Hi again in this new year of 2025! I’m going with the reminder of the fractured phrase: Hooray for Hollyweird! Most of us love movies and I enjoy recommending what you should watch on any given day. So, Hooray for Hollyweird … and for today’s recommendation, let’s go with “Red Dawn” from 1984 – and it was the very first U.S. film to earn the PG-13 rating!
“Red Dawn” is the story of a group of high school students that battle invading communist forces. When the film was released in 1984, it was an Olympic year where communist USSR was boycotting the Olympic games because the U.S. had boycotted the 1980 summer games after the December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets only weeks before the winter games of 1980. The USSR had a history of near-Olympics invasions having invaded Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
In any case, “Red Dawn” became a flash-point of the U.S. showing its toughness again after the previous decade of leaving Vietnam and the weak-kneed foreign policy of President Jimmy Carter (remember Iran’s take-over of our embassy in Tehran and the subsequent holding of hostages?).
As a film, “Red Dawn” is only so-so, but it is a decent action film with a solid cast that does only so-so work. The main character is played by Patrick Swayze and he’s backed up by Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Grey, Powers Boothe and C. Thomas Howell. Mix in smaller roles for Oscar winner (not for this one) Ben Johnson and Harry Dean Stanton and this is no a cast with a weak link other than the type of movie.
“Red Dawn” has a bunch of stereotypes that drag the film down a bit and it was remade into a in insipid mess 28 years later in 2012. So, as usual, watch the original and forget the “reboot.” You won’t have any trouble finding “Red Dawn” on a streaming service and you can always say, “Hooray for Hollyweird!”
(CLICK here … to read my review of “Red Dawn” from 1984)
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