Film: Red Dawn

In a fit of masochism I bought Red Dawn.

 It's one of the many mid-80s HBO staples ("most films shown on cable receive 2 stars or less, and are repeated ad nauseum.") that during the end of the Cold War was a perfect adolescent male fantasy. For a generation coming of age with The Day After and GI Joe, the notion of taking to the hills and heroically rising against communist invaders was one every American boy in 1985 could buy into. As I often do when revisiting old films, I poke around on the web to see what background resources are out there.
It's a truism that for almost any conceivable subject, there's someone more devoted to it than you, and they'll happily do the work instead. It's this principle that led to my creating this blog!

However, that doesn't quite hold up with Red Dawn. While there seems to be a universal sense of brief, belated embarrassment regarding the film, I've found very little in-depth discussion of its execution and merits. And so, to get this out of my system...

Here's the opening titles, which define the world Red Dawn exists in. We'll take them point by point:

Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years.

Doubtful that even in the 80s/90s (in theory) that the international community would not send food aid to the Soviet Union. Presumably, the evil party elite are withholding it from the masses, as we see next:

Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet Troops invade.

Would this really be allowed by the UN? By the various conservative European governments? Are the Greens in Germany sweating about this turn of events?


Cuba and Nicaragua reach troop strength goals of 500,000. El Salvador and Honduras fall.

First, an army of 500K would mean 5 and 16 percent of total population, respectively. Cuba at least has a stable base to grow on. At the time of the film and somewhat into the future (at least so far as the USSR still existed, in the real world) Nicaragua had insurgents to deal with. US-funded, Balance of Power insurgents for what that's worth. Given the phrasing of the statement I assume that each of the 500k club knocked off one of their democratically-leaning neighbors, though there seems to be little other reason they were picked as targets -- aside from perhaps the Risk strategy of adjacent territory. And how was Cuba's navy in the 80s?

Greens Party gains control of West German parliament. Demands withdrawal of nuclear weapons from european soil.

Putting aside the scarce likelihood of a liberal, appeasing sweep into power during a time of obvious world unrest, last I checked there were sovereign governments in Europe other than West Germany. And presumably, none of the Greens seem to care if the Soviets leave their nukes in eastern Europe.

Mexico plunged into revolution.

Sure. Why not? Doubtless America didn't even see it coming, despite decades of John Bircher domino-theory hand-wringing about central america --  and the Red Dawn scenario is nothing if not Bircher-inspired -- that was fulfilled by the actual knocking over of two dominoes.

NATO dissolves. United States stands alone.

With the rather rampant aggression and desperation of the USSR in the RD world, it seems unlikely that all of NATO would fall away -- particularly with Soviet troops on the march within Europe.  Sure, maybe some of those pinko socialist countries, but even France? England?  

 Also, stands alone against what, really? The Mexico revolution? Liberating Poland?

The introduction of multiple points attempt to give the RD history some kind of wide-ranging verisimilitude, but under any scrutiny has the opposite effect. It's this kind of simultaneous too-much/not-enough thinking that detracts from the film throughout.

Act I: The Invasion

We're never given a clear picture of what the long-term USSR strategy is, so it's up to the audience to say exactly why paratroopers are deployed to Calumet.  If the town lies along some key interstate route through the rockies, it's never mentioned in the film.  One or two lines of dialogue could have covered for this! Perhaps some strategic parallels are meant to be gleaned from the pre-invasion history lecture about the Mongols, even though their tactics here are similar only in the "killing frenzy" particular.

Of additional note is that here's a classroom incredibly incurious about their world -- their teacher trails off in the midst of a lecture and it's ten full seconds before any of them even turn see why he paused. The teacher is then shot by the first paratroopers he talks to. The students, who do not live in a world of constant school shootings (not even in Colorado), linger by the window long enough to receive some 7.62mm attention of their own.

Much later in the film we learn that the paratroopers are scheduled with, or at least close to, a limited nuclear attack. Granted the film is pre-Internet, but it's still surprising that no reports of any of the nuclear war reaches Calumet before the troops are landing.

