Red Dawn (1984) - by J. Molotov

Holy shit. I can’t even cope with anything that is happening in this movie.

Patrick Swayze is ratcheted up to a level I have never seen before, not even when he was Bodhi in Point Break. This is exponentially more nuts.

Charlie Sheen is the first one to join with Patrick Swayze when the others want to mutiny in the very beginning. They are telling Swayze that he’s just a scared kid like the rest of them, just a jock and who put him in charge? And he is licking his lips and darting his eyes all over the place and exhorting them in a quavering, God- and Commie-fearing hick accent to understand that this is World War III and they have to quit dicking around.  But then Charlie Sheen comes over to his side and we know they will win because he’s the highest paid actor in television. The hugs are so intense and there are two pairs of matching coats in the group of six people. Two! What the fuck happened to the wardrobe department?

And now, 5 minutes later, it is October and a whole month has gone by since the Commies took over and they have pine boughs stuck into their heads and jackets sticking out willy nilly in all directions like they think they are camouflaged and now they are hazing one of the kids into drinking the blood of a dear they shot. And it’s a month later and this kid is still wearing the Star Wars hat with the lid flipped up. I think it’s the one who drank the blood but I’m not sure. It’s like I can’t even see their faces anymore, but not like in Tron where everything is so shitty that I just can’t tell the characters apart, I think this movie has simply made portions of my brain stop functioning and the first one to go was the facial recognition center.

Book burning. That’s all I’m gonna say about that. They are back in town, which is now run by the KGB.

I was going to write this review about a topic I’ve discussed in the past, the seeping of Communist paranoia into 1980s films. I was going to say how this is the seminal work in that genre and possibly explore that further but everything was immediately fucknuts from the get-go without any warning or building up to it so we’re past that now.

They find their dad in the concentration camp and he gives them a speech about how he was probably a bad father but it just doesn’t matter now. Tells them their mom is dead and that they can’t afford to cry. He caps that off by screaming “AVENGE ME!” a couple of times.

Now they are out of town somehow without being caught at this house with some people, and this old man just gave them his granddaughters and some horses. I will probably never recover from this. One of the granddaughters is fucking Jennifer Grey, who subsequently acted in movies with each of the brothers; she was in Dirty Dancing with Patrick Swayze of course but also she was in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with Charlie Sheen when they were in jail together and he offered her drugs. Drugs? Drugs. She is possibly the most effective vessel of true feminine outrage and disgust.

The way the Cuban commander gives orders to his underlings is so mock patient, like he thinks they are all reeeeeeally stupid. It’s kinda like how Vizzini gives orders to Andre the Giant in The Princess Bride. 

Again with the screaming at people not to cry. Patrick Swayze has taken that as his personal mantra and he is beating it into his soldiers. “Just let it turn to something else! Never cry again as long as you live.” Hey, I’m all for sublimation but wow. This is what it means to be an American.

So the sublimation takes the form of them fighting back with face paint and tagging everything with “Wolverines” which is the name of their high school football team I guess. They also have grenades.

Now it’s November, and they are all wearing black berets and smoking cigarettes and I don’t think I can write anymore.

December, January, and February go by and increasingly fucked up things happen until they are all dead. Wocka wocka. I’m dead too.