Red Dawn (1984)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1984
	Director: John Milius (Conan the Barbarian)
	Actors: Patrick Swayze (Point Break, Donny Darko), Charlie Sheen (Hot Shots, Mackete Kills), C. Thomas Howell (The Amazing Spiderman), Lea Thompson (Back to the Future 1-3)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama, War
	Conditions of visioning: 18.06.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: When their town and the whole country is invided by communists, a bunch of high-school students finds refuge in the mountains.
Review: I learned about this movie while watching documentaries about Conan the Barbarian, as it has the same composer Basil Poledouris and especially the same director John Milius. I understood that he was not afraid to show things as they are, in particular violence, so I was interested to see how he would tell this story of invasion of the USA in the middle of the cold war. I was a bit skeptical about the teenagers point of view but they quickly grow up as they have to fight the enemy, so it is not a "movie for teenagers" but rather one for adults. I liked that after less than five minutes the action starts, and that later on time is taken to let us know the characters better. This is very well done. There are some good action scenes, but you still feel the limited budget, which makes it hard to tell a story of world war by focussing on only one small town. However this is compensated by the great play of the three main young actors: Swayze, Sheen and Thompson, and the one of Powers Boothe playing a colonel stranded behind enemy lines, and that summarizes for us the status of the global war in five minutes in a believable way. A very interesting movie. From what I read on internet, the 2012 remake with Chris Helmsworth (Thor) and in which North Koreans replace communists is a typical recent remake not worth watching.
Rating: 7 /10