Red Dawn

It was on TV today. I'm sick from how much poker, football, and movies I've been watching today. I think I just experienced a normal Sunday for most Americans - lots of TV and doing jack shit. I feel sick.

In any case, Red Dawn, I just realized is a modern western. It's the famous 80s film when Russian, Nicaraguan, and Cuban armies invade the US, for no apparant reason. It's a bleak look at a bunch of teenagers who fight the Russian's. It also became the namesake for the operation that caught Saddam Hussein. Watching it is weird. One of justications Patrick Swayze gives for killing a prisoner when challenged "what makes us different from THEM," is his valient shout: "WE live here." Jennifer Grey commits an act of terrorism by blowing up a Russian military post in the town. You could easily read this film as support for the insurgency in Iraq. A foreign army occupying a country. In the film, thank goodness, the Russian army is super brutal and kills many innocent civilians just to reiterate how bad they are.

One Cuban military advisor has issues with the red army and misses his lovely cuban wife at home and wonders how his current mission fulfils "La Revolution." At the end, he sees the two brothers, Swayze and Charlie Sheen, and lets them go, his heart apparently always having been in the right place.

The film is a Western because of it's location and theme. Most of film is shot out in the plains of the Dakotas. The theme of man/group against a brutal and unfriendly world take up much of the film. Swayze carries a revolver, reminicant of Clint Eastwood. They ride horses. The movie is modern because it deals with a present (at it's time) political situation. It does not take place around the Civil War. Interestingly, it refers to Afghanistan and Swayze throughout the film wears basically a turban to keep his head warm. He's an Afghan Arab - he's Osama Bin Laden, minus millions of bucks. It is very violent. According to IMDB, it had the most acts of violence in any film up until that time. It is a rallying cry for American values.

It was written and directed by John Milnus, a USC alum, and writer of Dirty Harry.