The right of people to abuse their freedom by making and showing a film as cynically provocative as Red Dawn is part of the price the rest of us must pay for living in a democracy.

It packs plenty of rabble-rousing ammunition, but its sloppy execution is unlikely to win any merit badges for marksmanship.

When it was released in late summer of 1984, it was a big hit, which shouldn't come as a surprise; this was the year when Reagan won the presidency in a landslide, and if nothing else, 'Red Dawn' plays like a Reaganite masturbatory fantasy.

Red Dawn‘s grip on the viewer is slowly-but-surely loosened as it progresses into a sluggish and increasingly uninvolving midsection...