"Red Dawn" starts with a few title cards that provide some background to the story that is about to happen. How a terrible wheat harvest one year started unrest in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc, as well as the rise of Communist forces in South America. Why would a film do this? Well to provide some credible backing for the plot, to give it a sense of realism as if it is ripped from current headlines. It is a pretty good effect. We next see Red Army troops parachute down near a school in a nice tranquil part of small town USA start to gun down all-American school kids.
Frankly that's where the film turns from "political thriller" to "nonsense action movie." It also makes one wonder, why did they bother with the "realistic" set up, which was supposedly based on actual military hypothetical scenarios, when for the rest of the movie is one preposterous action scene after another? The entire focus of the movie is how demonic and cruel the Soviets are and how courageous American school kids are. Red Army soldiers are callously gunned down and destroyed in every which way, while each death on the American side is met with sappy drama and grievance. The combat scenes are wholly preposterous and in one scene one of our young heroes actually aims at an approaching gunship with an assault rifle firing from the hip whilst yelling his battle cry. Too bad for him that the gunship is at least one hundred yards away, which, for the pilot isn't very far, but for someone shooting an assault rifle, that's a considerable distance to be blindly spraying bullets and hoping to hit the intended target. Basically, the film attempts to fool its audience with the opening title cards as there is not one hint of realism after the first shot fades in.
"Red Dawn" just plays out as a gun lovers action movie with the unnecessary back drop getting in the way of every scene. John Woo's "Hard Boiled" is also a gun lovers action movie, but it has style, it has it's unique feel and just enough plot to keep it going and most important of all it never attempted to be realistic with any sort of background on crime rates in Hong Kong. It was made to accepted as it progresses. "Red Dawn" has very little action movie creativity and style with the "realistic" attempt at a plausible Cold War plot being nothing more than blunt force mediocrity.
There is also the fact, mainly revealed by hindsight after the USSR's collapse, that by 1984 the Soviet Union was in no shape to conduct such an invasion and, in fact, imported most of its wheat - thus didn't rely on its own harvest - and that makes the whole film genuinely absurd and practically a parody of its own paranoid notions. --- 5/10
BsCDb Classification: 13+ --- violence
Frankly that's where the film turns from "political thriller" to "nonsense action movie." It also makes one wonder, why did they bother with the "realistic" set up, which was supposedly based on actual military hypothetical scenarios, when for the rest of the movie is one preposterous action scene after another? The entire focus of the movie is how demonic and cruel the Soviets are and how courageous American school kids are. Red Army soldiers are callously gunned down and destroyed in every which way, while each death on the American side is met with sappy drama and grievance. The combat scenes are wholly preposterous and in one scene one of our young heroes actually aims at an approaching gunship with an assault rifle firing from the hip whilst yelling his battle cry. Too bad for him that the gunship is at least one hundred yards away, which, for the pilot isn't very far, but for someone shooting an assault rifle, that's a considerable distance to be blindly spraying bullets and hoping to hit the intended target. Basically, the film attempts to fool its audience with the opening title cards as there is not one hint of realism after the first shot fades in.
"Red Dawn" just plays out as a gun lovers action movie with the unnecessary back drop getting in the way of every scene. John Woo's "Hard Boiled" is also a gun lovers action movie, but it has style, it has it's unique feel and just enough plot to keep it going and most important of all it never attempted to be realistic with any sort of background on crime rates in Hong Kong. It was made to accepted as it progresses. "Red Dawn" has very little action movie creativity and style with the "realistic" attempt at a plausible Cold War plot being nothing more than blunt force mediocrity.
There is also the fact, mainly revealed by hindsight after the USSR's collapse, that by 1984 the Soviet Union was in no shape to conduct such an invasion and, in fact, imported most of its wheat - thus didn't rely on its own harvest - and that makes the whole film genuinely absurd and practically a parody of its own paranoid notions. --- 5/10
BsCDb Classification: 13+ --- violence