If ever a film has been ripe for rediscovery and reevaluation, it is Red Dawn, John Milius’s 1984 movie about a group of Colorado children who become guerilla resistance fighters during a Soviet–Cuban invasion of mainland America. Received and remembered as a bit of fun, schlocky action, it has become a cult classic mainly as a novelty of the Cold War and its silly obsessions that remind us how far away we have quickly come from worries over ducking and covering and the Russians. That is unfair to the film and just inaccurate. In truth, Red Dawn was the best war movie made in the 1980s, a thoughtful meditation on the tragic impact of military invasions and why they usually fail. It is also an examination of the mindset of the warriors on both sides who fight in them and the grim things war does to them, both physically and mentally.
The film was a moderate box office hit at the time of its release but was derided by critics. It was released at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” popularity. Reagan had declared the USSR an “evil empire” and presided over a military buildup to win the Cold War. Liberals denounced it as warmongering, but voters approved. Reagan’s won 49 out of 50 states in his 1984 reelection bid, one of the biggest landslides in U.S. history.
Red Dawn came out in the summer leading up to that election. Audiences accepted it as an old-fashioned cheer-for-the-heroes film. To most critics, the film was a hokey bit of flag-waving pandering. Either way, it was lumped in with then-contemporary films such as Rambo, Uncommon Valor, and Missing In Action as part of a trend that represented both resurgent anticommunism and reappraisals of the Vietnam War.
Both sides missed the point of the Red Dawn. It is ultimately an anti-war film and all the more powerful because it makes its points subtly rather than blaring them out from the first scenes like the anti-Vietnam films of the 1970s and ’80s.
Red Dawn certainly stands apart from other ’80s action films. The protagonists are not indestructible powerhouses capable of superhuman feats like Sly Stallone or Chuck Norris, but rather ordinary people who are quite vulnerable. By the film’s end, most of the heroes are dead, having accomplished little if anything to liberate their homes. While the invaders are wrong, the film recognizes them as human. The violence in the film is initially exultant, but by the second half, it becomes brutal, horrifying, and tragic.
The film’s tagline was, “In our time, no foreign army has ever occupied American soil.” Writer and director John Milius told the Los Angeles Times in 1984, “I see this as an anti-war movie in the sense that if both sides could see this, maybe it wouldn’t have to happen. I think it would be good for Americans to see what a war [on their own soil] would be like.”
The premise of the movie was derided at the time as too far-fetched to be believed. Would Russia actually become so belligerent that it would launch a massive ground invasion of another country, risking the censure of the rest of the world? We know from Ukraine now that the answer is at least less clear than it might seem. Yes, invading the United States is a stretch, but that figures into the plot: A joint Soviet-Cuban invasion seizes the middle of the country, but the coasts rally and hold firm. The U.S. won’t bomb its own land because so many civilians are trapped in the occupied middle states, so the conflict becomes a quagmire for both sides. The small town of Calumet, Colorado, finds itself on the front lines of a war of attrition.
A group of mostly high-school-age children, led by brothers Jed and Matt Eckert, hide out in the mountains after Soviet and Cuban paratroopers land in the town. They hope to wait things out until the U.S. forces push the invaders out. They soon learn that any liberation is far off and opt to instead transform themselves into resistance fighters. The children become an estimable military force thanks to the fact that the Eckert brothers’ father was a survivalist who trained his boys well. Soon, they’re ambushing Soviet convoys, engaging in hit-and-run attacks on outposts and even bombing occupied buildings in town. They dub themselves the “Wolverines” after their local high school’s mascot.
Red Dawn is notable for one of the most intensely “’80s movie” casts ever: Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen star as Jed and Matt Eckert, accompanied by C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, and Jennifer Grey as the main Wolverines. Harry Dean Stanton has a small but compelling role as the Eckert boys’ father. Despite how famous the cast became in other iconic ’80s films, that doesn’t become a distraction in Red Dawn. If anything, it enhances the film. The sight of Dirty Dancing’s Baby planting a bomb near Russian soldiers and then leading the survivors into a machine-gun ambush graphically underscores how extreme situations such as war can lead people to extreme actions.
The first half of the film seemingly endorses the Wolverines’ decision to become guerillas. It’s their land, their home that has been invaded, after all. Why shouldn’t they defend it? Isn’t that the right thing to do? Stanton’s final words to his sons when they covertly visit him in an internment camp are “Avenge me,” and for a while, it seems like the Wolverines are winning. The scenes of their attacks are mostly exciting and uplifting.
Swayze is particularly inspired by being cast as the Wolverines’ leader. He has both the charisma and physicality necessary to convince the audience that he can turn a bunch of high school children into a fighting force. Yet he can also project the sensitivity necessary to convey his character’s turmoil as the grim reality of war grinds away at him. The scene where Swayze kills an invader up close for the first time is not heroic. Instead, he executes a wounded and terrified man. Swayze’s anger overwhelms any mercy he might feel. It’s an ugly and savage moment, and Swayze perfectly captures this.
The film contrasts the children’s guerilla campaign with the dilemma of Col. Bella, a former Cuban revolutionary, now the military governor for the region. Bella, played by the late, great Ron “Superfly” O’Neal, is a true believer in the socialist cause and enraged by the deaths of the soldiers under his command at the hands of the guerillas. He authorizes brutal reprisals in the belief they will crack the Americans’ morale. Not only does that not work, but it also forces him to face up to the fact that he is no longer an idealistic revolutionary but is now exactly the type of authority he used to fight against.
Bella’s conflict reveals the subversive point of Red Dawn: The film’s American audiences may have seen the Wolverines as valiant freedom fighters, but they’re just as easily characterized as rebel insurgents or even terrorists. They kill invaders whenever they can with ambushes and bombings, never in straight-up battles.
For a while, it even appears as though the Wolverines might be winning. They aren’t. The Wolverines’ attacks never loosen the invaders’ hold on the town. The guerillas are too small and their attacks too sporadic to be anything more than a nuisance. The Soviets eventually bring in Col. Strelnikov, leader of a special forces unit, to hunt down the Wolverines. The tide abruptly turns, and one by one, the Wolverines are picked off.
In the film’s most wrenching scene, the Wolverines decide to execute one of their own. It’s a person they have known since childhood but who was captured and forced by Strelnikov to reveal the Wolverines’ hideout. The guerillas, at the same time, plan to execute a captured Russian soldier. The doomed Wolverine pitifully begs for his life while the Russian says to him, “Tell me that you are my friend so that we do not die alone.” Both are cut down anyway. The shock of having to kill one of their childhood friends eats away at the Wolverines.
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Eventually, only four Wolverines are left. The Eckerts opt to lead a suicide attack on the invaders’ headquarters, ostensibly to allow the other two to escape. There’s no reason why all four couldn’t just make a dash to U.S.-controlled territory, but the Eckerts admit that the fighting has broken them. They are burned out and used up. They see no other course left than to take on the invaders in an act of pure nihilism. They kill several of the invaders in the attack but are quickly mortally wounded themselves. When the thoroughly disillusioned Col. Bella gets the drop on the boys, he sees in them what he once was and throws his weapon down in disgust. “Vaya con Dios,” he tells the Eckerts as they limp away to die in the park where they once played as children.
The fact that so many people did and still do view Red Dawn as a simple heroic adventure is a testament to the power of the narrative of protecting one’s home from invaders. It’s always different when it is our land. But a fun romp this is not.
Sean Higgins is a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute specializing in labor and employment issues.
