Swayze for President

The 1980’s were a great time for movies. Filmmakers working on mainstream features could get away with a lot more than they do today. I know in a time when films like Hostel are huge at the box office my last statement seems absurd, but unfortunately it is true. You couldn’t make a film like Red Dawn today without significantly changing the film. Think about it, the opening scene in this film shows Russian soldiers parachuting onto a school playground, destroying everything around them, and even killing children. This is at first shocking but if world war three ever does land on our soil I’m sure the enemy isn’t gonna play nice and only target adults.

Taking a large group of teen stars like: Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Grey and then putting them into familiar stereotypes worked well for this film. We have all the basic teen movie elements here, the jock, the nerd, and the hot girl. If John Hughes had made a violent war movie this would have been it, except he would have thrown Anthony Michael Hall or Molly Ringwald into the mix.

After the attack on the school a group of students stock up on supplies and head for the woods to hide from the chaos taking place at home. Once there and the pecking order is established they hunt, fish, argue, and unleash some serious whoop-ass on the bad guys. Calling themselves the wolverines they quickly become legendary as news of their wrath spreads.

This two disc special edition has some pretty cool stuff on it. We get a counter that keeps track of all the deaths in the film (great idea), a documentary that is pretty interesting, cast and crew commentary and more.

I love this movie, and highly recommend it to everyone. This is a very violent film and politically incorrect movie made during a time when the cold war was still fresh on everyone’s minds and is a great example of a good 1980’s action movie. Also Swayze is in, so check it out because Red Dawn is a killer film!