In order to prove their total weapons superiority to schoolchildren, the Soviets indiscriminately fire RPGs both into the school and at terrified, fleeing civilians. That they can't hit a large pickup truck from 50 yards with their missiles lays some early groundwork for the Wolverines' later success. Less fortunate teens are dragged from their VWs. Why is the capture of teen civilians with no strategic value a priority minutes into an invasion?

Cut to downtown (such as it is) Calumet, where we take a few seconds to see that folks with the "cold, dead hands" stickers really mean it. Our heroes tear through town in their Cheyenne, assembling much of the main cast but unable to rescue Aardvark's father. They loot Danny's father's survivalist store on their way out of town, taking everything for a good time in the mountains, (weapons, batteries, cases of coke, football, buck knife) but forget to take any water. Was there really no bottled water in the 80s? Instrumental to their escape is a happenstance encounter with an American Huey, which strafes the Russian roadblock on the highway out of town. Consider this for a moment: one Huey mopped up what is apparently the entire enemy presence on half the major routes out of town. How on earth did the Russians manage to hold Calumet at all? Did every other citizen flee on the other road?

Indeterminately later, the soviets have had time to supply heavy equipment, including AA and mobile armor. One underling complains that they're low on antitank rounds (no american tanks have been seen, and won't be for months) -- maybe wasting RPGs at the high school was a bad decision? Our Cuban Colonel, Bella (Superfly Ron o' Neal) drops an NRA talking point on his next lieutenant, instructing him to go to the Sporting Goods store and find their records of all gun owners in the area. Stupid Americans! This will teach them about gun control! Ha! Ha ha!


Come October, somewhere in the woods, Jed Eckert is indoctrinating the boys with deer hunting and drink-the-blood rituals. The verdict? Murder tastes good. But even all-venison-and-blood diets wear thin after a few weeks once you run out of Coke. The boys decide to see what's doing in Calumet.

...where it's Communist Pride day! Lenin posters are up everywhere, Aleksander Nevsky plays at the cinema, re-education plays at the drive-in, and even the mayor's Oldsmobuick has been given a kicky camouflage paint job by our new Cuban, Marxist overlords. The stores are open, but mostly empty, as if a controlled central economy modeled on the USSR has been put into place in under 45 days. More likely, there just aren't any goods coming in -- which makes you wonder how these troops, let alone, the people, are going to eat. The mountains aren't great for growing crops in autumn, and do recall the war began following starvation in the USSR...

The choice of Nevsky is an interesting one, as the film was shown in the USSR during WW2 with the aim of riling up the civilian populace against Nazi invaders. The filmmakers are having a little joke, I imagine.

Visiting the drive-in, an unaccented voice drones in english about the merits of communism. The PA quality is bad enough that there's only about three intelligible sentences. No matter, we're not here for education, we're here for the melodrama! Harry Dean Stanton, the bloodied but unbent Pa Eckert is helped to the fence to see his sons. Shamelessly, he rationalizes that his remote and abusive parenting has in fact prepared his boys for this day.

Admonishing them to never cry again, he implores them instead to Avenge me, boys.

Aveeeennnnnnnnnnge me!

Next time we see dad, he's getting shot. Some re-education!

In need of oscar-caliber infodump, they check in at the Mason's ranch, where Sam the Lion has retired with his common-law wife, Ruby from V. After an abbreviated roll-call and apologetically-served cup o' soup, Sam catches everyone up about the invasion. Calumet is "40 miles behind enemy lines" which we learn later extend across the country, north-to-south, with Denver specifically mentioned to be "under siege." Sam also discusses rumors that the boys are responsible for murdering unspecified "folks" around town. Given that the boys haven't taken any action against the occupying force at this point in the film, and that Sam himself figured they'd just left for FA (it doesn't mean what I would like), and that there's only been a month since the invasion, I tend to think Sam is lying to the boys to keep them from stupidly going into town again. Not that it works. Our heroes leave, adding two granddaughters (who apparently spent days risking sexual assault in their sneak to the ranch from somewhere even more of a hellhole than Calumet; maybe Texas?) and 4 horses. The horses are quickly forgotten by everyone; they're present in only one more scene, late in the film.

Two 80s icons, sabotaging their legacies.

