Movies - Red Dawn

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	Movies - Red Dawn

Red Dawn is a 1984 movie by John Milius about an invasion of the United States by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and the resulting guerrilla actions of a group of American high school students in the fictional town of Calumet, Colorado.

The movie featured Patrick Swayze (Jed Eckert), C. Thomas Howell (Robert Morris), Lea Thompson (Erica), Charlie Sheen (Matt Eckert), Darren Dalton (Daryl Bates), Jennifer Grey (Toni) and Powers Boothe (Colonel Andy Tanner).

Produced at the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, "Red Dawn" has become something of a camp classic amongst film fans for it's totally played straight, Cold War propaganda-esque take on the notion of the Soviet Union invading America and American teenagers forming a resistance cell to battle Cuban and Russian troops.

Plot summary

The film's plot involves a Soviet and Cuban/Latin American invasion of the United States in the year 1984 igniting a World War. The film is set in a small Colorado town where a bunch of teenagers take to the hills first to escape, then later to fight against the occupation forces. While the film provides a large amount of alternate history material, it does little more than serve as a device to justify the story told in the film. The story itself is about young people on the ground resisting a military occupation and is many respects timeless.

The film's plot relies on several alternate history political precursors. They include the collapse of NATO (which leaves the U.S. without any major allies except the UK and later China) and the spread of Communism to all of Central America and Mexico. The latter condition not only gives the Soviets a neighboring country to stage an invasion from but also large allied armies to help invade and occupy the U.S.

It starts with Russia suffering its worst wheat harvest in 55 years. Apparently desperate for food to feed its people, the Soviet Union and it's Latin American allies launch a full scale invasion of the United States in September 1984, igniting World War III. The Soviets destroy several major U.S. cities with ICBM strikes, especially key points of communication (Omaha and Washington, D.C. are specifically cited). Simultaneously Soviet troops and their Latin American Communist allies invade the U.S. on three fronts. First Russian transport aircraft slip through U.S. radar disguised as commercial airlines. These planes contain crack Spetsnaz troops and Cuban Special Forces who parachute and occupy strategic towns and transportation hubs. The second force is composed of Mexican, Nicaraguan, and other Central American Communist armies who pour across the U.S.-Mexico border into the center of the United States. The Russians themselves invade Alaska from Siberia. They cross into Canada, cut the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, but are decisively stopped at the border by the U.S. Military. Much of the progress and politics of the war is left to the viewers' speculation, but updates are later provided by a downed USAF F-15 Pilot, played by Powers Boothe. Among them is that China has suffered the loss of at least 400 million people in a Russian nuclear attack, apparent retribution for opposing the invasion. The film treats nuclear war as no big deal. A nuclear world war in particular is shown to have no effect on the world beyond those directly killed.

The Communist forces manage to occupy and control the central third of the United States, extending from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River. Once the lines are stabilized, it quickly becomes a conventional war with both sides ceasing their use of nuclear weapons. The USAF pilot explains that the Soviets are reluctant to use any more nuclear weapons as they want to conquer the United States, not flatten it, and the US government is unwilling to use tactical nukes on their own soil against the invading armies. The Soviets establish puppet governments at the local level to help them maintain order.

The plot revolves around several Colorado high school students who hide in the mountains and eventually start a guerrilla campaign against increasingly frustrated Communist troops. They call themselves the Wolverines after their school's mascot. Some have commented the film is instructional in how to wage brutal partisan resistance. The American youths launch raids, set ambushes, use sniper attacks, plant terrorist bombs and even execute a prisoner of war and one of their own American members who tried to betray them to the Soviets during their campaign. There is a grim atmosphere to much of the acting despite the popular view this is simply a cartoonish, Gung-Ho patriotic Cold War-era action film. Some critics have also suggested that the film's cold-war political baggage and heavy-handed ideology take away from what is actually a well-made/acted film.

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