Red Dawn

Red Dawn
Red Dawn
	File:Red Dawn DVD.jpg
Directed by	John Milius
Written by	John Milius, Kevin Reynolds
Produced by	Sidney Beckerman, Buzz Feitshans
Starring	Patrick Swayze; Charlie Sheen; Lea Thompson; Harry Dean Stanton; Powers Boothe; Jennifer Grey; Sam Slovick
Music by	Basil Poledouris
Distributed by	MGM/UA
Release date	1984
Running time	114 minutes
Language	English
Budget	4,200,000 USD

Red Dawn is a 1984 film 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 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 in the last decade of the Cold War, "Red Dawn" has become something of a cult classic.

Plot summary

Template:Spoiler 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 story is about young people resisting military occupation.

The film is set in a small Colorado town where a group of teenagers flee to the hills first to escape, and eventually begin an insurgency against Soviet occupational forces. The Colorado High School students call themselves the Wolverines after their school's mascot and proceed to launch raids, set ambushes, use sniper attacks, plant 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.

The film's epilogue suggests that the United States won the war several years later; a plaque is displayed which pays tribute to the Wolverines and reveals that the events in the film occurred during the "opening stages of World War III".

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.

Backstory

Much of the progress and politics of the war is left to the viewers' speculation in the film's first half, but specific facts are later provided by a downed USAF F-15 Pilot, Lt. Colonel Andrew Tanner (Powers Boothe).

The film's backstory involves several alternate history political precedents. The Green Party came to power in West Germany, forcing the removal of US forces from that nation. The resulting upheaval left NATO a political afterthought, with only Britain remaining as a US ally. At the same time, Soviet allies Cuba and Nicaragua each expanded their armies to 500,000 men, subsequently overrunning El Salvador and Honduras. A civil war in Mexico resulted in that country falling behind the Communist iron curtain. In a parallel to Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet Union, like Nazi Germany, now had a broad base from which to invade its primary enemy, and thousands of troops from satellite nations to augment their own armies.

During this time Russia was suffering its worst wheat harvest in 55 years and food riots throughout the Warsaw Pact. Apparently desperate for food to feed its people, the Soviet Union and its Latin American allies launched a full scale invasion of the United States. Although the movie was released in 1984, the story itself takes place in the near future, probably 1988 or 1989 since the Holodomor of 1932-1934 is most likely the 55 year old "worst wheat harvest" that is referred to. The Soviets utilize a three phase attack. First, they use tactical nuclear strikes and destroy key points of communication including several major U.S. cities (Omaha, Kansas City and Washington, D.C. are specifically cited). Tactical nuclear weapons are also used to destroy ICBM bases in Montana and the Dakotas. In addition, it is hinted that Cuban infiltrators aid in confusing U.S. forces by raiding Strategic Air Command bases throughout the Midwest and Texas. Coupled with these nuclear attacks, Russian transport aircraft slipped through the U.S. radar disguised as commercial airlines. These planes contained crack Soviet VDV Airborne troops. The second phase saw Mexican, Nicaraguan, and other Central American Communist armies (with small contingents of Soviet forces) pour across the U.S.-Mexico border into the Great Plains of the United States. The Russians themselves invaded Alaska from Siberia. They crossed into Canada, cut the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, but were decisively stopped at the US-Canadian border by U.S. forces.

Elsewhere Britain remained loyal to its American allies, but suffered heavily for it. China also declared war upon the USSR; the reason for this is unexplained though there is some longstanding animosity between the two powers that continues to this day. With the bulk of their armies committed to North America, the Russians used nuclear weapons against the Chinese, killing at least 400 million. In the film the effects of nuclear weapons are not shown, as the location (northern Colorado) is far from any contaminated sites.

The Communist forces manage to occupy and control a large chunk of the central United States, extending as far west as the Rocky Mountains, and north to Cheyenne, Wyoming across Kansas to the Mississippi River in the east. Denver is also under siege.

Once the lines are stabilized, it quickly becomes a conventional war with both sides ceasing their use of nuclear weapons. Col. Tanner explains that the Soviets are reluctant to use any more nuclear weapons as they want to conquer the United States, not destroy it utterly, and the US government is unwilling to use tactical nukes on their own soil against the invading armies. The Soviets work through American collaborators at the local level to help them maintain order.

Themes

The movie intensified American audiences’ Cold War fears, perhaps intentionally. At the time it was made, supporters of the Domino Theory were promoting the notion that first Central America and then Mexico would fall to Communism. After enough of the world had fallen to communism, the forces of the Communist world would finally invade America itself. While this was unlikely, it should be remembered that Euro-American apathy towards fascist expansion in the 1930s led to a similar result. The idea that a world war could largely be fought in a conventional manner also supported the ideas of hawks on both sides. The grim and futile ending, in which the resistance cell is effectively wiped out having accomplished almost nothing useful, was also typical of Cold War era action films.

