Red Dawn

Now that's...unexpected.

I'll be honest I'm shocked. Red Dawn could not be less of a dumb action movie if it tried, but my God is it engrained in pop culture as one of the most kick ass and action filled movies of the 80s. Like what the shit, it's really good, it has a lot of down time between the brief action segments, gives time to our characters, shows the dehumanizing effects of war, shows real human emotions on both sides of the conflict, and is steeped in realism. If this film got re-released today people would have a very, very different opinion of it than they did back in the day. Huge respect to the director John Milius that took a kind of absurd plot about communist soldiers invading the american midwest and a band of high school students take up arms and try to liberate their town, into a legit war film that has the heart as well as the explosions. The cast is pretty star studded with Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen as brothers who lead the guerilla fighting force, and we got Lea Thompson and Jennifer Gray (this being done before Dirty Dancing), all of whom do very good work and do sell this premise. I was surprised to see this movie actually takes place over the course of about half a year, so you see these kids go from survivors to warriors and how much damage they are inflicting to this army as time goes on. This was the last movie I would ever expect to tell kind of a dark, real, and straight up war film. You just think it would be ridiculous premise, shoot outs galore, plenty of explosions for your money's worth, "Wolverines!!", hey we won, the end. Nope! No horseshit, this movie deserves a better rating than 6/10 on IMDB, it really pulled the persian rug right out from beneath me and gave me something much better. I kinda want to give it a 7.5/10, it's not a great movie but I'll be damned if I said it was even subpar. I dare not talk about it further cause I certainly don't want to spoil things or hype you up too much. Just go in and watch it with an open mind with zero preconceptions, and I think you'll very much like it. Again, it's not the 80s action movie with a heavy layer of cheese everyone makes it out to be so if that's what you want, I suggest you go rent First Blood Part 2 or Commando. Positively shocking but 4 stars, 7.5/10, very recommended from me!