Wash Post Mocks Red Dawn Remake as Perfect for Paranoid Tea Partiers

According to the Washington Post, the Red Dawn remake that appeared in theaters, Wednesday, is perfect for paranoid Tea Partiers who fear being placed in “internment camps.”

Film critic Michael O’Sullivan huffed, “The scenes that follow -- featuring internment camps and summary executions -- will be red meat for tea party patriots.” Aside from the cheap shots, fans of the original 1984 film about a communist invasion might take O’Sullivan’s review lightly. The journalist began by mocking the conservative themes as “silly.”

He knocked the Patrick Swayze film, saying:

It hadn’t aged well, and in the shifting light of 21st-century geopolitics, the old film’s rabid anti-communism seemed slightly silly, as did the fake-looking gunplay and explosions.

The Washington Post’s hostility towards the remake mirrors the paper’s anger over the original. On August 10, 1984, Rita Kemply, the then-critic for the paper, railed:

Better dead than "Red Dawn."

Director John Milius, the barbarian behind "Conan," co-wrote this anti-gun-control, anti- Communist, survivalist script with Kevin Reynolds. Sick and silly as it is, the idea could have been intriguing, had it gone anywhere, which it didn't.

A movie about Americans defending their country is “sick and silly?”

Just as in 2012, the Post tagged the original Red Dawn as paranoid:

And talk about enemy intelligence: The Russian commander's first order when he takes over the town is: "Go to the sporting goods store and get copies of form 443S. And find out the private ownership of the weapons." The registered gun-owners are then taken off and shot. It's an NRA nightmare come true.

Regarding the new movie, O’Sullivan oddly compared it to the documentary by Dinesh D’Souza:

Like the conservative documentary “2016: Obama’s America,” “Red Dawn” hints broadly that the United States has left itself open to attack and occupation through a combination of weak foreign policy and squandered military might.

That’s going to be a tough pill to swallow for some. Others will eat it up, along with all the speechifying about how freedom isn’t free.

If a liberal paper like the Post hates the new (and old) Red Dawn, perhaps conservatives will love it.