The bloggic tug-of-war over "The Great Raid" makes me wonder if it's the new "Red Dawn."
That 1984 Hollywood movie tells the story of a group of American teenagers who take to the bush as resistance fighters after a Soviet-Cuban surprise attack topples America. If you believe the anti-war left, this is the neo-con "Ten Commandments." It's "xenophobic paranoia" ... "a patriotic breath mint to help teenagers feel proud of our country again" in the wake of Vietnam ... "right wing propaganda" ... "an NRA wet-dream." And that's just from a movie review site, not a political site.
Long before 9/11 I sat in a tavern with our newspaper staff columnist (haughtily liberal) and some other people. "Red Dawn" played on the TV over the bar. The columnist refused to even set eyes on it, and he spent the rest of the night studiedly looking the other direction from the TV screen. Like he was afraid some of the gung-ho was going to splash on him.
I had seen the film on cable the year after it came out. I was a 20-something anti-Reagan liberal at the time. And I enjoyed it. I thought it was stirring and thought-provoking, and a fun adventure flick. Not "Animal House" or "Outlaw Josey Wales," mind you, but it stayed with me.
And it stayed with me mainly because, even while it made me think about the American values that the heroes in the movie upheld, it gave me an insight into freedom fighters/resistance fighters/partisans everywhere in the world.
The "America invaded" plot was a fantasy, though it was imagined realistically enough if you suspended disbelief. But in reality Americans had fought against insurgencies overseas all through my life. In Southeast Asia first, in Central America at the time of the movie.
From the comfortable distance between suburbia and El Salvador, young people like my peers could easily reduce all these fighters to cardboard: Maoist puppets, bandits, and terrorists on the one hand, or else saintly Che-like warriors for universal justice. But "Red Dawn" gave them to us with the faces of American teenagers, in a situation that, though fantasy, was not utterly unthinkable. The movie teens were unlikely warriors, forced into the role by circumstances, and growing into it.
And they reminded me that American independence was the work of freedom fighters -- not the "terrorists" that Brian Williams and some other have claimed they were.
Rooting for insurgents is in our nature. We love a plucky underdog. In the early republic, Americans instinctively supported the rebels in Greece and Hungary and Latin America. In John Quincy Adams' famous phrase, "Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will be America's heart, her benedictions and her prayers." One reason I embraced the cause of the Kurds back in the late 1970s was that, for once, we were supporting the freedom fighters. When we abandoned them, I felt bitter.
In fact, if "Red Dawn" is at all subversive in modern terms, it is so from the point of view of the right. You watch "Red Dawn" and you root for the insurgents. You understand their motives, you cheer their victories of grit and wit against superior firepower. They even use some of the tactics of al Zarqawi (booby-trapped corpses, for instance). Their essential rightness is presumed, and the collaborationist elements among the Americans in the movie are even more evil than the invaders.
All insurgencies will look alike, on some level. Rural Boston rebels in 1775, up-country Alabama Klansmen in 1866, the Maquis in 1944, Irgun in 1946, Iraqi al Qaida in 2005. They attract certain personality types, they gravitate to certain tactics.
And the resemblance is purely superficial. The difference between them is in their motives and goals. The essential thing is what they are fighting for, what their code of honor allows, what kind of nation they would create if they won. All the difference in the world is in that. Does anyone imagine that an al Zarqawi "victory," should that nightmare come, would be followed by a replay of Philadelphia, 1787?
Where's the backup to the claim that no liberal liked "Red Dawn"?
Let's put it this way I was someone who had to fight with the principal to have a "no nukes" club in their high school in the early 80's! (yes it was that time, and my Texas school didn't take kindly to our views).
At any rate, while I was younger than you when watching it, I was still in high school, "politically aware", and I just don't have that recollection about Red Dawn being a political movie.
And from the reviews I am quickly checking, there isn't really anyone quibbling with the dramatic potential and greatness of the actual story - for example the Los Angeles Daily News.
"The freeing of some 500 American prisoners of war from a Japanese camp in the Philippines near the end of World War II was the greatest rescue mission in U.S. military history.
Recounted in the recent best-seller "Ghost Soldiers" and, finally, the long-delayed release of the movie "The Great Raid," it is inarguably a stirring tale of courage, astute planning and brilliant tactical execution.
But the film, alas, is rather too respectful of the effort, which involved a whole lot of uneventful walking on the part of the Army Rangers who made the raid, and much listless sitting around by the starving prisoners awaiting rescue.
