Red Dawn starts like any other day in a small Colorado town, however the normal tranquillity is soon shattered when Russian soldiers parachute out of the sky & start killing everyone. In a systematic coordinated attack right across America starting in Mexico allied Soviet & Cuban forces have invaded the US & World War III has begun. Brother's Jed (Patrick Swayze) & Matt Eckert (Charlie Sheen) along with several of their high school buddies manage to escape the initial invasion & make it to the relative safety of the Colorado mountains. With no option but to fight the teenagers take arms & wage their own personal war against the Soviet Cuban scum who have invaded their homeland & killed innocent Americans...<br /><br />Co-written & directed by avid gun collector & pro-gun activist John Milius one has to say that I really didn't think too much of this overly sentimental teenage action film. The script by Milius & Kevin Reynolds takes itself deadly seriously & is very pro the right to bear arms all the way, it says that the right of each American to own a gun is good because America is the land of the free & in the event of an attack by the Russians or any other evil superpower individual Americans will be able to defend themselves. I suppose Red Dawn tries to tap into the fears people had at the time, fears about Cummunism, about Russia, about World War III, about nuclear warfare, about increasing legislation in owning a gun which Red Dawn repeatedly says owning a gun is every American's God given right & the whole survivalist movement. The character's aren't great, there's the clichéd action film theme of ordinary people being thrust into an extraordinary situation & having to toughen-up & overcome the odds, you know the sort of thing I mean. Nothing really works that well, while watching it last night I just thought it was a collection of seemingly random incidents stringed together & you never get to know any of the character's, in fact I couldn't really name them now as I couldn't really tell them apart. The film never leaves the confines of the Colorado town either & I for one never really felt like the whole of the US was at war. At almost two hours it felt like it went on forever, the action isn't anything special & it's hard to believe a group of teenagers could take on & defeat a heavily armed platoon of highly trained soldiers. I read somewhere once that someone thought Red Dawn resembled The Goonies (1985) but with guns & rocket launchers which I think is actually quite an apt description.<br /><br />Director Milius nails his allegiances down here, there are some really nauseating scenes of gross patriotism which I found rather laughable. The scene of the teenagers listening to the radio & the American national anthem comes on to keep the nations spirits up is just so forced & cheap it's untrue. Red Dawn was the very first film released with a PG-13 rating in the states, The Flamingo Kid (1984) was actually the first film to be given a PG-13 but Red Dawn ended up being released before it. There is a fairly high body count & a fair amount of blood too although it's not that graphic it is quite violent & whether Red Dawn would still get a PG-13 today is debatable. Amazingly the term 'Red Dawn' was the given code name for the military operation in Iraq that captured Saddam Hussein back in 2003!<br /><br />The film is well made with decent production values, the military vehicles & the like look very authentic I suppose & the New Mexico location shooting has some nice scenery. There are several sizable parts of the film which are subtitled. The acting is in my opinion very poor, the likes of Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen in his film debut, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Harry Dean Stanton & Powers Boothe are capable of much better than this & some of the performances are truly dire.<br /><br />Red Dawn is not a film that I can say I liked, it's pro-war pro-gun patriotic nonsense that has dated very badly & is a bit of a chore to sit through in one sitting. Apparently set to be remade as Red Dawn (2010).