Sometimes, I see no difference between us Canadians and our American neighbors. We are one and the same : we share a common piece of land, a culture, several professional sports leagues and so much more. But sometimes, I bear witness to a piece of history that reminds me that my opinions often are just well-meaning, Canadian ignorance. RED DAWN was one of these pieces. This strange, exhilarating and oh-so-revered Patrick Swayze movie made me very confused. It also made me laugh out loud more than once. I think I liked RED DAWN, but given a 29 years perspective, I could not, for the love of me, take it seriously. It's an experience akin to the wet dream of a gun-toting, bible-thumping, yet slightly educated, toothless Alamabian elder stereotype on crank. If you press play with that in mind. You may find RED DAWN as entertaining as I did.
RED DAWN is a cold war movie. A pretty paranoid, disaster-scenario kind of cold war movie where the Russian Army, aided by their buddies in Cuba, invade the United States. I suppose it made sense back then, given the political climate. They take the small heartland town of Calumet by storm without any apparent reason and erect a ''reeducation camp'' for the leadership figures and the potentially troublesome. It's not the unlikely, bullied kids who barely escape to form a resistance cell. No sir. It's a bunch of football playing jocks, lead by Jed Eckert (Patrick Swayze) and his brother Matt (Charlie Sheen) that inherit the responsibility of giving hope to the POWs and take back their land. You could argue that RED DAWN is undoubtedly a bro-tastic movie.
Now, I can fathom that Russia, back then, could have potentially invaded the United States for one reason or another. Cuba, that's another story. The financial woes of Fidel Castro's nation have been well-documented ever since. But the way RED DAWN depicts the invasion and subsequent occupation of Calumet is deformed by just about every fear of the era, so it's funny in retrospective. Countless soldiers drop from the sky in silence, in front of a horrified class teacher (who happens to be teaching a class about Genghis Kan *), who walks out on his student in disbelief, only to be executed and trigger a violent rampage where several good, hardworking citizens die from badly choreographed explosions. So yeah, the content is not fun or original by any means, but the execution is hilarious. The tragic ambitions of RED DAWN rendered it comedic almost three decades later.
AVENGE ME, BOYS, AVENGE ME.
I have two favorite scene in RED DAWN. The hunting lesson is pretty good, but the best scene is the last goodbyes of Tom Eckert (the underrated Harry Dean Stanton) to his two boys. Not only his monologue is ridiculously over-the-top, but Patrick Swayze's crying face is just unreal. He is so cramped, he doesn't look like he's crying, but like he's is severe physical pain, like someone is twisting his testicles off-camera. It's meant to be sad and inspiring, but it did not hold up to father-time really well. As funny as this movie became though, it's a pretty ironic experience post-Iraq war, though. Seeing a movie where the U.S is being occupied and underfed students resist using IEDs and guns stolen from the ennemies is...well, you know. It is what is it now.
Yeah, RED DAWN is a politically confused movie. It's harvests the United States' own political folklore and those of its ennemies (notably Che Guevara) to create a romanticized icon in Jed Eckert, like he's a modern Paul Revere. Author and director John Milius is very concerned about making SURE the Eckert boys are seen as the good guys. There are several weepy scenes in between the courageous action sequences who aren't all that convincing. Pathos is just supposed to happen to you. The way RED DAWN stops and has complacent weepy scenes to boost the pathos now and then, it bugged me. But it's about the only thing in that movie that I really didn't like.
RED DAWN not a mean movie, though. It's not imperialistic or anything. It's just a strange, paranoid dream of a second amendment enthusiast. It was good action movie, a lifetime ago. It became a bad movie sometime in the nineties also, I'm sure. But in 2013, it became a funny, charming movie that provides an interesting perspective on the volatile political landscape of the world we live in.
* SYMBOLISM. WOLVERINES.