Posted on 09/15/2009 8:32:05 AM PDT by Ge0ffrey
Has any mainstream media outlet mentioned the Patrick Swayze movie that made moonbats nuts during the Reagan era?
A Politically Incorrect Vision of Guerilla War by John Milius When Hollywood decides to make a controversial film, it is usually about a subject or theme that the Hollywood community, which tends to be to the left of the political spectrum, agrees on and the movie watching audience does not. In 1984, director John Milius, fresh from successful films like The Wind and the Lion and Conan the Barbarian, decided to create controversy in a different way. He made Red Dawn, a film depicting the Soviet invasion of the United States and the efforts of partisans, mainly high school kids, to fight them off. Hollywood has never forgiven Milius for doing this.
Red Dawn starts in the near future (from circa 1984), when NATO has collapsed, Mexico has fallen to Marxist revolution, and America, in essence, stands alone. A High School history class in a small town in Colorado is being treated to a lecture about Geingas Khan. Quietly, almost unobtrusively, a Soviet parachute unit is dropping down in the footfall field outside. The teacher is killed, students are killed, and pandemonium breaks out.
A group of students, along with an older youth played by Patrick Swayze, flee into the wilderness, armed with hunting rifles and supplies taken from a gas station/convenience store owned by one of their fathers. At first they survive by hunting and fishing, but soon find that their town is occupied by a Soviet Army that is also comprised of Cubans and Nicaraguans. An incident with some Russians soldiers occurs with the Russians winding up dead, weapons are captured, and the guerilla war is on.
(Excerpt) Read more at associatedcontent.com ...
>>> Is it good? <<<<
Here are some other movies by John Milius, obviously they are all great fliks:
# Clear and Present Danger (1994) (screenplay)
# Geronimo: An American Legend (1993) (screenplay) (story)
# Farewell to the King (1989) (screenplay)
# Red Dawn (1984) (writer)
# Conan the Barbarian (1982) (screenplay)
# Apocalypse Now (1979) (screenplay)
# The Wind and the Lion (1975) (writer)
# Magnum Force (1973) (screenplay) (story)
# Dillinger (1973) (written by)
# The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) (original screenplay)
# Jeremiah Johnson (1972) (screenplay)
# Dirty Harry (1971) (screenplay) (uncredited)
True, although today's standards blow it sometimes, too. I just watched (in bits and pieces) 'Rescue Dawn', about Lt. Dieter Dengler's shoot down and epic escape from Laos in 1965. There were guys walking around a USAF base near the end in Woodland cammies, which didn't come out until the mid Eighties. (grumble)
OMG, you’ve never heard of Red Dawn? Do you live on a desert island?
The movie seems to suggest that America was overrun pretty swiftly and everyone locked up.
The reality is far different than a handful of kids being the resistance. In reality an enemy would have to bleed for every inch.
Russian Soldier/Prisoner: This violates the Geneva convention!
Jed Eckert (Swayze): I never heard of it!
Actually, I saw “Red Dawn” at the Granada Theater in Santa Barbara. I could have sworn it was in 1982, but all the film biographies on Google say the movie was released in 1984.
I did see “Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom” at Santa Barbara’s Arlington Theater on July 15, 1984. I saw alot of other movies in that beautiful theater.
I just learned that Hollywood is doing a re-make of “Red Dawn,” scheduled for release on September 24, 2010. This time, the Russians and the Chinese are invading America, instead of the Russians and the Cubans. Also, the eldest Wolverine, Jed....the role played in the original movie by Patrick Swayze....is going to be a Marine on leave back home when the war begins. Kinda blows the premise of high school kids taking up arms and defending their town and their country; I just hope it’s not “politically correct.”
In the middle of the cold war, it captured this 13-ish year-old boy's imagination. I'd be a little dubious about showing it to kids much younger than that, but then, I'm stodgy that way.
I saw it just recently; it hasn't aged well. :-) The idea of playing soldier, eating cans of beans three meals a day, and sleeping out in the snow for months at a time just isn't as appealing as when I was 12.
Red Dawn Bump
As I recall in the original, “Jed” was no longer a “high-school” kid either.
I could be wrong.
He wasn't. They didn't say, but I'd put his age at 19 or 20.
It's doubtful that I'll go see the remake. I'll bet money that the Communists are all guilt-ridden, sympathetic characters who are "Just Following Orders", the "Wolverines" are a correctly-diverse group of kids, and the bad guys are all Straight White Males Conservative American Males.
Just guessing....we'll see in a year.
I’m with you. I dust off that DVD about once a year. I agree the message may be somewhat overt if not outright blunt, but that’s what it takes to reach denser minds. I didn’t see much that has not played out when communists (or fascists) take charge:
- disarm the citizenry by whatever means necessary
- put suspected dissidents in reeducation camps
- execute the un-rehabilitated
- execute civilians in reprisal for guerrilla attacks
- recruit weasel politicians as pawns
- turn a family member over to the commissars
- foment a constant barrage of propaganda
and on and on. Good entertainment with a solid message. Swayze was excellent. WOLVERINES!
Any of Vince Flynn’s or Brad Thor’s books would drive them insane!
Sounds like a good read.
“Publisher Comments:
Taking America back...one politician at a time
What if America’s leaders were held accountable for their broken promises and made to pay for their corruption? Vince Flynn brings to life a chilling scenario of Washington under siege in the provocative, edge-of-your-seat political thriller that stormed onto national bestseller lists.
Term Limits
In a night of shattering brutality, three of Washington’s most powerful and unscrupulous politicians have been executed with surgical precision. Their assassins, vanishing without a trace, have delivered a shocking ultimatum to the leaders of the American government: set aside petty, partisan politics and restore power to the people, or be held to deadly account. No one, they warn, is out of their reach not even the president. A joint FBI-CIA task force reveals that the killers are elite military commandos, but no one knows exactly who they are or when they will strike next. Only Michael O’Rourke, a former U.S. Marine and freshman congressman, holds a clue to the violence: a haunting incident in his own past with explosive implications for his country’s future....
In a tour de force of action and suspense, Vince Flynn takes the ultimate American ideal a government of the people to a devastating extreme.”
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?isbn=0671023187
As a movie, it's no masterpiece. However, like "Starship Troopers" and "The Fifth Element," it's one heck of a lot of fun and very entertaining!
Mark
I saw the flick with a bunch of my NORAD/SPACECOM team mates. They kinda ruined it with all that talking about the improbabilities the movie presented.
I thought it was korny but kinda cool.
One thing that I always found strange about the plot is that the Chinese were on our side.
I must have watched that movie a hundred times in college.
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