Graeme Robertson with four more great war films (that still aren’t Saving Private Ryan)…
A while back I wrote a feature in which I looked back at four of what I considered to be great war films, with the main linking theme being that they weren’t Steven Spielberg’s beloved classic Saving Private Ryan.
However, as many of you are likely to agree that those films, while great, are not the only great war films that aren’t Saving Private Ryan, so thankfully my Flickering overlords have granted me another chance to talk about even more films that I feel you all should take a look at.
While I focused exclusively on World War II films in the first feature, this time I’ve added a touch more variety when picking my cinematic depictions of war this time around, so get ready for a trip to the dying days of World War II, the napalm singed jungles of Vietnam and even a trip into the hypothetical nightmare world of World War III.
So join me as we take yet another trip into the trenches to talk about four more great war films that I think you should watch, that still aren’t Saving Private Ryan.
Red Dawn (1984)
The 1980s are often held up as the decade in which the Cold War came to an end, with the superpowers of the USA and the USSR finally putting aside their ideological rivalries for the sake of preserving peace.
At least this was the case towards the end of the decade because at the start of the decade the relationship was anything but pleasant with the superpowers at each other’s throats and threatening to nuke one another’s bollocks into oblivion.
In the midst of this tense period, the self-styled “zen anarchist” that is John Milius released his 1984 action war epic Red Dawn, a film that imagines what might have been if the Cold War had turned into a World War.
A group of small town high school kids are confronted with the might of the Red Army, as the Soviet Union in co-operation with its communist South American allies launches a full-scale invasion of the United States, igniting World War III in the process. Fleeing to the mountains, the teens gradually build up their strength, learn to fight and begin to take the battle back to the invaders, styling themselves as a guerrilla faction dubbed the “Wolverines”.
The heroes of the film who take the fight to the nefarious Communist invaders are not your typical 80s action heroes, with the ranks of the Wolverines instead being a who’s who of popular 1980s teen stars and one underrated cult legend.
We have the late Patrick Swayze, a pre-insanity Charlie Sheen, the Soul Man himself C. Thomas Howell, Marty McFly’s mum Lea Thompson and oddly enough Jennifer Grey, perhaps best known as “Baby” from Dirty Dancing which also starred Swayze. That film would have been a lot more up my alley if it climaxed with Swayze’s dance scene being gate crashed by a Soviet tank, but that’s just me.
The performances aren’t bad, although they are a bit limited to the cast screaming, crying or a mixture of both, although Howell does stand apart in that he spends much of the film changing from a scared teenager into a rather cold-blooded killing machine. Maybe it’s so he can be tough enough to survive his encounter with Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher (which is an AWESOME film by the way). Also, keep an eye out for a memorable appearance from the always reliable Harry Dean Stanton as Sheen and Swayze’s imprisoned father who insists quite strongly that they “AVENGE ME!!!!!!!!!”
Although for my money, the film is elevated by the mere presence of the underrated cult actor Powers Boothe as downed fighter pilot Tanner who acts a kind of badass cigar-chomping Obi-Wan to the teenagers, offering guidance on the state of the war and helping to plan raids and ambushes. Boothe is just one of those actors who whenever he appears, not matter how small the role, he just owns the screen and you know you’re in for a good bit of fun. Except for that time he played Jim Jones, that wasn’t so much fun.
The villains, however, don’t get nearly as much character development with many of them being your standard stock evil foreign commies, written with all the depth of a puddle. Save for the lone South American commander who begins the film as a loyal commie commander but gradually comes to understand and respect his new enemies, although he does sport a truly glorious South American moustache.
This being a war film, it is littered with lots of great set pieces. The most impressive and certainly most striking is the film’s intense and genuinely terrifying opening invasion scene, with Soviet paratroopers quietly landing behind a school, before unloading their heavy weapons upon the students inside. It’s a high note that the film manages to just about maintain with its various ambushes, raids, and tank battles that make for an all round entertaining slice of 80s Cold War paranoia, we even get a pretty spectacular napalm strike in one scene, although Robert Duvall is sadly not involved.
Now it’s easy to denounce this film as nothing more than a piece of Reagan-era right-wing Republican Party sanctioned commie killing propaganda. And in many respects, that’s exactly what it is, a piece of crazy paranoid right-wing propaganda, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the most entertaining piece of right-wing propaganda that I’ve ever seen.
Red Dawn is one of the most fun war films to come out of the 1980s, packed with great set pieces, a great turn from the legend that is Powers Boothe, and sense of madness that makes it an enjoyable slice of right-wing Cold War insanity.
