Red Dawn

This is what we call a movie-movie, a movie that throws nuance and self-consciousness and artiness to the wind and concentrates on the slam-bam. It's richly entertaining, it's big, it moves fast. [10 Aug 1984, p.C1]

What if Reagan’s America got a taste of her own interventionist foreign policies? Apocalypse, wow.

As an action movie, Red Dawn is a repetitive headache, and anyone with Blue State sympathies will be appalled at its manipulations and exaggerations. But there's smart subtext beneath the big dumb explosions.

Red Dawn is at once a mainstream shoot ‘em up action picture and an ideologically demented exercise in American paranoia.

Red Dawn charges off to an exciting start as a war picture and then gets all confused in moralistic handwriting, finally sinking in the sunset. Swayze, Howell and the other youngsters are all good in their parts.

The film is too dumb to work as patriotic exhortation and too mawkish to work as blood-and-guts exploitation. It's a long commercial in which the Marlboro Man has become the American Guerrilla, with his good buddies, good guns and a bottomless case of Coors. [03 Sep 1984, p.73]

Another infantile right-wing fantasy from writer-director John Milius, this cinematic embodiment of the paranoid delusions of militarists, survivalists, and television evangelists is definitely a film for the Reagan era. Red Dawn is simply too simplistic and inept to be taken seriously.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Red Dawn is one of my favorite movies of all time, but it's certainly not because it's a great movie. Rather, it's a guilty pleasure that's loud and unintelligent but sure is a lot of fun. The acting and script are probably the best thing about this movie. They're over-the-top and taken a bit too seriously, but they still give audiences a reason to be emotionally invested in these teenage protagonists and the bleak, harrowing situation they've found themselves in. The story is not entirely unbelievable when it comes to its basic premise. The title cards at the start of the film set up an alternate history that sets up a plausible setting for a World War III on American soil. But once it gets into the gunfights with a small group of teenagers defeating groups of a well-supplied army, all reality is to be suspended indefinitely. But the overall quality of the film certainly doesn't detract from its entertainment value. Red Dawn is not to be viewed as a good film, but as an escape into a fun, unbelievable story of conquering against all odds. Story: 6 Acting: 5 Script: 6 Visuals/Sound: 4.5 Entertainment Value: 8 MY RATING: 5.9/10

The Russians are launching air strikes, killing civilians, and re-educating the children? Hmm, that sounds **** terms of its premise, *Red Dawn* is plausible and well-conceived; the special effects are all practical (in-camera), and the cast list is impressive. Unfortunately, instead of a 90-minute teen action flick, John Milius attempts to create a two-hour epic about the strength of American youth—yet he simply fails to fill that runtime with compelling content. The characters are largely forgettable, the plot is predictable, and even Basil Poledouris’s score fails to impress. Whenever there isn't an explosion or a shootout, the film is excruciatingly boring.

The great cast and premise are squandered by the limited battle choreography and screenplay that fail to build any kind of tension instead presenting poorly paced dramatic scenes between the teenagers which then cut alway to scenes of incomprehensible action montages. Still it is clearly made from the heart and I found it quite compelling.