We're next seeing the team back in their camp as they listen to a Radio Free America broadcast by firelight. The FA announcer tosses out some French Resistance codes which historically indicated the imminent invasion of Normandy. As no major outside forces are ever seen in the film, we are left with the idea the FA command is more than a bit desperate to keep hope alive among occupied history majors at this point in the war. Aardvark seems to be missing. Lea Thompson's Erica, with her fine gift for understatement, declares solemnly that "Things are different, now."

Later (not long enough for there to be a date title, so it must be October still), the boys espy a jeep of russian soldiers-cum-tourists out to take a few pictures for mama back in Minsk. Yuri, who looks a bit like a young Rick Moranis, allegedly studied english and knows american history, so he translates the the plaque for the Arapaho National Forest for his, um, comrades. Apparently he plays a little joke, as his version is not even close to the real text, unless "Forest" can be translated as "battlefield," and whips up casualty figures out of whole cloth.

Yuri's little joke is put to the test when they find a contemporary arrow, left by our heroes. He immediately declares it an Indian arrow, but his friends question the native american faculty for steel and plastic. Insisting it is bone, polished by to a high sheen (does he know who's hiding offstage?) Yuri stalks clumsily down the mountain in search of more arrows that will somehow prove they are Indian make. The Wolverines' first ambush is sloppy, but soon the three-man team of russkies are overwhelmed. Forgetting both military discipline and Communist best practices, Yuri, soaked in his own blood, crawls into the car and radios not with a location, or a situation, but with a pitiful "God help me!" twice. Then Jed comes up and blows his head off with dad's .44, the thundering gunshot rolling off the hills nicely.


During the after-party, we're having another brief crisis of moral superiority. "They were people!" point. "So was my dad!" counter-point. Aardvark shows up from wherever he was (some lesser Wolverines go on walkabout) and asks what it was like. "It was good," said death-commando-in-training Robert, hornily sawing off a shotgun barrel.

Without irony, Jed intones -- and I think the screenplay meant this metaphorically --  "One thing's for sure. No one can ever go home again." Brother Matty pushes a pile of dirty dishes at Erica, saying she should make herself useful. While this looks like a case of the actor seeping into the character, he's probably just pissed that she scored a confirmed kill (messily) while he came up empty. Lea is having none of it, and when Sheen retorts with a cavalier 'What's up your ass' she triggers, getting that angry chimp face she wears during an awful lot of the film. Something tells me that the soviets didn't just try having their way with Sam the Lion's granddaughters...

Back in town, Colonel Superfly inspects the bodies of our three unfortunate sightseers. Recognizing the source of the trouble right off, he goes to the mayor (Lane Smith, getting typecast here for the rest of his life as the go-to guy for bootlicking Vichy Americans) because Superfly apparently knows that Lane's son is a Wolverine, and responsible for the slayings. How the Russians know all of this, so soon, is by any stretch pure contrivance.

Later still, the re-education good ol' boys are digging graves for the fallen soviets outside of town. Then they get in line to be shot, among them Harry Dean and Aardvark's dad, who gets a better moment than his ostensibly heroic-by-association son by starting a rousing recital of America the Beautiful that gets cut short. To assume that this whole funeral/execution was a show staged for the Wolverines' benefit is, I think, to give the screenwriters too much credit.

It has the desired effect, as back at camp afterward the boys are demoralized. Swayze again holds them together by sheer force of will, and drops another catchphrase on his crew to get them over their grief: "Let it turn."



Act II: It turns.

The setup for a montage begins. A soviet tank stops at a gas station (inexplicably stocked) to refuel. Chimpanzee girl rides up on her bicycle, carrying a large pic-a-nic basket for grandma. The russkies leer and try their best wild-and-crazy pickup lines, but their captain warns them to "forget the broad," and just take her food. Casually, the basket is grabbed, and, not inspected, thrown into the tank. To hopefully no one's surprise, the tank then explodes, with a nice effect of Ivan Mannequinov falling to the earth with a hefty thud. The boys, taking a page from Superfly's anti-insurgent advice, mow down the pursuing survivors with ease. They flee.

