Red Dawn
Original theatrical poster
Directed by	John Milius
Produced by	Sidney Beckerman Buzz Feitshans
Screenplay by	John Milius Kevin Reynolds
Story by	Kevin Reynolds
Starring	Patrick Swayze C. Thomas Howell Lea Thompson Ben Johnson Harry Dean Stanton Ron O'Neal William Smith Powers Boothe
Music by	Basil Poledouris
Cinematography	Ric Waite
Editing by	Thom Noble
Studio	United Artists
Distributed by	MGM/UA Entertainment Co.
Release date(s)	August 10, 1984 (1984-08-10)
Running time	114 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English Russian Spanish
Budget	$4.2 million
Box office	$38,376,497[1]

Red Dawn is a 1984 American war film directed by John Milius and co-written by Milius and Kevin Reynolds. It stars Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen, and Jennifer Grey. It was the first film to be released with the MPAA rating of PG-13.^[2]

The film is set in an alternate 1980s in which the United States is invaded by the Soviet Union and its Cuban and Nicaraguan allies.^[3] However, the onset of World War III is in the background and not fully elaborated. The story follows a group of American high school students who resist the occupation with guerrilla warfare, calling themselves Wolverines, after their high school mascot.

Plot [edit]

An introductory text explains how the United States has gradually become strategically isolated after several European nations, excluding the United Kingdom, withdraw their membership in NATO. At the same time, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact partners aggressively expand their sphere of influence. In addition, the Ukrainian wheat harvest fails while a communist coup d'etat occurs in Mexico.

On a September morning, in the small town of Calumet, Colorado, a local high school teacher pauses mid sentence when he sees Russian paratroopers landing in a nearby field. The paratroopers open fire when the teacher confronts them. Pandemonium follows as students flee amid heavy gunfire. In downtown Calumet, Cuban and Soviet troops are trying to impose order after a hasty occupation. Shortly thereafter, the Cuban Colonel Bella instructs the KGB to go to a local sporting goods store and obtain the records of the store's gun sales on the ATF's Form 4473, which includes the names of citizens who have purchased firearms.

Brothers Jed and Matt Eckert, along with their friends Robert, Danny, Daryl, and Aardvark, flee into the wilderness after hastily equipping themselves at the sporting goods store, which is owned by Robert's father. While on the way to the mountains, the teens run into a Russian roadblock, but are saved by an attacking U.S. Army helicopter gunship. After several weeks in the forest, they sneak back into town; Jed and Matt learn that their father has been captured and is being held in a re-education camp. They visit the site and speak to him through the fence; Mr. Eckert orders his sons to abandon him, and to "avenge" his inevitable death.

The kids then visit the Masons, neighbors of the Eckerts, and learn that they are behind enemy lines in "Occupied America". Robert's father is revealed to have been executed because of the missing inventory from his store. The Masons charge Jed and Matt with taking care of their two granddaughters, Toni and Erica. After killing Soviet soldiers in the woods, the youths begin an armed resistance against the occupation forces, calling themselves the "Wolverines." The occupation forces initially try reprisal tactics, executing groups of civilians following every Wolverine attack, in hopes of intimidating the local population and compelling the Wolverines to surrender or desist. During one of these mass executions, the fathers of Jed, Matt, and Aardvark are killed.^[4] Daryl's father, Mayor Bates, acts as collaborator and tries to appease the occupation authorities.

The Wolverines find a downed F-15 and its pilot, Lt. Col. Andrew Tanner, who informs them about the current state of the war: several American cities, including Washington, D.C., were obliterated by nuclear strikes; America's Strategic Air Command was crippled in a surprise attack by Cuban saboteurs who had posed as illegal immigrants from Mexico; and the paratroopers the youths encountered were dropped from fake commercial airliners to seize key positions in preparation for subsequent massive assaults via Mexico and Alaska. The middle third of the US has been taken over, but American counterattacks have halted Soviet advances and the lines have stabilized. Concerned about nuclear fallout, both sides refrain from the further uses of nuclear weapons.

