Saturday, December 13, 2008

Confession time: I love the movie "Red Dawn"

When it comes to a movie I love such as "The Replacements" or Mel Gibson's epic "Braveheart", I'll watch it over and over when it comes on the tube.

Yeah, these movies are guy flicks where real men act real manly. But a good movie is eternal.

When it comes to political cinema, I love "The Candidate" with Robert Redford and one of its sleeper, alter egos, "Red Dawn".

I'm watching it tonight as I write, and it is classic conservative theater. And the young actors assembled went on to decent careers -- Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen and Leah Thompson.

You don't have to agree with the premise of the cinema to enjoy it just the purity of it. Red Dawn is an eager tale about freedom and the supposed threat to it from the Russians, Cubans and Nicaraguans. While its premise did not prove true historically, the movie still was -- in the 1980s -- like ABC-TV's nuclear tale about the aftermath of nuclear war in Kansas some classic political stuff for its time.

These movies are great to watch over and over.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was in high school when the movie came out. It was very "real" to me and my classmates in our rural town.

Anonymous said...

I remember crusing by the Tennessean's Business section 10 years ago and introducing a kind liberal-hearted copy editor (with the initials JG) to the plot of this movie. I can still hear the screams of laughter to this day...