The quickly staged hit and run tactics never explain how they're resupplying themselves with military hardware, but by the next scene they're liberating another mass execution using AK-47s and expertly-tossed grenades. Thus begins the montage proper, including a questionable-objective raid apparently near town, where our Wolverines have acquired heavy machine guns (including a mounted .50 cal) and multiple RPGs. So well planned are their attacks, the montage shifts to stills of wrecked soviet vehicles, all tagged with the Wolverines graffito.

In town, Superfly is not happy. Nor is his boss, a stern and ugly Russian direct from character actor hell. They helpfully drop a little more information about the war, saying that things are "paralyzed at the front." Why they're even bothering to stay in Calumet remains under-discussed. Instead, they talk a little about the too-obvious parallels with Vietnam and Afghanistan. Then Lea's bomb goes off in the "friendship center" behind them to clunkily underscore their loss of control.

Finally, it's November! Early November, apparently, as there is little to no snow on the ground, even here in the Rockies. Enter Colonel Andy Tanner, played by inimitable Powers Boothe whose F-15 was shot down nearby. He carries a revolver instead of a standard military .45. Tanner exists mostly as another convenient means of information dumping on the war, detailing the invasion. There's more talking-point paranoia about illegal aliens (Cubans, mostly) coming across the border through texas. They somehow infiltrated SAC bases in the midwest (despite being illegal and Cuban) and "wreaked a hell of a lot of havoc." The Soviets went overland (?!) through Alaska and Canada (which is, apparently, the 51st state in this world) and reinforced with 3 army groups (approximately 75% of available Red Army forces circa the film's release) from the north. Nuclear strikes eliminated silos in the Dakotas, which apparently house all the ICBM silos in the continental USA. No word on any nuclear response by the US, only that no more nukes will be used inside the country. It would seem as if the US could empty any remaining silos, subs, or B-52s on Russia and fear little in the way of reprisal.

The lines stretch from Cheyenne, Montana to "the Mississippi" which covers a lot of ground. We (finally!) learn that Calumet was taken to control one of several passes through the Rockies, but that Denver remains merely "under siege" for the past three months -- and apparently the city had even less of a food supply than the boys' one-horse town, as the residents are already "down to sawdust bread and rats..and sometimes on each other." Europe has decided to "sit this one out," except England, which in Tanner's expert strategic analysis "won't last very long," though it seems to me that three months in WW3 time scale is fairly long already. On our side, inexplicably, are "600 million screamin' Chinamen" who have, if nothing else, solved their overpopulation problem.

Soon, Tanner's off witnessing the Wolverines wipeout of an armored column. Jed is anxious for praise, to which Tanner assures him that his "mama'd be real proud." But the askance look he gives Jed says something else besides, and back at camp he lays into the boys for their strategic ambitions.

December arrives, and with it a major attack on the occupying forces, one of the largest set pieces of the entire film. It's marred by uncertain objectives, and a patently ridiculous bit of special effects involving a grenade and the world's most oblivious MiG pilot. And now there's a minor airbase in Calumet? After the debacle, Creepy the Russian is angry, though Superfly demonstrates an increased, grudging respect for his foes.

The following scene, with the boys playing football with Tanner (for one play, at least) feels like it was inserted out of sequence. Gone are the snows, even from the widest shots of the mountain background. The scene is a long "getting to know you" bit, and feels like it should have occurred prior to Tanner being taken along on raids.

Next we're back at the Mason house, sipping moonshine from his jars. Sam tells Jed that the Wolverines are famous, and, come spring, they're going to drop in some special forces to help them out. Because Calumet is vital to the war effort, I guess.

Spring's a long way off...


Act III: How can this film have a downbeat ending?

January starts with a tank battle. If the US has made 40 miles of progress on the lines, on the ground, into the high rockies, IN JANUARY  they can't possibly be waiting until spring to drop in the green berets. With the tanks are an F-16, which leads to me presume the producers could not pay for both the later Hind replicas as well as a proper air-to-ground plane, like an A10, or even an Apache. From the way Tanner tries to convince Jed to come with him, this scene apparently is meant to show the Wolverines attempting to return Andrew Tanner to civilization. Jed balks, and this goes on long enough for a Soviet tank to surprise the boys on their rear. So well prepared, our Wolverines. Abandoning any tactical sense that has enabled their survival thus far, they hide directly between the russian and american tanks, making no effort to use the friendly and very uneven terrain to flank the soviets. After an exchange of main cannons, Aardvark goes crazy and tries to take on one tank while a second rolls up. Tanner goes in after him, and both are quickly killed, but provide time for the American tank to finish business. Strangely, the survivors choose to go back to camp rather than cross another hundred yards to hook up with the American tank group and get to FA.

