Red Dawn
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- For other uses, see Red dawn (disambiguation).
| Red Dawn | |
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| Directed by | John Milius |
| Produced by | Sidney Beckerman, Buzz Feitshans |
| Written by | John Milius Kevin Reynolds |
| Starring | Patrick Swayze Charlie Sheen Lea Thompson Harry Dean Stanton Powers Boothe Jennifer Grey Sam Slovick |
| Music by | Basil Poledouris |
| Cinematography | Ric Waite |
| Editing by | Thom Noble |
| Distributed by | MGM/UA Entertainment Co. |
| Release date(s) | August 10, 1984 |
| Running time | 114 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | 4,200,000 USD |
| IMDb profile | |
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 (Lieutenant Colonel Andy Tanner).
Produced in the last decade of the Cold War, Red Dawn has become something of a cult classic.
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[edit] 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 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 the Soviets, and eventually begin an insurgency against Soviet occupational forces. The Colorado high school students call themselves the Wolverines after their school’s team/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 with “Partisan Rock” in the background, which pays tribute to the Wolverines killed in action, and reveals that the events in the film occurred during the “early days 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.
[edit] Characters
Jed- The leader of the Wolverines and the only one out of highschool of the bunch, until Lt. Colonel Andy Taylor arrives. Jed was raised hunting in the mountains with his father and younger brother Matt. He is skilled in the art of survival and hunting. Jed's fate is unknown but he presumably died in the end. He was shot in the side when confronting a Russian after his younger brother Matt was shot. Jed was left in the cold sitting on a swing set holding his dying brother in his arms.
Matt- Matt is Jed's younger brother. While Matt has the same hunting skills as his brother, he is more of a peace keeper. His regard for women early on is old-fashion, but he disagrees with the assasination of a captured Russian soldier and their traitor friend Darly. Matt survives the entire movie up until the last attack. He is shot and wounded. He cannot walk on his own and almost appears lifeless in his brothers arms when we last see them sitting on the swing set.
Robert- Robert starts off as a soft spoken individual but turns into a killing machine. He is the only one who sides with Jed and Matt when they say to stay in the mountains over surrendering themselves to the enemy. After drinking Deer blood from his first hunting experience while hiding out in the mountains and then learning of his fathers death, he becomes the most fearless Wolverine. Sporting a ski-mask and black beret, he is only fueled by the enemies he kills. Robert saves the last of the survivors when 2 Russian Helicopters start attacking the Wolverines. As 5 make thier escape, Robert stands his ground, shoots down one Helicopter with his RPG, then takes out his machine gun and fires at the second while screaming the rally cry "Wolverines." He is shot dead.
Toni- Toni is the older of the two sisters that are given to the Wolverines by Mr. Mason. He wants them to escape with the boys to the mountains so they wont get caputred by the Russians. She is more of a fighter than her younger sister and eventually forms a crush on Jed. She is shot when the two Russian helicopters attack the group, she is fatally wounded and is aided by Jed. Her specialty was planting bombs in places, she had a bomb placed under her dead body so when the Russians discovered her, some of them met thier demise.
Erica- Toni's younger sister. She is soft spoken and always observes what is going on. She forms a crush on the downed Air Force Pilot Taylor. She is only one of two Wolverines who survives the movie and makes it to free America. She voices over the narration at the end and claims she never saw Jed and Matt again. The last time they saw eachother was right before Jed and Matt went into town to cause a diversion and get one last attack on the Russians.
Lt. COL. Andy Taylor- A pilot whose plain was shot down and he was discovered by Erica. She took him to the Wolverine base camp and he taught the kids some military tactics. They planend several attacks, but he was killed when he jumped on a tank and tried over take it.
Daryl- The politician of the group, he tried at first to get the guys to surrended when they first escaped into the mountains. He usually disagreed with Jed but eventually gave in and joined the fight. His father was the mayor of the town. Daryl went into town without the Wolverines knowing, he was caught by the enemies and they bugged him. When the Wolverines found out they decided to execute him. No one agreed to it except for Jed and Robert. After Jed killed a Russian prisoner, he could not bring himself to shoot Daryl. Robert, who at the start of the film appeared to be a close friend of Daryl, shot him dead.
Aardvark- Aardvark was Matt's best friend and was driven to school by Matt's older brother Jed, along with Matt, he also played on the football team with Matt. At the strat of the film we see Aardvark's father captured and later executed. Aardvark was the first wolverine to die when he and LT. Taylor were on top of the Tank trying to take it over. He was shot.
