Red Dawn‘s grip on the viewer is slowly-but-surely loosened as it progresses into a sluggish and increasingly uninvolving midsection...

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 17, 2024

No amount of warm and fuzzy ‘80s nostalgia can save this head-smackingly stupid action romp about a bunch of Colorado teens squaring off against Commie invaders.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 19, 2024

One could regard Milius’ treatment as almost mythic, his manner and characters spare, his ending grim and reflective on the historical pattern of occupying powers and the forces that resist them.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 21, 2022

Revisiting it now as a cynical lefty, though, I have to give the devil his due: "Red Dawn" works.

| Original Score: B | Aug 31, 2022

It takes an intriguing story built around an interesting concept and some good chemistry and creates a movie that feels very 80’s-ish while also still holding up today.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 24, 2022

The right of people to abuse their freedom by making and showing a film as cynically provocative as Red Dawn is part of the price the rest of us must pay for living in a democracy.

| May 3, 2022

It packs plenty of rabble-rousing ammunition, but its sloppy execution is unlikely to win any merit badges for marksmanship.

| Aug 14, 2018

an often compelling and always entertaining, but fundamentally flawed merging of Hollywood's Reagan-era penchant for action escapism and distinct Cold War paranoia

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 13, 2018

Red Dawn may be far from the most plausible action movies of the 1980s, but it's easily among the most memorable.

| Oct 18, 2017

When it was released in late summer of 1984, it was a big hit, which shouldn't come as a surprise; this was the year when Reagan won the presidency in a landslide, and if nothing else, 'Red Dawn' plays like a Reaganite masturbatory fantasy.

| Apr 14, 2017

Red Dawn knows what it wants to say; it just has a hard time saying it, and too often it goes for the easy score instead of really delving into the possibilities of the scenario.

| Original Score: C+ | Aug 12, 2014

Certainly a silly Conservative leaning product of its decade, but one that still holds cache as a fun and exciting bit of escapism...

| Mar 15, 2013

Controversial, bloody 1980s WWIII film with teen heroes.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 15, 2010

The smartest/dumbest movie of 1984.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 7, 2007

Released in the midst of renewed Cold War nuclear dread, Red Dawn doesn't starve for unintended wackiness.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 22, 2007

C'mon: The Dirty Dozen meets The Breakfast Club? That's just awesome.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 2, 2006

See Red Dawn only when you're in the mood for a guilty pleasure

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 3, 2006

Guilty pleasure film that one day you'll have to explain to your grandkids.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 14, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 12, 2005

Good action flick and the first PG13 movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 22, 2005