This battle marks the beginning of the end, both for the Wolverines and for the writers. First, in practical terms, it's a break with what we've seen so far: the kids have been superhumanly skilled in battle against the enemy, easily killing ten to twenty times their number. Here, they lose any sense of tactics or discipline, paralyzed by two (apparently) unsupported tanks which are presently under fire by American regular army forces from land and air. The boys are clad in snow camo, led (or at least advised) by a USAF colonel, and are bristling with weapons (Robert and Matt have at least one RPG on their backs, and everyone's packing an AK-47). It looks like they could fairly easily slip around the side of one tank, attacking or escaping as they chose. Either soviet tank that chooses to deal with them would be exposed to fire from the American armor, so given the track record of the Wolverines thus far, odds of survival, if not outright victory, seem highly in their favor. Then Aardvark goes nuts and the scene plays out.

Second, it all but assures that the Wolverines and their writers are not interested in survival. Killing Tanner stops any (hinted-at and almost entirely off-camera) talk of going to Free America, which any rational human being would have been trying to do all along. The boys have lot parents, sure, but none of them have established any suicidal love of Calumet.   Killing Aardvark (and while she's no Harry Dean Stanton, Lea's priceless cry of "Aardvark!" as the boy dies is a minor Great Moment in Red Dawn) allows them to begin whittling the team down, though perhaps too late -- an earlier exit would have lent much more bite to their occasional and usually waved-off moral quandaries.

Next comes the aftermath scene. Lea is in the deeply-shadowed foreground, sobbing that she'll never love anybody again. Is she talking about Tanner, or Aardvark? Since we're shown virtually no scenes of the kids outside of combat, we can't be sure. One presumes Tanner, but Jennifer is the one sitting in the background cradling Tanner's flight helmet in her lap.

After a makeshift funeral, Matt goes to find Jed sitting in the snow-free field, brooding. The dialogue hints that this may be at the end of a vigil, but like much else here, one can't say for sure. Matty informs his brother the rest of the team is thinking about quitting, that they'd lost their stomach for it. Jed asks if Matt has, too, and in one of those fate-sealing responses, Matty says: "I'm your brother. Just make it count."

FEBRUARY

Still token snow on the ground. In town, the russkies are having their May Day parade early, as a creepy Spetsnaz commander who sports a Bennett 'stache marches his unit through town. He gives a reorganization all-hands-meeting speech, indicting the tactics used by Superfly and Creepy Russian General as impotent. Behind him are presentation aids that will be unfamiliar to modern audiences: bulletin boards, charts, and photographs. He has four boards, one devoted to the small animal the boys take their name from, one of pictures (I'm guessing, hard to make out) of their past exploits, one of pictures with their victims' bodies, and one with eleven 8x10 glossies of the suspected Wolverines. Now, it's just been barely hinted that Darryl's dad (the mayor, smarmy Lane Smith) knows something of the boys, and shortly more is revealed, but there's a real stretch to make an assumption of eleven Wolverines. Spetsnaz Bennett closes by launching a bold new strategy: hunt for them!

Next, the Spetsnaz are out in force, walking briskly through the barrens in their full white snowsuits, less than helpful in the still-sparse snow. Several carry what I am truly hoping to be radio transmitters slapped together in the prop department. They look to weigh about ten pounds, have springs jutting from their front, and two large dials that look more like the adjustment knobs on an aeron chair. Above all, they seem a parody of clunky Soviet-designed equipment. They beep loudly when in proximity of their quarry, which kind of negates the usefulness of sneaking up in full camo.

As we quickly learn. The Wolverines were laying in wait for them, prepared to the degree that both of their tripod-mounted machine guns were deployed and the treeline mined. Within forty seconds, a team of special forces men -- so famed for their lethal efficiency that even Reader's Digest ran scare pieces about them in the 80s --  have been decimated and put to flight. One is captured, brought back to the camp for interrogation. Too bad none of the kids speak Russian. They taunt him with Spanish and German, and then go Abu Grahib on him anyway. His amusing mangled english epithets, like "Suck at you! Goddamn for your mother!" are sharp.