Tanner assists the Wolverines in organizing raids against the Soviets. Soon after, in a visit to the front line, Tanner and Aardvark are killed in the crossfire of a tank battle. As a result of the escalating attacks, Soviet commanders now view the Wolverines as a serious threat. Using threats of torture, KGB officers force Daryl to swallow a tracking device, then release him to rejoin the guerrillas. Spetsnaz are sent into the mountains following signals from Daryl, but are ambushed and killed by the Wolverines. The group discovers that their pursuers are carrying portable radio triangulation equipment and trace the source of the signal to their friend. Daryl confesses and pleads for mercy, but is coldly executed by Robert after Jed executes a Soviet soldier captured during the battle.

The Wolverines' morale erodes as the war of attrition takes its toll. The remaining members are ambushed by three helicopter gunships after being baited by a truck dropping supplies on the road. Robert and Toni are killed in the attack, leaving the group reduced to four. Determined to save at least some of their number, Jed and Matt attack the Soviet headquarters in Calumet to distract the troops while Danny and Erica escape to liberated territory. The plan works as Danny and Erica escape, while Jed and Matt are wounded. Though Colonel Bella encounters the brothers, he cannot bring himself to kill them and lets them go. Still, it is implied that the brothers die in the park where the two spent time as kids.

The film's epilogue is narrated by Erica and suggests that the United States repelled the Soviet invasion some time later. A plaque is displayed with "Partisan Rock" in the background, which has been a recurring motif throughout the film as each dead comrade's name has been inscribed upon it. The plaque reads:

...In the early days of World War III, guerrillas – mostly children – placed the names of their lost upon this rock. They fought here alone and gave up their lives, so that this nation shall not perish from the earth.

Cast [edit]

• Patrick Swayze as Jed Eckert
• C. Thomas Howell as Robert Morris
• Lea Thompson as Erica Mason
• Charlie Sheen as Matt Eckert
• Darren Dalton as Daryl Bates
• Jennifer Grey as Toni Mason
• Brad Savage as Danny Bates
• Doug Toby as Arturo "Aardvark" Mondragón
• Powers Boothe as Lt. Col. Andrew "Andy" Tanner, USAF
• Harry Dean Stanton as Tom Eckert
• Ron O'Neal as Col. Ernesto Bella
• William Smith as Col. Strelnikov
• Vladek Sheybal as Gen. Bratchenko
• Ben Johnson as Mr. Jack Mason
• Roy Jenson as Mr. Samuel Morris
• Pepe Serna as Mr. Mondragón
• Lane Smith as Mayor Bates
• Radames Pera as Sgt. Stepan Gorsky

Development [edit]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2011)

The script for Red Dawn was written by John Milius and Kevin Reynolds from a story by Reynolds. The original story, called Ten Soldiers, was more akin to Lord of the Flies, the classic novel about the aggressive nature of man, than to the action film it eventually became. Some of the changes included a shift in focus from conflict within the group to 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.

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 train yard, and a building near downtown, which was repainted with the name of "Calumet, Colorado", are still there today. An old Safeway grocery store was converted to a sound stage and used for several scenes in the movie.^[5]

Before starting work on the movie, the cast underwent a realistic, intensive eight-week military training course. During that time, production crews designed and built special combat vehicles in Newhall, California. Soldier of Fortune reported that the movie's T-72 tank was such a precise replica that "while it was being carted around Los Angeles, two CIA officers followed it to the studio and wanted to know where it had come from".

Reception [edit]

Red Dawn was the 20th highest grossing film of 1984, opening on 10 August 1984 in 1,822 theatres and taking in $8,230,381 on its first weekend. Its box office gross is $38,376,497.^[1] It was the first film to be released in the US with a Motion Picture Association of America PG-13 rating.^[4]

Red Dawn received mixed reviews, receiving a score of 53% on Rotten Tomatoes.^[6]

At the time it was released, Red Dawn was considered the most violent film by the Guinness Book of Records and The National Coalition on Television Violence, with a rate of 134 acts of violence per hour, or 2.23 per minute.^[7] The DVD Special Edition (2007) includes an on-screen "Carnage Counter" in a nod to this.^[8]

National Review Online has named the film #15 in its list of "The Best Conservative Movies."^[9]

Adam Arseneau at the website DVD Verdict opined that the film "often feels like a Republican wet dream manifested into a surrealistic Orwellian nightmare".^[8]