Red Dawn also depicts collaboration, portraying the local mayor as an opportunist who gains or maintains power by collaborating with the occupational forces. Actor Lane Smith plays the role of the "Vichyite" mayor who tries to appease the occupational authorities. He watches as several of the residents of his town are executed as insurgents and later gives up his own son to the KGB to win more favor.

The private ownership of firearms is also presented as part of the film's anti-communism. Early in the film an advertisement seen on a small truck states a classic gun owner's creed, "They can have my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers." The shot moves down to a dead hand holding a Colt M-1911A1 pistol being removed by a Soviet paratrooper. As our group of heroes flees the initial invasion of Calumet, they stop at a local sporting goods store owned by one of their fathers. He tells them to gather supplies and gives them several rifles and pistols along with boxes of ammunition. (The father and his wife are later executed because of the guns missing from the store's inventory.) In a later scene a Cuban officer orders one of his men to report to the local office of records and obtain the paperwork of local citizens who own firearms. The Cuban officer specifically refers to Form 4473, which is the actual form used to record the sale of a firearm by a dealer to a private citizen in the United States. These scenes speak to the long-standing issues of government gun control.

One of the Cuban officers (Ron O'Neal) is portrayed in a sympathetic light. While he was very enthusiastic at the start of the invasion, eventually he grows disillusioned with the futile and costly war of occupation and refuses to gun down the Eckert brothers at the end of the film. The fact that he too was once a partisan fighter, helping other communist guerrilla fighters in other parts of the world before the Third World War began, plays a part in his growing respect for the Wolverines — exhibited fully when he allows the Eckert brothers to escape — and his disillusionment with the invasion and war.

Although most of the high school insurgents are killed, a voice-over appears at the end of the movie by Erica (Lea Thompson), (one of the two survivors) showing a World War III memorial, and the American flag flying implies the United States had won the war. It was not part of the original script, but was added to soften its otherwise grim and defeatist ending.

Taglines

In our time, no foreign army has ever occupied American soil. Until now. (see note in trivia section)
The invading armies planned for everything - except for eight kids called "The Wolverines."
8:44 A.M. A full scale military invasion by foreign troops begins. Total surprise. Almost total success. A gang of high school kids become the last line of defense.

Trivia

File:RedDawn(McDonalds).gif

Soviet soldiers posing in front of a McDonald's restaurant

The original tagline for the movie was "No foreign army has ever occupied American soil". This had to be changed because it was factually inaccurate. The British Army captured Washington D.C. during the War of 1812 and set fire to the White House and other buildings. In 1942 the Japanese seized the islands of Attu, Kiska, and Agattu in Alaska's Aleutian chain. At the time, Alaska was not a U.S. state but it was a territory, so it was still U.S. "soil". The United States recaptured the islands the following year.^[1]

The script for Red Dawn was written by John Milius and Kevin Reynolds (director of Waterworld) from a story by Reynolds. The original screenplay, called Ten Soldiers, was more akin to Lord of the Flies, the classic novel (and later a film) about the aggressive nature of man, than to the action film it eventually became. Some of the changes made to Ten Soldiers included a shift in focus from the conflict within the group of teens to the conflict between the teens and their oppressors, and the acceleration of the ages of some of the characters from early teens to high school age and beyond.

Red Dawn's story and conception are similar to John Steinbeck's The Moon Is Down, which is a story about a town occupied by a foreign army. The book, which was published during the height of World War II, was widely circulated in underground Europe and extremely popular as propaganda because the people of occupied Europe believed it spoke directly to them in a realistic way. Unlike Red Dawn, The Moon Is Down is purposely vague and does not name the location of the town or the nationality of the invaders, but it did not start out that way. In the book's early form, the town was in America and the invaders were Nazis. Steinbeck met much resistance for this version of the story from his colleagues because it seemed to be defeatist, and so Steinbeck stripped all national references from the book and published it in the form we have today.

The movie was filmed in and around the town of Las Vegas, New Mexico. Many of the buildings and structures which appeared in the film, including a historic Fred Harvey Company hotel adjacent to the train depot, the Las Vegas train yard, and a building near downtown which was repainted with the name of "Calumet, Colorado" where the movie was set, are still there today as they appeared in the film.

Calumet was an actual mining town in Colorado, about 50 miles north of the New Mexican border at the junction of routes 610 & 69 (Possibly in Chaffee County). Today, the real Calumet is a ghost town.

