Wonderfully Horrible Netflix Instant Films: Red Dawn

I grew up in constant fear of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. This paranoia was heightened by the fact that my family are fanatically anti-Communist Cubans that left after Castro's revolution. It just seemed inevitable that we were all going to die in some atomic holocaust. Though not as hardcore as the 50's and 60's the 80's were certainly a time of great fear. That's why the movie Red Dawn resonated with me quite a bit as a kid. Not that I would know the first thing of how to fight back if the Russians did invade with my useless skills as an upper middle-class "Artiste". I would die pretty quick. But not the Wolverines!

Red Dawn is a who's who of young 80's stars. It stars Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Grey, Lea Thompson, and C. Thomas Howell. The story revolves around a group of Midwestern teenagers that decide to take on the enemy when the Russians and Cubans invade America. They call themselves the Wolverines, after their high school football team. They are led by Swayze and Sheen who use their wilderness and hunting skills to keep them alive. Their parents are rounded up and put in death camps for reasons that are never fully explained. In fact the whole invasion isn't explained. But, whatever. The Wolverines then start fighting a guerrilla war against the Ruskies. The Russians are not happy and make it their mission to stop the Wolverines. Good luck with that.

A couple of years ago they made a reboot in which the North Koreans invaded. That makes no damn sense. The world has changed and our enemies are no longer a massive country like the Soviet Union that had the resources for a full scale invasion. North Korea? Come on. Those guys might launch a missile at us but there is no way that they could invade. So, we have the wonderfully silly, overly patriotic, jingoistic, and totally excellent original which stands as a kind of artifact of cold war politics and paranoia.