Red Dawn

I understand the south park reference now

<Disclaimer: Spoilers>

I never actually intended to watch this movie this week, it just sort of happened. I was looking through Netflix for a different movie, saw this, remembered that this was on my list, and just decided to watch it.

And it was a pretty good decision. 

Overview: Text exposition tells us that communism is on the rise, countries are turning to civil war, NATO dissolved and America now has no allies. We see students from the small western town of Colorado going through their normal day when suddenly Russian/Cuban soldiers parachutes in and attacks. A small group of teens manages to escape, and begins guerilla warfare to try and take their town back.

I guess a good place to start when describing this movie is yes, the first time I heard of this movie was in a south park episode “Grey Dawn” where old people take over the town to keep their drivers license. I thought it was just regular absurdist south park humor, I didn’t realize that the entire episode was a reference. It’s actually one of my favorite episodes.

The only other time I heard of Red Dawn was when there was that remake with North Koreans instead of Russians/Cubans. When it came out, I really didn’t care to go see it, because it felt like a stretch to me. Enemy soldiers just parachuting in the middle of a country? What was their game plan after the initial attack, fight their way out when they are completely surrounded by their opponents? It sounded like a glorified wish fulfillment with teens fighting and winning against trained military professionals.

Which was what I saw in the original, and the movie makes it work.

I wasn’t watching the movie for the characters, not really. I can’t even tell you what any of the characters name were. Hell, I don’t think they even introduced the teen girls by name initially. The only guy I really remember was Jed and that’s because they kept saying his name constantly throughout the movie.

Naw, I was mainly watching it for the plot and plot alone. How did the Russians somehow airdropped tanks to this small town? Why did,they decided it was a good idea? Who know and who cares. I left my critical thinking hat at the door when I started watching. I just wanted to see teens staging a revolt, being revolutionaries and beat the bad guys who invaded. It doesn’t matter the logistics of How the movie got here, just enjoy the ride as they show it.

It didn’t feel like there was a lot of individual characterization, but there was a lot of group characterization, a lot of small moments that were honestly my favorite parts. When the Russians invaded you see a bumper sticker saying “you can take my gun from my cold dead hands” and see a soldier doing just that. The town residents protesting by singing “My Country Tis Of Thee”. As the teens were ditching town and stocking up food and bullets one of them grabs a football. Like, that makes sense for a teen to do. And later on we get a great scene of them actually playing football with everyone, a real group bonding moment.

There’s also a great scene of three enemy soldiers just exploring the area, seeing the natural park sign, and just translating it out of his ass saying it is a site of a great battle. Yes, they are the invaders, but they aren’t faceless, the movie does humanize them.

I think my all time favorite scene is when they we’re victorious in their first ambush. One of the boys just shouts “WOLVERINES!!” And I laughed. Because school spirit, its their identifier to their home town, of course they would use it for their name. But it also true that the teen was just so high on adrenaline that he just cheers like at a prep rally.

The transformation of the teens to this militia group also feels very natural. The movie takes place over months and you can see the process that they take. From first just trying to survive in the wild, to protecting themselves, to laying traps, then attacking. Each victory gives them more and more supplies and more and more knowledge on how to fight. But they are still dumb kids that when someone with real tactical knowledge explains an attack plan, they have no idea what the hell he’s talking about because of the terms he uses. It just seems like a natural progression.

Course, this movie does have it’s bad parts to it. When the girls came into the group, some dude told them to “make themselves useful” and wash the pots, and the girls just went off in him and it felt…a little disingenuous? Like I get what the scene was supposed to represent, its war, they don’t want to be belittled after the trauma they went through, and i get it. But it just felt a little Too Vicious. A little Too Forced, on both sides, for it to really feel real. This also sort of plays into the whole “lack of characterization” thing. Like, I see moments like this happening, but I just don’t feel it. Its more like hitting a mark than actually telling me anything about who they are as a person.

One of the girls has a crush on an older man. One guy is sad that his dad is dead. I think one of the kids is supposed to be the nice one, but there really isn’t any focus on them for me to say exactly which one it is. The only real character with any form of characterization is Jed, seeing him deal with grief, be a leader, and the responsibilities from it, but even them its so few inbetween that it still feels a little vague.

And one of the Big Scenes that they could have done with characterization was completely mishandled. The Russians call in the Big Guns Major to deal with the Wolverines. He gets a group of men to track them down to their base camp. How? Well the town’s mayor is actually the father of one of the rebels. At their insistence to be safe, the teen swallows a tracker led the army to the hideout.

That caused so much infighting and drama.

Too bad we never saw the scene.

We never saw the betrayal scene. It was just, completely cut out. We only know because after the attack the traitor teen confesses to what had happened. Which was a complete missed opportunity.

The entire scene afterwards was by god probably The Best part of the film, where they deal with the aftermath of the attack. But how could they not show the actual moment of betrayal? The teen being convinced by the enemy to rat out his friends for his family? That would have been so emotional and showed so much about the guy, but instead they just went to the next attack and told us about it as an afterthought. I guess they wanted to keep the reasoning of the attack as a surprise, but it felt like a missed opportunity to me for some character development.

Again, not to say that this movie was bad without it. To me, it chose to focus more on the events than the people, leaving only a few with any real development. It doesn’t ruin the film for me in any way, and it allows for outlandish attacks and “fuck yous” for an Actual Military losing to 16 year olds. Yes, there were a few things that annoyed me. But the movie promised from Wish Fulfillment revolution fighting, and by god did it deliver.

I actually watched the trailer for the 2012 version and honestly, I sill wasn’t feeling it. It felt like it was trying too hard, or trying to give legitimacy of like a Marine leading the Teens and that’s why they were good fighters. Personally, it didn’t seem to capture the heart that is the original, but maybe it will be different if I watch it, who knows.

Overall: If you haven’t had a chance, I would definitely recommend you check it out yourself. It was a fun ride from beginning to end where they put in genuine effort into making this movie and is very much appreciated.