- 1984’s politically incorrect Red Dawn
Posted on 09/15/2009 9:33:52 PM PDT by FrontPageMag.com
The nation is mourning Patrick Swayze, who passed away yesterday at age 57 after a long fight with pancreatic cancer. Everyone remembers his performances in Dirty Dancing and Ghost, but few if any obituaries will commemorate his role in one of the most politically incorrect films of the last 25 years: Red Dawn.
Leftists have always despised, and still revile, the film. For a quarter-century, the far-Left has claimed Ronald Reagan brainwashed the nation’s youth with this movie. Less than a year ago, David Plotz was so troubled by it that he assailed it in a full article in Slate. “Red Dawn embodies conservative nutterdom in a way few films not made by Mel Gibson have ever managed,” he wrote. “If Ann Coulter made a movie, it would look like Red Dawn. ” (Jonah Goldberg responded on “The Corner.”)
It is fun to remember the libertine Left fretting about its violence. The Guinness Book of World Records, through some reckoning system invented by Enron, named it the most violent film in history. (It was the first film rated “PG-13.”) Its real crimes were two-fold: it showed the Soviets as aggressors promoting an insidious agenda, and it depicted the potentially Orwellian implications of gun control.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...
We have not forgotten : WOLVERINES !!!!!
Good movie.
Obviously, Slate’s David Putz has never seen any Michael Moore movies. Talk about “nutterdom”.
Red Dawn should remain forgotten.
A truly horrible film.
Red Dawn ping!
John Milius kicks ass.
I haven’t forgotten either...
WOLVERINES!!!
I like “Red Dawn” because of its overwhelmingly politically incorrect perspective, but I do kinda agree...not a great movie.
It wasn’t that bad. I thought they could have done for a bit of a better script, but you have to admit it did give one hell of a creepy effect in the unlikely event of a Soviet-Bloc invasion in the American Southwest. Watching RPG’s close up heading straight for the camera was kick-ass special effects for it’s time.
The gun control implications were frightening, as well. The ending was a bit of BS, but at least ‘we won.’
For an 80’s movie, it fared well. You have to remember it was the decade of decadence. Superficiality was reigning supreme at that time.
Go Wolverines!!!
My son loved this film too. And the Rambos :)
That’s what I typed about him in one of the first posts here about him yesterday.
Too bad this didn’t rub off on Charlie Sheen a little more (he played Jed’s younger brother).
Watching it now, I’d probably wince at the acting. But, at the height of the Cold War, when I was young, I saw it at the movies with a group of friends, and it hit home for us. Now it’s interesting to watch because it’s so different politically from the films made in Hollywood today... I wonder how Hollywood will handle its remake. I don’t think young people today are fearful of China like we were of the Soviet Union. Ironically, the original actors probably are left-leaning.
We have not forgotten : WOLVERINES !!!!!
Agreed - the script writing could have been better. But whoever was the military advisor was right on. They used actual Soviet weaponry and uniforms, including vehicles (T-62, BMP-76, Mi-26 Hind, etc.).
Yes, we don’t like Red Dawn because it was an awesome movie by any standard of art of technical brilliance. I like the overall message. And some of the ambush scenes. It was the mid-80s. We had a bunch of movies that had series of montages in them, what do you people expect?
The media hated John Milius for the Conan films, too.
Milus co-wrote Apocalypse Now with Francis Ford Coppola. One reason why the film is semi-schizophrenic as Milius is a conservative warrior type and Francis is a lib. Not a totally overbearing lib.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.