Wolverines!

It’s hard to imagine a time outside of 1984 where you could make, and release, a movie like Red Dawn (this is foreshadowing for a future review, I want to point out). There’s a very thin band in the middle of the 1980s where the idea of American exceptionalism, the thought that we were the best country in the world, that we could defeat any foe (especially those damn Ruskies and their damn communism), became this driving, patriotic force that overwrote everyone’s brains. America was number one. Full stop.

Movies bought into it, giving us some classics of the decade, like Top Gun and Rocky IV, that specifically had our heroes prove they were better than Russia. That was the whole point of the films: whatever the heroes are doing, it’s specifically to win the Cold War. We were going to come out as number one, and if that meant that Rocky Balboa had to defeat Russia in a boxing match, well, hell, we were just going to do it. Obviously that made sense. How else could that play out? That’s how you win a war.

And along comes Red Dawn, this seeming Brat Pack-related film where a bunch of teens get sucked into World War III, fighting the good fight for America against the threat of Russia. It’s stupid, it makes no sense, and it could never have happened… and yet, on a budget of $17 Mil, the film brought in $38 Mil during its run in the Summer of 1984, making it a modest hit that went on to be a cult classic. Teens fighting the good fight against communism was the simple idea, and it worked, but only because it was 1984 and that’s just what the country was looking for at the time.

Going back and watching the film, it’s hard to think how this could have been a hit in any other era. Frankly, the film really isn’t that great. It starts out decently enough with our heroes, Jed Eckert (Patrick Swayze) and his younger brother, Matt (Charlie Sheen), quickly coming together after troops land in their sleep town of Calumet, Colorado. These aren’t American troops, though. No, these are Russian-backed invaders from Cuba and Nicaragua. This was possible, we’re told, because by this point NATO had dissolved and America was left all on its own to defend its borders, making it ripe for attack. Jed and Matt hop into their truck, gathering other teens along the way as they’re pursued by soldiers, and head out into the mountains to survive.

But it won’t be a short time up there. The invasion was well planned and well executed, and the soldiers are here to stay. That means that it’s up to those living within the occupied zone to fight back. Jed, Matt, and their group – including C. Thomas Howell as Robert Morris, Jennifer Grey as Toni Mason, and Lea Thompson as Erica Mason – arm themselves and go on the hunt, planning and executing quick missions against the Soviets, harrying their supply lines and causing chaos, all under the banner of their high school sports team, the Wolverines. It would be up to Colonel Ernesto Bella (Ron O'Neal) to fight back and stop these teens, but as a soldier who fought as an insurgent himself, he just can’t do it. And so the war goes on, and both sides wait for the point where the tide finally turns.

I will credit the film for at least one thing: the film is bleak, and it doesn’t end on a particularly upbeat note. A group of teens fighting against trained warriors seems like a silly premise since, you would think, they would be overpowered and quickly killed. Eight or so fighters against an entire army is long odds even under the best of circumstances, and that’s not even considering they were untrained teens when this all started. What’s surprising is that the film lets them live for even four months before it all comes crashing down around them.

Spoilers for a forty year old movie: most of our heroes don’t make it out alive, and I do honestly respect that. This film documents their fight, how they battle the Soviet troops and try to cause as much chaos as they can, but the film never makes you think they’re going to somehow win the whole war all on their own. They’re fighting for Calumet specifically, to strike a blow for the people in their town that they love and nothing more. The rest of the country has to fight their own fight. This is just about seeing how long the Wolverines can survive before the inevitable toll of the war takes them, too.

So yes, I do appreciate that the film realizes no one is getting out of this story alive. With that said, that’s about the only good move the film makes because, otherwise, this is a pretty shallow and empty movie. The biggest flaw with the film is that, despite the cool setting it tries to build, it never really invests in its story. Red Dawn is, functionally, a series of action set pieces with interchangeable actors shooting, exploding, and dying over and over again. Its limited perspective and tight scope following the Wolverines means we never really understand how big the army is that occupies Calumet or what it would take for that army to be sent packing. So every battle, every fight, is meaningless filler without context.

Worse, the characters in the film are just as shallow as the story that surrounds them. Every character in the film is defined by a single trait. Jed is the soulful leader, Matt his brother, Robert the battle-hardened tough, and Toni and Erica are the girls. That’s really it. None of the characters become more than their predefined roles, and the film doesn’t even bother investing anything into their dynamics at all. Once they join the Wolverines they become warriors, and the film treats them like little figurines on a board it can move around. Hell, even when one of them dies it’s hard to care because, for most of the pack of Wolverines in the film, you can’t even remember their names or tell them apart.

The film only really cares about showing us the invasion and, eventually, the battle pushing back the Soviets. It’s peak 1984 patriot porn, and in Red Dawn, as in real porn, story, setting, and characters don’t matter nearly as much as the action. The set pieces are quick and dirty, but there’s a lot of them so if you want to see lots of guns firing, vehicles exploding, and bodies flying, this film has you covered. It’s absolutely rife with shots of Americans sending the Ruskies back to Hell (without having any character necessarily say as much), and for the year it came out, that was what audiences wanted. You can understand why it did so well when it was released despite it being a shallow, basic, and largely empty film.

But now, all these years removed, it’s much harder to like this film. Sure, it’s amusing to see all these Brat Pack outliers acting in this war movie. Sometimes they even give us something approaching a good performance, too. Red Dawn is more a cinematic curiosity, though, than a real film anymore. The time and place where the film played best is long gone and in its wake is a very different country, with very different foes, fighting for a very different kind of patriotism. This isn’t anywhere near the right era to make a film like Red Dawn and it’s hard to imagine audiences wanting that or studios thinking that would be a good idea. This film only worked when it was released, and then soon after everyone realized, “wait… this film kind of sucks.” Yes, it does, and there’s no getting around that.

Which makes it all the more baffling that, nearly thirty years later, FilmDistrict decided to remake the film in 2012. A different era, a different world, and a much worse Red Dawn… which we’ll have to cover soon enough.