Danny- The youngest of the Wolverines. He did not really know the guys when he joined them and he was the last one picked up by Jed when they made thier escape to the mountains. When the car overheats they have Danny piss on the radiator, they know they can make the youngest guy do anything. He, like Matt, is against a lot of the killing and seems to want to surrender at the beginning. In the end, when Matt and Jed decide to go make thier final attack on the Russian/Cuban base, he goes off with Erica to free America, making him the only other survivor.
[edit] 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, Lieutenant 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 U.S. forces from that nation and all nuclear weapons from Europe. The resulting upheaval left NATO a political afterthought, with only Britain remaining as a U.S. 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 to 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 and Spetsnaz troops. The second phase saw Mexican, Nicaraguan, and other Central American Communist armies (with small contingents of Soviet forces) pouring 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 and cut the Alaskan pipeline, but were decisively stopped at the U.S.-Canadian border by U.S. forces.
Elsewhere, Britain remained loyal to her American allies, but suffered heavily for it. China also declared war upon the USSR; the reason for this is unexplained, though there is some long-standing animosity between the two powers resulting from the Sino-Soviet split that continues to this day. Colonel Tanner obliquely refers to some 400 million Chinese having been killed, probably as a result of a massive Soviet nuclear strike. 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. Colonel 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 U.S. government is unwilling to use tactical nuclear weapons on or over their own soil against the invading armies. The Soviets work through American collaborators at the local level to help them maintain order.
[edit] 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 toward 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, 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 (who is later executed by the Wolverines for it) 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, a bumper sticker seen on a 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 empty Colt .45 pistol being removed by a Soviet paratrooper, presumably from a police officer or armed civilian gunned down earlier during the invasion of Calumet, Colorado. As the protagonists flee 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. The American flag flying above it implies the United States had—eventually—won the war. It was not part of the original script, but was added to soften its otherwise grim and defeatist ending.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Trivia
- 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. On December 8, 1941 the Japanese took over Guam and occupied it until the U.S. recaptured it in the Battle of Guam, July 1944. [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 injured 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.
- 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.
[edit] Cultural References
- In the song "Rambozo the Clown" by punk band Dead Kennedys, the lyrics reference Red Dawn:
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- War is sexy
- War is fun
- Iron Eagle
- Red Dawn
- Be a wolverine, you'll rule the hills
- Just get some guns and cheerios
- War is sexy
- In the game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, based in 1986, 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? Put twigs in your hands, try and beat back the ruskies?" Also, radio ads for AmmuNation offer free screenings of the film Red Dawn, supposedly a documentary.
- A 2003 episode of South Park titled "Grey Dawn" parodies Red Dawn.
- In the PC game Red Alert 2, the first mission of the Soviet campaign--which involves parachuting on Washington, D.C.--is called 'Operation: Red Dawn'.
- Recently, Family Guy made a reference to the movie by showing Peter singing a segment about the Wolverines on a Broadway titled 'Red Dawn: The Musical'.
- In the Japanese anime Sunabozu, the Machine Gun Brothers destroy the Dragon Kong tank, they shout 'Wolverines!', which is a reference to the name of the anti-occupation guerillas.
- Red Dawn has had such an underground following (like Twilight 2000) that it is now being reenacted. Most notably, the reenactment group "106th Soviet Guards Airborne"[1], is the only known major reenactment group in which their focus is based on this storyline, Twilight 2000 and the storyline of the book "Red Thrust" written by Stephen Zaloga.
[edit] See also
- The Sliders television series. One episode depicts the US under Soviet Dominion.
- The Tomorrow series, by John Marsden, follows a similar scenario, in which a small group of Australian high school students escape capture during a total invasion of the nation by an unnamed foreign power, and become guerrilla fighters.
- The Amerika 1987 television series also shows a Soviet-occupied America.
- The computer game Red Alert 2 in which the name of the first Soviet mission "Operation: Red Dawn" is used.
- The computer game Freedom Fighters also set in an America invaded by the USSR.
- The board game Fortress America, which depicts an invasion of the continental U.S. by Communist powers, including partisan resistance.
- Role playing game Twilight 2000.
- Guerrilla
- Red Army
- Political commissar
- Red Storm Rising
- The Book series Wingman, supposed to have happened after the world was thrown into WW III as the Allies won against Russians. It describes that Russia would falsify peace before having a insider ("the Vice President") shut down Star Wars to allow Russian nukes in to strike the USA.
- In the episode of scrubs "My Heavey Meddle" Turk and Elliot are watching Red Dawn and yelling "Wolverines!"
[edit] References
- ^ Red Dawn Goofs (English). Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 2006-06-11.
