By the time the '80s rolled around, the Cold War was just about over. The Soviet Union was slowly-but-surely crumbling, and the threat posed by Mutually Assured Destruction was waning by the year. That's what makes movies like 1984's American action classic Red Dawn so interesting. In its alternate history tale, the USSR expands its sphere of power through Central and South America, while NATO dissolves, the US becomes isolated, and its only allies are a downtrodden England and a nearly-annihilated China. The result, as it turns out, is World War III, and Red Dawn shows one rather peculiar theater of that conflict: A guerrilla campaign conducted by some high school students in rural Colorado. So stock up on supplies, raid your gun cabinet, and run for the hills, Wolverines: The communists are here, and a political reckoning is brewing.




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