Rating: 
Summary: AAHHH ITS THE RUSKIES...and those crazy nicaraguans
Review: this is a fantastic movie. the costume design is superb especially the russian soldiers with the moustaches who look like they belong in a cheap porno. another great touch are the amazing accents. patrick swayze puts in another award winning performance as a leader of a teenage band of rebels called the wolverines. amazingly they hold off an entire division of russian troops headed by a lunatic nicaraguan. one scene stands out in my mind..it is the gut wrenching scene when patrick and his father are talking througha chain link fence as a heavily accented russian voice is blaring propoganda such as "resistance is futile" through a megaphone. in that moment, i felt like a true american and wanted to stand up and shout WOLVERINES!
Rating: 
Summary: UTTER RUBBISH
Review: I bought this dvd on as the reviews it got were good. After watching it I was very very dissapointed. It is the most boreing, far fetched movie I have ever seen. Basically, the USA is invaded by Russian and Cuban troops. A group of teenagers escape and start a war with the invading forces. They survive for months. The Russians chuck everything at them including gunships but they still cant defeat the kids. These kids call themselves the "wolverines" and one part of the movie which really made me laugh was when the kids attacked the Russians and some of the troops cried out "help help its the wolverines" I cant understand anyone who can honestly say they really enjoyed this movie. I have seen more exciting episodes of the Muppet show. If you like a film with good action, lots of excitement and great acting, stay clear of this tripe. If the film had no swearing in it and less blood, a 5 year old MIGHT find it a good film.
Rating:
Summary: Silly cold-war melodrama
Review: Communist troops land in middle america and begin machine-gunning children. A Russian soldier disarms a corpse and the camera pans to a bumper sticker "They will take my gun away when they pry it from my cold dead hand". Get the idea. This is one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen.
Rating: 
Summary: A Reflection Of The Time In Which It Was Made
Review: "Red Dawn" is essentially a "what-if" tale of a United States invasion by...who else?...Communist nations. If nothing else, it's certainly entertaining and thought-provoking film. I'm not a fan of Patrick Swayze's but I really cannot fault either his acting skills or those of C. Thomas Howell in this picture.That said, I must comment on the overall context of "Red Dawn". Much like John Wayne's "The Green Berets", this film is somewhat hackneyed by today's standards and doesn't stand the test of time well, although it's still interesting to watch. One must keep in mind that "Red Dawn" was made during the presidency of Ronald Reagan while Cold War feelings were running pretty strong and not too long after we invaded Grenada to save some medical students from a Marxist revolution. For this reason, ultra conservatives will hail this picture for its prescience while ultra liberals will decry it for being unrealistic. Neither of these positions really do justice to the movie. While "Red Dawn" is not a movie I care to add to my personal collection, I think it is one best enjoyed with the viewer's political filter, be it left or right, turned off.
Rating: 
Summary: Ignore the Editorial Comments and enjoy this film
Review: Unfortunately, the official editorial, and some subsequent reviews are in error. The invasion depicted in this movie is both the result of a nuclear strike, and is somewhat more plausable than indicated in the reviews. The possiblity of a so-called decapitation strike (nuclear bombing of centers of federal government and federal military command centers) is real. In fact, the US used conventional weapons to do exactly the same thing to Iraq with similar effect as depicted in this film. The reviewers of the film were clearly not paying attention when this theme was stated in the early part of the film. When one appreciates how possible this scenario is, the film becomes much more entertaining as a thriller / horror story. The work of the actors and crew can be much more fully appreciated. If you like to be scared, this film will do it.
Rating:
Summary: A What If Movie,Reflects its time period very well
Review: This Movie was released in 1984,the same year when the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States was heating up.This movie gives people who want to take it seriously, a realistic vision of what could happen if a war was fought on American soil. Taking the name of their school,The Wolverines. Teenagers flee to the mountains,for protection from the war that is happening in their hometown.What follows,is similar to guerilla warfare,they fight for their family,their freedom,and their country.I found this movie to be very action packed,it also has a strong storyline,and is very,very patriotic.A Must See !!!!
Rating:
Summary: A great Cold War Classic
Review: During the Cold War is when I first watched this film with my family. I was around 6 at the time it came out and I remmber during the first opening sceen. My older family members set there in shock as on the screen Russia took control of America. My Uncle even though he said it was fiction. I remmber him saying it could happen. I remmber vagley of the days when Nucler War was not only possable, but everyone thought it was going to happen. This movie shows the tenseness of the period of the Cold War 80's . Just as the book Swan Song "which is also a great book" it shows how we " America and Russia" were insane in a way and that war to that scale is pointless and would only destory people's lives.
