Things I’m Supposed To Hate, But Don’t: Red Dawn
By Mitch Berg
As noted in the previous article, I hate crap.
Unless it’s good crap.
Or, if it’s bad crap, at least let it be bad crap that does something good.
Let’s be clear; Red Dawn is a crap movie. It’s so crappy, only Quentin Tarantino should direct the remake.
And yet I love it.
It had everything a teenage guy (or in my case, a twenty year old, which in college is just about the same thing) could want.
It had all your best buds, out on a really serious adventure!
It had blatant cold-war emotional manipulation!
It had you…er, Patrick Swayze and all your buds kicking righteous ass!
It had Ferris Buehler’s sister and that Caroline In The City chick whose name eludes me, with guns!
Jennifer Gray and Lea Thompson! I didn’t even have to look it up!
I noted long ago that I’ve only walked out of two movies in my life; Tom Hanks’ wretched The Burbs, in 1988, and Little Nicky in 2000. Red Dawn was nearly the first; during the scene where the student council president (who later betrays the group) calls for the vote on going back to town after the invasion? I started getting my things together to get up and go – but since it was a cold night and only homework at college awaited me, I stayed put.
And there were more justifications for getting up and going; any scenery that Lea Thompson doesn’t shoot or blow up, she chews; you can see Powers Boothe silently cursing his agent in every scene; the ending is mawkish and awful.
But it’s a John Milius movie. And Milius has a way of making “marinading in testosterone” fun, and even thrilling. Dirty Harry was only a few steps above Tarantino-level dreck – but there’s not a person in the film-going world that doesn’t love it; there are people in Sri Lanka whose only English is “Go Ahead, Make My Day”, and they all get it.
And as bad as the movie is, Milius is in fine form, pushing all the same buttons that get otherwise-sophisticated Americans to get a little verklempt at “God Bless the USA”, or sing along “we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way!” with Toby Keith.
It’s manipulation. It’s crap. It’s glorious.
It’s almost a rite of passage, these days. I watch it with my kids, partly to point out the crap, and partly to pass on the great two-generations-from-white-trash folklore of the whole thing.
Wolverines! F**k Yeah!
Now, I’m going to go listen to “This American Life” to rebalance my chi.
May 11th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
http://www.imfdb.org/images/8/8f/RedDawnLeaThompsonM60.jpg
What’s not to like?
May 11th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
I like it too.
May 11th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
“There’s a world of hurt coming down.”
May 11th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Actually, the phrase that went through my mind was the old Irish Spring tag line – manly yes, but I like it too, LOL.
May 11th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
“Now, I’m going to go listen to “This American Life” to rebalance my chi.”
Actually pretty funny.
May 11th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Mitch, I think that “People who admit seeing Red Dawn” automatically puts you on the DHS Watch List. Although we were on the List a long time ago, anyway.
Avenge me, boys!
May 11th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
You’re just a rebel, Mitch. Red Dawn and Dirty Harry, which you both like, were massively counter-culture at the time and to a large extent still are. Dirty Harry release a paroxysm of liberal outrage at the movie and Harry had to be an anti-hero for just that reason, while Red Dawn drove the media just about nuts when it came out. Fangs were out for both movies, and neither got anything but bad review.
But for a movie with dialog worthy of a sophomoric high schooler, a budget smaller than Michael Moore’s lunch bill, and a cast that was as comfortable with their props as Obama is with a bowling ball, it was a fun movie.
But half the fun was realizing that helping the thing make money was driving the movie critics and media talking heads of the time nutso.
May 12th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Another one was the made for TV Mini-series “Amerika” starring Kris Kristopherson. Unsaid, but assumed was that that the UN arranged total nuclear disarmerment between the US and USSR. Basically after the US gave up all it’s nukes surprise! the UN and USSR were in “cahoots” and the USSR still had some nukes left
Amerika was shown in 1987, after the Carter administration. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092316/