John Milius's envisionment of a Colorado small town occupied by Allied Communist Invasionary Forces starts out in a genuine nightmare vein; but it soon seems to wake up and to enter a controlled daydream vein, a conscious conjuration of the Good Old Days of the Minute Men and the Green Mountain Boys, where a small pack of teenage renegades descend from their mountain hideout to make guerrilla strikes against the oppressors and to leave their school nickname, Wolverines, spray-painted on the battle site like Zorro's carved initial. No doubt the most common remark among reviewers around the nation has been that the movie seems a made-to-order promotional tool for the NRA and the anti-gun control lobby. One could go further in that strain and remark that the napalm industry might feel a certain vindication, after so many image-blackening Vietnam movies, at seeing their product demonstrated in such a context that the audience can nod assent as one of the characters mutters through his teeth, "Fry 'em." And the nuclear anti-freeze people, or contemporary Big Stickists, will surely be able to find sustenance in the notion that nuclear missiles can pepper the globe and life can eventually pick up again and go on much as before (minus, to be sure, a few major metropolises). If the stupidity here eclipses the sincerity, it is perhaps because Milius, with that mixture of combativeness and defensiveness so typical of the right-wing mind, insists on putting his worst foot forward. Where liberals tend to talk among themselves, conservatives go out of their way to be overheard by the enemy. Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Ron O'Neal, and William Smith. (1984) — Duncan Shepherd
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