Rating:
Summary: flawed and dated classic, but also misunderstood
Review: In "Red Dawn" a lightning Soviet invasion puts a small midwest town on the frontlines of WWIII. Invading Russians - backed up by Cubans and Nicaraguans - follow-up their blitzkrieg by moving into towns and using locally recorded gun licenses to weed out potential troublemakers. It's left to the local teens to take to the hills and survive. The group led by Patrick Swayze and also including Charlie Sheen and C. Thomas Howell and some guy who plays the wimpy student-body president at their HS, initially try to lay low and live off the land. When they can't make it out of the war zone, and those pesky commies won't leave them alone, they collect their guns and stage a guerrila war - resupplying themselves, ala QuakeIII Arena, on whatever their victims had been armed with. (A First-Person-Shooter game based on "Red Dawn"? Now there's an idea....) Once the Wolverines declare their own brand of WWIII, the plot loses its focus - the story gives no hint of their progress, only devolving into a montage of crudely staged battle scenes that are hard to follow and even harder to link (although the same could probably be said in real wars). "Dawn" is usually dismissed as either a crude film or a right-wing fantasy, although it's actually a classic because it's actually both and neither. With its poor acting, underwhelming action sequences (Russian helicopters which fill half of either of the last two Rambo movies appear in only one major scene), implausible plot twists (the Russians are supposed to be in complete control, but the heroes come and go as they please) and a story that goes nowhere, the film looks like it was shot by some students trying to weather a real Russian invasion. Also, the film's appeal to right-wing sentiments is so bald (the Russian soldiers even know the name for the form used to process gun licenses - thank you liberals!!) that the film can't be considered dishonest. On the other hand, it's hard to dismiss the film as glorifying jingoism since the film doesn't really glorify war - the Wolverines aren't immortal, aren't that likable and suffer conspicuously for their rebellion. The battle scenes have a sort of brutality not unlike that in the crop of Vietnam war movies released at the same time ("Platoon", "Full Metal Jacket" and "Hamburger Hill") which nobody would say glorify war. We never get to see all that cool American high-technology upon which many Tom Clancy books were made. Also, except for one scene in which Wolverines pop-up out of trenches, there are no "gotchas" - scenes in which the bad guy not only gets it, but gets it good (like the exploding shark in Jaws, or the terrorist strapped to that missile in "True Lies"). Our heroes are lucky enough to dispatch their enemies with stolen rocket grenades and AK's. Also, none of our heroes has a catchphrase or delivers that line ("go ahead, make my day") that a true popcorn flick needs. There are scenes in which the characters look like they're straining to say something cool, something that will elevate them from partisans into true heroes, but they're too tired to be imaginative. Even the Russians seem less menacing than the gross stereotypes of our enemies in films produced during WWII - including a Cuban officer whose experiences move him to suggest softer ways of dealing with the Wolverine partisans; an apparently cruel KGB officer played by veteran character actor Vladek Sheybal is replaced by a more cunning sort who, despite a very Soviet upbringing, realizes that summary executions of captured Americans won't defeat the Wolverines; at lower ranks, the Russians alternate between greed, aggression and stupidity, but are always far from home - including one guy among the Wolverines' first victims who looks like he'll die of fright before blood loss - compare that with the German prisoner in "Private Ryan" who is reluctantly spared by his American captors only to return the favor by disemboweling one of them when the two meet again. Like those WWII propaganda movies, "Dawn" was a product of its times, one when those Russians were scarrier than Yakov Smirnoff - not simply for the menace they held over us, but the menace within us that they threatened to release.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie!
Review: This is one of the great movies of the mid 80's! You can't go wrong with a great story and an all star cast. And for all of you movie trivia buffs....this was the very first movie to be released in theaters with a PG-13 rating!
Rating:
Summary: Red Dawn- Don't ever say "It can't happen here"...
Review: I say that because invasion did happen here...in the 1770's. We were ordered to park our guns with the government and we resisted..and won! Thus it happened too in Red Dawn. Now some politicians want to do the same to the avergae firearms owner. The movie shows what "they" are scared of righteous citizens protecting their own. Good marksmen in the mountains sounds like the Greek resistance of WW2 (and it worked for them). Don't forget the scene where the Rooskie tells the Afghan to go to the Sporting Goods store and get Federal Form 4473... Although the actors playing the Russians were a little lame in the mountaintop scene, the movie played well and reminded me that diligence spared us this after the collapse of most communisn in the late 80's. But don't ever again say "It can't happen here..". Fail to study history, and you will relive it!!
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