According to Jesse Walker of Reason:

The film outraged liberal critics, but further to the left it had some supporters. In a witty and perceptive piece for The Nation, Andrew Kopkind called it "the most convincing story about popular resistance to imperial oppression since the inimitable Battle of Algiers," adding that he'd "take the Wolverines from Colorado over a small circle of friends from Harvard Square in any revolutionary situation I can imagine."^[10]

Libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard argued that the film was "not so much pro-war as it is anti-State."^[11] Rothbard gave the film a generally positive review, while expressing some reservations with the story:

One big problem with the picture is that there is no sense that successful guerrilla war feeds on itself; in real life the ranks of the guerrillas would start to swell, and this would defeat the search-and-destroy concept. In Red Dawn, on the other hand, there are only the same half-dozen teenagers, and the inevitable attrition makes the struggle seem hopeless when it need not be. Another problem is that there is no character development through action, so that, except for the leader, all the high school kids seem indistinguishable. As a result, there is no impulse to mourn as each one falls by the wayside.^[11]

The film has gained a cult following over the years.^{[citation needed]}

References in the film [edit]

• The NRA slogan, "I'll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead fingers", is seen on a truck's bumper sticker as the paratroopers take over Calumet before a dead man's M1911 pistol is taken from him.^[12]
• The movie being shown to American prisoners at the Soviet camp near Calumet is Alexander Nevsky (1938), Sergei Eisenstein's Soviet anti-Nazi film. It is also playing in the town cinema across from the drugstore.^[13]
• One of the radio announcements is "John has a long mustache", which is the same message the French resistance gets before D-Day in The Longest Day (1962)^{[citation needed]}.
• Much of the story is set in the Arapaho National Forest, and a group of Soviet soldiers refer specifically to the Colorado War, which was fought there between the Arapaho and Cheyenne Indian insurgencies and the occupying U.S. government.^[14]

In popular culture [edit]

Film and television [edit]

• In the Family Guy episode "Hell Comes to Quahog", Peter stars in Red Dawn: The Musical.^[15]
• Numerous references occur in the movie Hot Tub Time Machine.^[16]
• In the television show Scrubs, Elliot and Turk watch and discuss Red Dawn in the episode "My Heavy Meddle".^[17]
• "Grey Dawn" is a South Park episode which parodies Red Dawn.^[18]

Video games [edit]

• The plot of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 includes an invasion of the United States by an ultra-nationalist Russia, where members of the United States Army's 75th Ranger Regiment have to repel the attack. The achievement "Red Dawn" is awarded for completing the American "Wolverines!" and "Exodus" missions in Veteran difficulty. "Wolverines!" itself is a reference to the movie.^[19]
• Freedom Fighters is a 2003 video game that takes place during a Soviet invasion of New York. This game is based heavily on Red Dawn in terms of characters, costumes and design, and the last mission closely resembles one of the final scenes when the Wolverines attack the Soviet base.^[20]
• Homefront, a video game also written by John Milius, is about a North Korean invasion of America.^[21] One notable "easter egg" relating to the film is a large billboard at a school sport stadium which reads "Go Wolverines!!!".
• Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis is a 2001 tactical shooter that takes place in a fictional conflict between the United States Army and unknown invaders presumed to be Russian Soviets on several fictitious islands. The final, climactic chapter in the game is called "Red Dawn."^[22]

Operation Red Dawn [edit]

The operation to capture former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was named Operation Red Dawn and its targets were dubbed Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2. Army Captain Geoffrey McMurray, who named the mission, said the naming "was so fitting because it was a patriotic, pro-American movie." Milius approved of the naming: "I was deeply flattered and honored. It's nice to have a lasting legacy."^[23]

Remake [edit]

The remake takes place in the modern day, with North Korea invading the United States.

See also [edit]

	1980s portal
	United States portal
	Film portal

• Culture during the Cold War
• World War III in popular culture
• Tomorrow series

References [edit]

External links [edit]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Red Dawn

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Red Dawn (alternate history)

• Red Dawn at the Internet Movie Database
• Red Dawn at AllRovi
• Red Dawn at the TCM Movie Database