Matty finds the on switch of the ugly spring box and determines it's pointing right... at... Darryl. Matty's apoplectic, slapping himself so violently Oliver Trask style his Dead Russian Major hat falls off. Darryl's been going to town, apparently without anyone questioning his absence (he has been pretty much invisible for the previous half hour or so), got caught, and was forced to swallow a bug. The commies have transmitters small enough to swallow but need receivers the size of cinder blocks. Matty, not the sharpest tool in the camp accuses Darryl of telling them where the camp was -- well, duh, Matty. "My father turned me in.. they did things you can't imagine.." cries Darryl, fully aware he's pleading for his life to a pissed-off Swayze. Presumably they did things that didn't leave any visible effects. On the other hand, the callow guy didn't take long to cave in.

Wordless with rage, Jed throws Darryl to the ground before unloading some abuse, and we cut to the execution scene. Spetsnaz captive tries to invoke the Geneva convention, but Jed, mountain man and jock that he is, hasn't heard of it.

Danny begs for Darryl's worthless life, but no! Darryl betrayed us. Spetsnaz turns to Darryl and says see, I will not die alone now. Ouch. Even Matty is swayed, and asks his brother what's the difference between us and them, now. Jed pulls his daddy's execution .44 (actually, in this scene it looks like a cheap .38) and snarls "Because.... we... live here!" and the girly spetsnaz screams before the wonderful return of the echoing-across-the-hillside sound effect takes him in the sternum. But even Jed can't execute Darryl, and points the gun away. Robert steps up and executes his former SBP, leading to one of the most bludgeoning instances of symbolism ever on film: his underfed body perforated with three 7.62mm rounds, Darryl manages to take two steps forward to grab Robert before he falls, leaving a bloody smear down Robert's immaculate snow camo.  For a person Darryl's size, one shot would likely knock him off his feet entirely, let alone a three-shot burst.

But nevermind that, the horses are back!

Following some more Swayze brooding (in what seems to be seasonally appropriate snowfall for once) we're back to our old tricks. The Wolverines are watching from a ridges as a small commie caravan drive down the highway, stop for several suspicious moments, and then even more suspiciously drop two large boxes of food off the back of their truck before driving on. Counter to any logic, Jed calls off an attack and sends Toni down to inspect the boxes.

Nobody questions the overwhelming contrivance of the Soviets' sudden largess. Or how the fresh apples and oranges getting into Calumet in February. Or how this scene makes any sense whatsoever: the only way for what follows to logically happen is that the Russians knew exactly where the Wolverines were hiding. After Toni tests for poison and snipers, our heroes race down the hillside, and then adjourn to Partisan Rock to gorge on produce and boxes of Chex.

 The Russians' plan is then made chillingly clear: no milk!

They did bring three Hind choppers, though. And while bin laden's CIA-trained mujahadeen in Afghanistan learned they can be downed with rocks and rope, our boys scatter helplessly before the onslaught, which bags Toni right off(surprise round) and much later Robert. His death is actually worse than Aardvark's; for so emboldened by using his RPG taking out the door gun on one Hind and having an opportunity to run, hide, or otherwise take cover and prolong this at least a few more minutes, chooses to to play open-field AK-47 versus ground assault chopper and loses.

Jed has an awkward farewell to the mortally wounded Toni, sure to jerk the tears from Dirty Dancing fans everywhere.

At last, all the pawns are cleared.

In the next scene, Jed is standing at Partisan Rock, and you have to be able to pause the film to catch that while having added Robert and Toni, he's also put himself and Matt there, too. Spoiler, Jed! Spoiler! For reasons lost to poor development, Erica and Danny are to be spared so that someone can make it and wrap the film up with a lifeless narrated epilogue while the brothers Eckert make a Wild Bunch run at Calumet. "We're all used up," Matty explains. In an appeal to his warrior code, Danny tries a different tack: "You're never gonna know who won!" he says, which gives us a pensive Sheen face for the shrugging, war-is-hell retort:

"Who will?"

