‘Red Dawn’

The ultimate in Reagan-era calls-to-arms, “Red Dawn,” continues to be one of the strongest ties our current culture has to our nation’s Cold War fears.

Featuring 80s all-stars Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Grey and C. Thomas Howell, “Red Dawn” plays like a two-hour adaptation of “Soldier of Fortune.”

Soviet and Cuban troops invade a small Colorado town (and presumably other parts of the U.S. as well) only to face resistance from a small group of forest-dwelling teenagers who call themselves the Wolverines. The opening sequence, in which parachuting Soviet troops attack a high school, is iconic, even if the rest of the movie is more infamous than notable.

Not only was it long considered by the Guinness Book of World Records to be the most violent movie ever made, but it was also the first film ever released with a PG-13 rating. That shouldn’t prevent it from going down in history as one of the great beacons of conservatism in the normally liberal Hollywood. It’s half fearmongering, half NRA-ad and 100% serious, which is why it gives so much pleasure year after year, viewing after viewing.

Writer/director and St. Louis native John Milius also wrote “Apocalypse Now” and was the Coen Brothers’ inspiration for Walter when they were making “The Big Lebowski;” but “Red Dawn” may go down as his most lasting contribution to the arts. It was this movie that inspired the name for the U.S. military operation that captured Saddam Hussein. That’s right; it was “Operation Red Dawn” that dug the former Iraqi leader out of his hole. And the responsible units’ names? Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2.

Whether you watch it to laugh at the way we weren’t or to cry for the heads of those dirty commie dogs, it stands the test of time and will remain one of this country’s favorite World War III movies.

‘Gymkata’

If a movie is made available on DVD only after an online contest, you know it’s got to be good.

Imagine a movie starring Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas based on the dubious notion that gymnastics can be cool. Throw him into a made-up, vaguely Soviet country where the U.S. wants to install a satellite-monitoring base, a country which no one is allowed to enter unless they can survive a deadly obstacle course called “the game.” Then take into account that they have the budget of a grade-school theater production and that Thomas is one of the better actors in the cast.

This will not even begin to prepare you for “Gymkata.” In order to defeat “the game,” which involves mostly running and rope climbing (deadly rope climbing!), Thomas is trained by the SIA (Special Intelligence Agency) to create a martial art that blends his gymnastics skills with karate to form gymkata, a martial art far too dependent on pommel-horse-shaped objects laying around Eastern European towns.

“Gymkata” has developed a small cult following for its unintentional comedy and poor attempts at political intrigue, but it deserves a much larger one. This film is epically ill-conceived and its utterly ridiculous premise pays off in the form of big laughs for anyone watching the resulting mess. Really, the only redeeming characteristics of “Gymkata” are its preservation of skewed views on Cold War policies and the fact that it gave Thomas the chance to get some revenge after being shut out of the 1980 Olympic Games. Who’s laughing now, USSR? That’s right; anyone who’s watching “Gymkata.”

‘Enemy Mine’

One of the great, forgotten sci-fi epics of the 80s, “Enemy Mine”, features a more humanistic view of Cold War politics. Well, half-humanistic at least.

Dennis Quaid plays an interstellar fighter pilot in a 21st century war between humans and an alien race called Dracs. Louis Gossett Jr. plays a Drac pilot who crash-lands on the same forbidding planet as Dennis Quaid. Forced to rely on each other to survive, both learn to accept each other personally and reject the years of propaganda they have been fed about the other’s race.

This movie approaches the Cold War as one between cultures and offers a non-military response to the problem. By sharing language and customs, the human and Drac learn to live together. In a strange piece of karmic repayment, the “can’t we all just get along” message actually helped.

“Enemy Mine” was among the first American films to see a legal wide-release in the former Soviet Union. As a result, it became very popular and therefore served as a catalyst in the necessary cultural change suggested by the film.

Popularity: 1% [?]

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Cadenza. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.