Red Dawn
Overview
 
Red Dawn is a 1984 American war film
War film
War films are a film genre concerned with warfare, usually about naval, air or land battles, sometimes focusing instead on prisoners of war, covert operations, military training or other related subjects. At times war films focus on daily military or civilian life in wartime without depicting battles...

 directed by John Milius
John Milius
John Frederick Milius is an American screenwriter, director, and producer of motion pictures.-Early life:Milius was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Elizabeth and William Styx Milius, who was a shoe manufacturer. Milius attempted to join the Marine Corps in the late 1960s, but was rejected...

 and co-written by Milius and Kevin Reynolds. It stars Patrick Swayze
Patrick Swayze
Patrick Wayne Swayze was an American actor, dancer and singer-songwriter. He was best known for his tough-guy roles, as romantic leading men in the hit films Dirty Dancing and Ghost, and as Orry Main in the North and South television miniseries. He was named by People magazine as its "Sexiest...

, C. Thomas Howell
C. Thomas Howell
Christopher Thomas "Tommy" Howell , known by his stage name C. Thomas Howell, is an American actor and film director. He starred in the films The Outsiders as Ponyboy Curtis and in The Hitcher as Jim Halsey. He has appeared in The Da Vinci Treasure,Soul Man, Red Dawn, Secret Admirer, Gettysburg, H. G...

, Lea Thompson
Lea Thompson
Lea Katherine Thompson is an American actress and director. She is best known for her 1990s NBC situation comedy Caroline in the City and her portrayal of Lorraine Baines McFly, Marty McFly's mother, in the Back to the Future trilogy...

, Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen
Carlos Irwin Estevez , better known by his stage name Charlie Sheen, is an American film and television actor. He is the youngest son of actor Martin Sheen....

 and Jennifer Grey
Jennifer Grey
Jennifer Elise Grey is an American actress. Her first major roles came in the 1984 war film Red Dawn and the 1986 comedy Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In 1987 she starred as Frances "Baby" Houseman in the hit film Dirty Dancing for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe. In the early 1990s, Grey...

.

The film is set in an alternate 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...

 in which the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 is invaded by the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 and its Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

n allies (specifically Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

 and Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

). However, the onset of World War III
World War III
World War III denotes a successor to World War II that would be on a global scale, with common speculation that it would be likely nuclear and devastating in nature....

 is merely in the background and not fully elaborated. The story follows a group of American high school students who resist the occupation with guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...

, calling themselves Wolverine
Wolverine
The wolverine, pronounced , Gulo gulo , also referred to as glutton, carcajou, skunk bear, or quickhatch, is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae . It is a stocky and muscular carnivore, more closely resembling a small bear than other mustelids...

s, after their high school mascot.
An introductory text explains how the USA gradually became strategically isolated when several nations withdrew their membership in NATO.
Quotations

The two toughest kids on the block, I guess...Sooner or later they gonna fight. [When asked why World War III started]

There were 5 of them. I got four. [when asked about how he got shot down]

Category:Action films Category:American films

 
x
OK