Once the brothers are alone, Matty is starting to waffle, reasoning that they could make it out. Jed cuts off any possible discussion with a well-timed "I love you, Matty." They then finish outfitting themselves for the task ahead.

In town, noble savage Superfly Bella composes a letter to his wife, filled with longing and regret for the things he's done. And further, he's done, and plans to come home after the war and try to forget.

Then explosions rock the town. Outside it's a red-lit inferno of props you'll swear were destroyed in the montage sitting idle as russian-uniformed extras careen by the camera, afire. Our surviving Wolverines make short work of the extras as they penetrate to "the station" and light it up with a few of their last RPGs. Bella's second, the poor man's Gregory Sierra (if there is such a beast -- why not, I guess, in a film also featuring the poor man's Bennett? ) steals up behind Matty with a drawn .45. Rather than shoot, though, he walks up close in time to get fried by the backwash of Matty's rpg. Good judgment! Perhaps the filmmakers want to let the boys escape after all. Matty's RPG kills Creepy Russian General, who has time for a shocked look of terror.

But no. Demonstrating his superior hunter's instincts, Spetsnaz Bennett knows the boys are escaping on a train headed out of town (from where to where?) hidden behind two cannons on a flat car in the murky light. He waits, standing completely in the open, his mac-10 on the side of his hip for fifteen seconds until they pass; at which point he opens up on Matty, who goes by second. Matty is thrown backward with a spin move worthy of a 50s cowboy actor, and Jed lumbers off with him. Bennett continues standing in the open, somehow knowing there are only these two Wolverines left to deal with. When the train goes by he walks slowly across the tracks, sees blood and a dropped AK in the trackside supply depot, and leisurely starts to investigate. So inattentive to his situation (he shows no reaction as gunfire erupts in the distance) that Jed, having just seen a firsthand example in stupidly walking out of cover to shoot a foe, steps out from cover to shoot his foe. So certain that this particular Russian is not just another faceless extra he's been slaughtering for months, but rather a true adversary, Jed announces his presence with the cocking of his daddy's revolver, and has time for a not-quite-pithy "You lose," before opening fire. Bennett returns with a volley from his mac, and while both men are hit, only he falls -- and shortly dies.

After a moment to consider the corpse of Spetsnaz Bennett, we find Jed carrying a bleeding Matt away from the trainyard. Bella steps into the frame, AK raised, but Jed, again perfectly judging the disposition of an enemy for the second time in as many minutes, just regards him with weary hurt, and Bella waves them off. For a moment you think he's not actually going to, that he's better than saying it, but then he does finally mutter "Vaya con dios," as he looks away. Bella throws his AK to the ground; he can't shoot it anymore. He takes a long look at the metaphorical blood on his hands, shudders, steadies himself, and searches in the sky for answers. In short, Bella receives the only identifiably human character arc in the entire film.

A considerably less dignified valediction awaits the brothers, as Jed has carried Matt to the playground from their childhood, muttering about how daddy'll be there soon. He drops Matt, picks him up, sets down on a park bench and cradles his unconscious-probably-dead brother in his arms as the snow falls on them.

Exeunt the Wolverines.

Then we cut back to Erica and Danny, who are climbing up a hill in daylight. Presumably it is several weeks if not months later (or possibly even the next morning, given the film's continuity problems) as there is not a bit of snow to be seen. As the plains finally stretch out before them, Danny announces "We're free now." "Free," she agrees with a nod.

We return to Partisan Rock for an epilogue (the snow missing from the last scene is back). The Rock is now a monument, with an American Flag proudly jutting from it. Erica handwaves the rest of the war with a simple: "In time this war... ended," and that she never saw the brothers again (no, really?). She comes to this place often, "when no one else does."

Somehow the lives of six high schoolers (okay, five and a townie) get a Department of Forests plaque: "In the early days of World War III, guerrillas, mostly children, placed the names of their lost upon this rock They fought here alone and gave up their lives "So that this nation shall not perish from the earth,"" showing how almost anything can be whitewashed.

Fin.

Thundering patriotic Red Dawn theme, rolling over larger-than-life b&w glossy headshots of the principals follow.