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The root is Cavalcanti's Went the Day Well?, or earlier yet, Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast. A history lesson interrupted, a panorama of Commie paratroopers viewed through the widescreen of a classroom window. "The Russians?" "And the Cubans!" Colorado high-schoolers form the last line of resistance, the quarterback named after Jedediah Smith (Patrick Swayze) leads the way. A reversed position, an updated mythology. "Hell, you boys is in occupied territory." The fantasy is a superpower's vision of itself as underdog, the oppressor's closet desire to be oppressed, Reagan getting a taste of his own "interventionist" policies—the boneheaded and the erudite met by John Milius with full-bodied force. (The joke about free Alexander Nevsky screenings has been noted, but there's also radiator pissing out of Dovzhenko's Earth.) A summer camp for the hardening of bratty flesh, where the pushover (C. Thomas Howell) drinks deer blood and treasures the flame of hate, "keeps me warm." Paternal figures include the gray survivalist (Ben Johnson), the battered Poppa howling for vengeance (Harry Dean Stanton), the colonel (Powers Boothe) who won't answer when asked if the guerrilla children are doing right. On the other side, a prissy tovarich (Vladek Sheybal) and a soulful relic from revolutionary ideals (Ron O'Neal). William Smith's lecture on insurgency points up The Battle of Algiers as a mainstay, to the outsider's eye the Transfer Act of 1905 was clearly "a great peasant uprising" crushed by Roosevelt and his "imperialist armies and cowboys." For the hero, the ultimate consummation is split between pulling the grenade pin for the dying partisan (Jennifer Grey) and expiring in a snowy playground next to his brother (Charlie Sheen). "A pretty good frenzy," all in all, with a postscript by Frankenheimer (The Fourth War). With Lea Thompson, Darren Dalton, Brad Savage, Frank McRae, Pepe Serna, and Lane Smith.
--- Fernando F. Croce |