 Wysłany: Sob 3:00, 30 Paź 2010 Temat postu: he replies |
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| The opening scene takes place at a high school in Calumet, Colo. Suddenly, Russian troops parachute onto the lawn, in a surprise attack on America ...
Mounties aren't as on-the-ball as you'd think. Judging from what the group of teenagers and an Air Force pilot were able to do with no help or training (they get some basic tips from the pilot, but his expertise is in flying a jet, not organizing an insurgency), you'd have to think the town was one small unit of Green Berets away from marching a Fourth of July parade past the smoldering hulks of Soviet military hardware. But it was winter and that 40-mile trek was just too much. The U.S. is no stranger to guerrilla warfare -- we have Special Forces who are experts in training native fighters how to make life hell for an invading army (see: the Russians and Afghanistan). Yet despite this, the United States doesn't send anyone to help the Wolverines because ... they're waiting for nicer weather. But even if we were that badly outnumbered, why in the hell would the U.S. Air Force send a single F-15 fighter 40 miles into enemy territory, with no help? As for the paratroopers on campus, we're told that the invaders used military planes disguised as commercial jets, a strategy that the Russians really did use during the invasion of Afghanistan. We understand this was a pre-9/11 world, but nobody at the FAA noticed hundreds and hundreds of extra flights swarming in from communist countries that day? Apparently that's what you get when you fire all the air traffic controllers. After all, when Jed (Swayze) interrogates a downed American fighter pilot about how he got shot down, he replies: "It was five to one. I got four." We're supposed to be too amazed at his badassery to stop and wonder how in the hell the U.S. Air Force wound up outnumbered five to one over its own freaking air fields. ... Alright, stop the movie. How the hell did communists make it all the way to Colorado? Later it's explained that the invasion came from two directions: Mexico (which in the film had recently fallen to communists) where half a million troops had amassed, and from the north, where 60 divisions of Russian troops flooded across Alaska and then down through Canada. Both forces were presumably marching to converge on a small high school in Colorado to knock out America's Swayze capability before it could be mobilized. The U.S. intelligence networks and spy satellites then failed to notice this massive army as it moved south across 3,500 miles of land to reach the USA? And what the hell did we do to piss off Canada, that nobody there bothered to pick up the phone and let us know thousands and thousands of Red Army tanks and jeeps and support vehicles were clanking down the highway? Two centuries prior, Washington was crossing rivers in below-freezing temperatures on Christmas. Ah, Red Dawn. It's easy to make fun of a movie about a high school football team led by Patrick Swayze single-handedly defeating the Soviet army. And we have done just that in the past. But what looks ridiculous in 2010 looked like prophecy to millions of teenagers in 1984. The numbers aren't any better on the ground. When the Wolverines go to view the front, they find themselves trapped in the crossfire of a tank battle -- that is, a single, lonely U.S. tank doing battle against two Soviet tanks. As for the half a million Latin American troops amassing in Mexico? We have politicians calling for military troops at the Mexican border now, just to stop immigrants from sneaking across and taking landscaping jobs from Americans. In a hypothetical universe where Mexico turned communist and hostile, the moment our spy satellites saw one communist tank rolling northward, every single bomber in the U.S. Air Force would be flying south with the intention of making everything from Texas to the Panama Canal look like the surface of the Moon. And it's not like the U.S. government doesn't know about Swayze's crew; when staying one night with a friendly family, the kids learn that they are known about in the free territory as far as California. Jed's reputation as a leader has spread and made him a folk hero. That's where they learn that there are rumors the military may be sending Green Berets! But Kamchatka is totally on the other side of the board! What a deal. Let's see how far we get into the movie before things start looking bad for the USA. We know the United States has agents embedded in the occupied part of America at the time -- the Radio Free America broadcast sends coded messages like "The chair is against the wall" and "John has a long mustache." Apparently there is no code for "Can anyone help those brave but outmatched high schoolers fighting crack commandos in Colorado?" The military passes up not only an easy victory,football uniforms, but a major propaganda opportunity as well. Liberate the Wolverines and have them travel across Free America and on TV talking about their amazing success overthrowing the Soviets. Have them speak at morale-boosting rallies and pitch joining the military or buying war bonds. Put them on Radio Free America to encourage other Americans to rise up and resist the Commies. So let's start with the north. Keep in mind, a military division is anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 troops. Sixty of those, showing up in Alaska. Excuse me? Have they never played Risk before? How the hell did the U.S. miss the 600,000 troops even back when they were amassing in Kamchatka? After taking a few shots, the U.S. tank waits patiently as the Wolverines take heavy machine gun fire from the other Soviet tank. After the second tank is disabled by a Wolverine rocket, one of the Wolverines uses the last of his strength to throw a smoke grenade to signal the U.S. tank. Finally, the U.S. tank realizes that it's a goddamn tank and takes shots to destroy the two already-disabled tanks. What the fuck was it waiting for? That is, as long as you don't think about it too hard. If you dig into the details of this action epic you find a pretty damning indictment of Reagan, the U.S. military and even America itself. In fact, it might be the most anti-American movie made outside of the Middle East. Just looking at him makes our sphincters tighten. Who in the hell was in command of homeland defense in the Red Dawn universe? Once spring gets here. The code is "The minors need a bottle opener for their Coors." Pictured: People tougher than Red Dawn universe Special Forces. This is seriously in the first two minutes. "We're not ...huge fans of snow, so ..." You've got to lock that shit down. Again, this is the freaking Reagan era here. We built over a thousand F-15s alone. When the U.S. fights wars these days, the other side doesn't even bother to scramble its fighters unless it wants to field test its ejection seats. That's why we went so deeply into debt over the last three decades -- so we could make enough fighter aircraft to blot out the sun if we so chose. So, what, in the world of Red Dawn did we sell them all to the Chinese pay off our credit cards? Five Russian MiGs coming. You got my back, right, guys? Guys? Are you seeing a pattern here? America ran into more resistance in Grenada than the Reds met in the middle of the freaking American heartland. Kids who grew up in the Reagan era did monthly "duck and cover" nuclear war drills in the classroom. A movie about them and their classmates fighting the Russians wasn't science fiction -- it's what they fully expected to be doing in a few years. And Red Dawn embodied Reagan's "we'll kill the commies with our awesomeness" spirit better than any movie except maybe Rocky IV (which is why National Review ranked it among the best conservative films). OK, let's say the U.S. got caught with its pants down (during the initial invasion we see only one American helicopter flying around Calumet and blowing the shit out of the Soviets -- that's one pilot who had to wonder where the hell his backup was). You would still think that several months later, after the battle lines had solidified, you'd start to see some of that hardware that we bought in the 1980s instead of a health care system. Really? Spring? Special Forces that swam the gator-infested swamps of Cambodia, marched the mosquito-thick forests of Vietnam and climbed the cold, barren peaks of Afghanistan can't handle a winter in richly forested and supplied Colorado? Sorry, didn't want to be rude and interrupt your battle. |
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