Directed by John Dahl ("The Last Seduction," "Joy Ride"), who insisted that the script present
the events as accurately as possible, the film reminds us that, along with frightening violence and mighty feats of endurance, war also involves a whole lot of boredom."
I haven't seen the movie - but usually I'm pretty keen on war flicks, even bad ones. So I'll probably think it is okay.
I think the reviewers simply think, the craftmanship in this movie isn't very good.
Not EVERYTHING is political, right?
Calm down. I saw no such claim in the article, nor evidence that one was intended.
I still consider myself a liberal, though I'm at odds with much of modern "liberal" orthodoxy. And I certainly liked Red Dawn, though it's hardly a great movie and has some frankly silly bits. The setup for the invasion is rather laughable, and the history teacher's portrayal of the Mongols in the beginning is way over the top. (Bugs fleeing in terror?)
(At least they made a reasonably convincing Hind gunship, unlike the obviously rebadged Sikorsky in Rambo. I always appreciate it when movies try to get the equipment right. I wasn't so impressed by the "Russian" M-1 tanks and Sgt. York AA vehicles, though.)
With respect to the original post, it's interesting to note that one of the most sympathetic characters in the movie is an occupying commander, an old Cuban revolutionary with serious doubts and misgivings.
On an extremely minor side note, Red Dawn was the first widely released movie to get the then-new PG-13 rating (The Flamingo Kid was the first). I'd think that "liberals" would proudly remember this landmark of imposed MPAA nanny-statism upon those parents who don't have a clue about what their children see in the theaters.
This message comes to you from an unaffiliated voter who loved the movie when he saw it as a kid when it came out.
I read Red Dawn as a parable about the Russian invasion of Afganistan. But The Great Raid, which is supposedly factual did not seem to be a parable at all.
For Red Dawn...lets start here:
http://ruthlessreviews.com/80saction/reddawn.php
Then stop by here:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/red_dawn/
This guy who reviews movies for a living thinks that liberals "dumped" all over the movie, but he was not surprised.
http://ficus-www.cs.ucla.edu/ficus-members/reiher/reviews/reddawn.html
I might also offer this to you JC.
At the time of your watching this movie, I suggest that your hormones and other distractions prevented you from any political observations.
On the next paragraph of your post you jump to a totally different movie. I HOPE that you are aware of that fact.
I hope that you actually read "Ghost Soldiers" as it is a really good book as well as being true.
The movie " The Great Raid" was not as good as the book, but most movies are not.
You said: "which involved a whole lot of uneventful walking on the part of the Army Rangers who made the raid, and much listless sitting around by the starving prisoners awaiting rescue."
Well, let me tell you from first person experience..that. is. the. way. it. is...Long periods of just suffering, boredom and misery, followed by minutes or hours or a few days of intense fear, terror, killing and destruction.
That's just the way it is.
I hope you never have to experience it first hand.
Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
Red Dawn was funny. I rather doubt Great Raid will be at all funny unless they have really screwed things up.
I mean the jocks actually manage to have the brains to fight the Russians. Please! It would be the gamers and history geeks would have been able to fight the Russians.
Never saw "Red Dawn", but a colleague used it as 1) and example of right-wing Reaganesque jinoism, and 2) paradoxically for the right-wing Reaganesque crowd, an insight into the Iraq insurgency and these sense of right and justice that they have for their cause. The argument goes something like, "those Bush supporters who support the war in Iraq, wouldn't they be the first taking up arms against an occupier in the style of Red Dawn? I know I would (take up arms against an occupier)."
My reply was while I didn't have first-hand knowledge of occupation and resistance, each of my parents got to see this sort of thing up close and personal in different regions of Nazi-occupied Croatia and Serbia. While "war was Hell" on the German occupiers, the casualty rates among the resistance are not something the Red Dawn patriots properly account for in their scenerio. In other words, I was telling my friend that he didn't know the first thing about what was involved in fighting in a resistance.
The other meme is that the U.S. population is reaching a boil on what it can take of casualties in Iraq, and that President Bush will start bringing the troops home next year whether Iraq is ready or not, and the idea is that the chances for democracy taking hold are slim. My take is that the insurgents can take their chances with our guys, or they can wait us out for that collapse in Iraq everyone keeps hoping for, and they can take their chances with Shiite militias (remember death squads? -- that is what kinda happened to rebel fighters or rather their relatives in insurgent conflicts where we didn't have troops in large numbers).
While the U.S. may not have a good outcome in Iraq, either way, the insurgents are not going to have a good time of it. The idea of a guerilla movement that can have its way with light casualties is a fantasy.