The film starts out showing a nice peaceful town, with students headed into high school to start the day. The scene continues to show the students in class and paratroopers landing on the football field outside the window. Chaos breaks out, people are shot, World War III starts, but somehow 8 teenagers escape. They quickly go to a sporting goods store, load up on supplies and weapons and head for the mountains to try and wait out the madness.
After waiting for over a month the go back into to town to realize that the Soviets and Cubans have occupied their city. They go back to the woods, regroup, and taking on the name of their high school mascot, the wolverines, decide to fight back. They cause quite a stir killing countless communists and not losing any of their own people for a long time.
As their fame continues to grow in their own area, but also across the country, the communists begin to focus more attention their way. I wont give away what happens in the end of the movie, but I will say that it is done well.
I wasn’t sure what to think about this movie when Nathan gave it to me to review, but I actually enjoyed it. It was weird to watch the US being invaded, and extremely far fetched to see teenagers fighting off an army, but never the less it was entertaining. I know quite a few people that don’t enjoy films that aren’t realistic, or are far fetched in anyway, but in my opinion if the film is entertaining, then it is worth watching.
Presentation:
Presentation is what makes DVDs stand out from each other; both on the shelf and once they are in your DVD player. So the presentation should be divided into packaging and menus.
Packaging:
There is nothing special about Red Dawn’s packaging, but it does have one of the cardboard sleeves that I like. Lots of people make fun of me for liking them, and I know a lot of people that just throw them away when they get DVDs but I like them. It just shows me that companies care a little bit more, and put a little bit extra into their packaging. Just like it drives me crazy when there is no insert or an ad there instead. That is another thing about this movie; it actually has a good insert. The front has the same picture as the cover, the back has a scene selection, and it opens up and talks about behind the scenes, the film, and the cast. The insert thing is probably my number one pet peeve when it comes to DVDs, so Red Dawn scores points with me there.
Menus:
Red Dawn’s menus really aren’t anything special but there is nothing wrong with them either. They are actually a nice change of pace from the normal moving video in the background with plain words as buttons. There is a large Red Dawn graphic as the background with planes flying through the screen and paratroopers dropping past the buttons. There isn’t much of an intro, and there are no use of moving video in the scene selection menu, but there are actually transitions from the main menu to the subsequent menus.
Special Features:
For the most part, special features are for huge fans of the movie, and again for the most part, no one else. These special features are worth watching, but for the most part it seems to me that unless you were a huge fan of the movie you wouldn’t spend the time to watch these special features. Here is what Red Dawn has to offer:
- Red Dawn Rising
- Building the Red Menace
- Training for WWIII
- WWIII Comes to Town
- Trailers
Not a ton of options, but that is not necessarily a bad thing because it means they put more time into each feature.
Red Dawn Rising is basically a behind the scenes look at the movie that wasn’t made until recently. They interview some of the more famous actors and actresses now and ask them about their experience with Red Dawn. This feature is entertaining, but unless you were a huge fan of one of the actors or the movie, you probably would not get a whole lot out of it. Building the Red Menace is cool because it shows how they built all of the tanks and equipment. If you enjoy stuff that has to do with war (which you would obviously have some interest if you were watching this movie) then this feature would be right up your alley. Training for WWIII is basically another behind the scenes look. It talks about how the actors had to learn how to handle guns so that it would look more realistic on screen. WWIII comes to town is also interesting. Red Dawn was shot in Las Vegas, and this feature shows how the town was transformed, and talks to different people form the area about their experience with the movie being filmed in their hometown. The last feature is trailers, and to this day I’m still not really sure why these are included in DVDs.
Overall:
Overall Red Dawn was a successful DVD. It was an enjoyable film, produced well on both parts of presentation, and had some good special features. Red Dawn would make a good addition to anyone’s DVD collection.
Overall: 7.5