Before filming began, production crews designed and built special combat vehicles in Newhall, California. Among their "fleet" were 15 Soviet armored vehicles (including a ZSU-23-4 'Shilka' mobile anti-aircraft gun, several T-72 main battle tanks, and various BMP and BTR armoured personnel carriers - all surprisingly authentic and detailed), several Yak-38 'Forger' vertical take-off and landing Soviet Naval aircraft (the Soviet Navy flag is clearly visible on the side of the air-intake), and three Mi-24 'Hind-A' helicopter gunships. The movie's Soviet T-72 tank was such a precise replica that "while it was being carted around Los Angeles, two CIA agents followed it to the studio and wanted to know where it had come from" (Soldier Of Fortune Magazine).

Five of the 36 parachutists who took part in the invasion scene early in the film were wounded when high winds blew them as far as one mile off target. Parachutist Jim Fisher, wearing a Russian paratrooper uniform, landed in a tree and found himself calling out to local rescuers: "Don't shoot, Don't shoot! I am not a Russian soldier!"

Red Dawn was the first movie to be released with a PG-13 rating. The Flamingo Kid had received the first PG-13 rating but was not released until after Red Dawn.

"John has a long mustache", which is heard briefly in the movie, was the code-signal used by the French Resistance in World War II to mobilize their forces once the Allies had landed on the Normandy beaches. It is featured in the movie The Longest Day.

The name of the film and its band of young guerrillas appears to have been used by the United States Army for the December 13, 2003, Operation Red Dawn in which the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured.

The original trailer shows a tank rolling up to a McDonald's restaurant where enemy soldiers are eating. This scene does not appear in the final cut; It was apparently removed due to a mass murder at a San Ysidro, California, McDonald's just weeks prior to the film's 1984 opening. See McDonald's massacre.

Jennifer Grey would later act with Charlie Sheen in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) and with Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing in 1987.

Patrick Swayze, Darren Dalton and C. Thomas Howell also appeared together in The Outsiders (1983).

The young doctors on the NBC sitcom Scrubs watch Red Dawn in a first-season episode in 2002.

A 2003 episode of South Park titled "Grey Dawn" parodies Red Dawn.

At one point, the Wolverines tuned into a radio station aired by the free-zone playing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, evoking Radio Free Europe.

In the game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City,based in 1984 , radio sermons by Pastor Richards make reference to Red Dawn, such as "They call this a Cold War, but it's hotter than hell. Mark my words! Any day now, you're sitting in school, passing notes, and talking about the prom when suddenly you look out the window and there are Russian paratroopers dropping in to take over. What can you do? Run into the woods with your friends? Call yourselves The Wolverines?" Also, radio ads for AmmuNation offer free screenings of the film Red Dawn, supposedly a documentary.

In the song Rambozo the Clown by punk band Dead Kennedys, the lyrics reference Red Dawn:

War is sexy

War is fun

Iron Eagle

Red Dawn

Be a wolverine, you'll rule the hills

Just get some guns and cheerios

Wilhelm scream: This one is said to be heard when a Soviet soldier is killed by a gunshot.

A Calumet is a Native American smoking pipe carved out of pipestone, sometimes called a "peace pipe"

Perceived Inaccuracies

Template:Cite-sources Though Red Dawn is a work of fiction, there are many aspects of the movie that are just not believable given the premise that the film takes on:

There are many inaccuracies in translation from Russian to English. For instance, in one scene a Russian soldier yells "Help me, God!" in Russian, but the subtitles read "help me," but when the Russian soldier actually does yell "Help me!" the subtitles read "help me God!" It should also be noted that it is very unlikely that a conscript or officer in the Soviet Army would call for God since the USSR was officially an atheist state, and soldiers in the Red Army were indoctrinated as to denounce God.
It would be difficult for a small band of teenagers, with very little training in military tactics, to be capable of subduing whole companies of professional Soviet soldiers, especially considering the Soviet Army had already overpowered the professional American military.
The conscript ensign on the hats of the Russian regulars is inaccurate.
The Soviet Paratroopers' camouflage pattern is inaccurate.
In the movie, Soviet soldiers were seen using the AKM automatic rifle (the modernised version of the famous AK-47 rifle), although the Soviet army had officially switched over to the AK-74 (an AKM rechambered in 5.45x39mm rather than 7.62x39mm) in 1974, roughly 10 years before the movie takes place. This is somewhat expected, as most movies show "enemies" using the AK-47 or any Kalashnikov-type rifle.
In the scene downtown shortly after the Soviets had gained a foothold, Russians are seen massacring the populace, and when one U.S. attack helicopter comes, it causes massive casualties while remaining unscathed from large amounts of anti-air rounds.

References

^ "Red Dawn Goofs" (HTML). Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 11 June 2006. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |coauthors= and |month= (help)

External links

[imdb-goof-1] "Red Dawn Goofs" (HTML). Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 11 June 2006. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |coauthors= and |month= (help)

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