An incredible cast in their early days of their careers- including Patrick Swayze, (Ghost, Roadhouse), C. Thomas Howell (The Outsiders, The Hitcher), Charlie Sheen (Platoon, Wall Street), Lea Thompson (Back to the Future), Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing,Ferris Buellers Day Off) and Powers Boothe (By Dawns Early Light, Southern Comfort) – take up arms against an invading Soviet army in Red Dawn, the superb hit 1980s actioner written a directed by cinematic powerhouse John Milius (Conan the Barbarian), and co-written by Kevin Reynolds (Waterwold).

It had been a few years since I’ve seen the film (over the years I’ve had it on VHS and then DVD) and was very much looking forward to revisiting the film but this time on bluray and in 4K.  Its also great that there are a bunch of special features in this edition- as all the previous releases have been bare bones. The list of the special features is a few lines down and once I’ve seen them, ill reedit this article and include a little details on the features. I do know that the total run time of the four featurettes is around the 56 minute mark and so a near hour of features about this classic 80s film is pretty great considering that it wasn’t a huge budget film at the time and not too much behind the scenes footage was filmed. With the longest featurette being Red Dawn Rising (which clocks in at 23minutes) this is a good look at the film and yes of course I would loved a feature length making of, but im greedy when it comes to special features. I think that the near hour of footage we get is a great job done! 

The restoration itself is also pretty impressive and whilst I’m sure the techies out there could explain to me in 10 minutes just how a restoration this crisp can be done from a film that’s decades old, I kinda like to just keep the magic and think ‘wow how do they make a film this old look this good’  Yes there is some grain but thats just nit pick! