Red Dawn

Red Dawn (1984) is John Milius's war action movie, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It starts on an ordinary morning in small-town Colorado, with kids half-asleep in class, until paratroopers drop onto the football field outside and enemy tanks roll down Main Street within minutes.

Eight teenagers manage to flee into the mountains. Calling themselves the Wolverines after their high school team, they learn to shoot, hide, and ambush the occupying army, growing from scared kids into a guerrilla unit fighting a war of their own. Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen play the brothers holding the group together, while Lea Thompson and Jennifer Grey are forced to grow up fast. Get something wrong out here and the cost isn't a failing grade, it's a bullet.

Milius made a rare beast for its day: a Cold War invasion fantasy where the young heroes actually die, paranoid and unsentimental. The film is remembered as the first ever released with a PG-13 rating, and it still holds cult status among fans of hard-edged 1980s genre cinema, while the 2012 remake never came close. One for viewers who like grim action that refuses an easy happy ending. Stream Red Dawn (1984) online on iFILM.