one of us doing this to the other.
If Blonde stormed Stalingrad.
THE BEST:
Cool concept, but: The concept has Five Wicky™ potential - what would actually happen if the United States was invaded by a hostile power? It’s never happened on the scale portrayed in this movie, at least by formal military. Just the army of loosely-affiliated Juans and Josés invading the southern border, but that’s not quite the same thing. The idea of an American insurgency like this is fascinating, a reversal of our modern ‘world police’ role, and there are so many possibilities to explore within it.
It’s just Red Dawn… doesn’t. Whatever would happen in that situation, it’s not Marty McFly’s mom dominating the battlefield with her marksmanship and mounted machine gun proficiency. There was nothing interesting or smart or creative about the Wolverines’ strategy or tactics at all. They just show up to a few different spots, shoot a few Russians, and move on.
Straight to the action: The only thing I’ll remember from this movie is its opening, which was great. I appreciate an action movie that gets straight to that point, and Red Dawn does, with a Russian paratrooper school shooting, back when you could still show school shootings and Moms Demand Action wouldn’t stop the movie before it’s ever produced.
The invaders know to find the 4473s: When Colonel Bella first invades Calumet, he directs his men to go to the sporting goods store and find the Form 4473s, because these files will tell him who has what guns where. Form 4473 is required to be completed upon purchase of any firearm from a licensed dealer, by federal law. While technically the feds can only access these records individually as part of a criminal investigation, by law, these dealers have to keep them all on file for twenty years, so the premise here is correct: every gun dealer is a mini registry, and the feds require them to be.
Why would anybody need to build a ‘ghost gun’ (more accurately, a self-manufactured firearm that requires no serial number because it’s for personal use)? Well, this is why. There are valid reasons not to want the feds, or the gun store, or anybody else to know exactly what weapons you have. You never know when or how or why that information will be used to target you.
What if?
The ATF and a foreign army - the threat is actually about the same
THE WORST:
Horribly overacted: Avenge me!!! You son of a bitch!!! The entire Daryl execution scene. Much of the dialogue and death is horribly overacted and completely unbelievable. Characters go from zero to 100 emotionally in an instant, which presents as funny, not dramatic or tense.
No compelling characters: All the characters are an amorphous blob. There’s nothing remotely interesting about a single one of them, so much so that they all run together and you forget who’s who. Which ones are brothers and which ones are friends again? Where did these chicks come from? Why does this Air Force pilot matter? Trick question - none of them do. All the characters are completely generic and interchangeable, and nobody cares when they die, even Jed and Matt.
No compelling writing or dialogue: Can you actually quote a single memorable line from this movie, other than the word ‘wolverines?’ Not that every movie must be driven by the script, but c’mon - there isn’t one conversation in this movie that anyone remembers or even drives the story meaningfully. Oh, this guy died. That’s sad. Oh, that girl died. That’s also sad. The end.
No substantive philosophy or moral question: For all the potential of a great premise, this movie is hardly an inch deep. No commentary or meaningful themes about the nature of communism versus freedom, which is the whole point of the Cold War conflict. Or the strategy or morality of guerrilla warfare, which is the whole point of this setting and scenario. There’s no difficult choice the characters face, or questionable decision made. The movie is just point A to point B, with no interesting scenery along the way to make the ride worthwhile.
Clumsy action: What are supposed to be tense action scenes present more like they should have Yakety Sax playing behind them. Everybody’s shooting from the hip, running around like a bunch of jackasses, and dying with about as much authenticity as a high school Shakespeare production. Nothing about the combat looks or feels convincing. It looks like a bunch of goofs who have never handled a rifle before, but are somehow competing against armor on a battlefield by chucking grenades with constantly perfect accuracy like they’re backyard cornhole champs. I don’t think the producers ever handled firearms before either - at one point, Tanner is shooting his pistol with the slide locked back.
It’s just cheese, which can be good - I enjoy plenty of ‘80s gunfight cheese - but then this movie turns around with its constant tear jerks and expects me to cry about it too. Be silly or serious, but pick one.
It baffles me that many commenters praise this scene’s authenticity. I’ve seen far more convincing AI generations.
Even Alec and Hannah handle guns more competently.
THE RATING: 2/5 Wickies. There’s a great concept here, but I spent the whole movie waiting for it to be realized. It never was. It’s hard to make me sleepy during a military combat movie. Red Dawn does.
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NEXT WEEK: The Sandlot (1993)
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