Unintelligible Stallone is sublime Stallone. If he's waxing poetic unintelligibly about Adrian or Vietnam, you know you're getting your money's worth.
No specific scene functions in isolation from a broader film overall, and it's highly debatable whether Colonel Ernesto's 'pacifist turn' (?) "brings a peaceful ending" to the film (as the opening post suggests). I mean, God forbid one involve 'political thoughts and theories' when discussing Red Dawn, of all things...
Disagree with Ebert's take that the Wolverines had too easy of a time beating the occupiers. They actually hid from the better armed sightseeing Russian soldiers and only fought them when Toni slipped and made noise. Killing them is how they get some of their better armaments at first. Also, the occupiers kill a handful of the Wolverines. It's not like they make it through the movie unscathed.
I agree with you, I don't think Roger Ebert has a clue about it. I think we can look to Afghanistan to see a real world example of how easy it is for an insurgency to beat occupiers. Both the Soviet Union and the USA lost there after decades of armed occupation, deployment of cutting edge defense technologies, billions of dollars spent and countless lives lost. And both counties and their allies achieved nothing there. The characters in Red Dawn were in the perfect location to resist and their childhood growing up there "trained" them in the skills needed to resist.
Thanks for this. It doesn’t really state what he thought f the different endings, just that he was determined not to have any winners but talks about the various endings as statements. I imagine he really couldn’t do anything about it
I didn't even know Rambo was a book until a few weeks ago, so I'm playing hard catch-up on David Morrell. I assume it's like when someone covers your song, but in an unusual way (to put it politely). You just shut up and cash the checks, because you don't want to deter other people from covering your songs.
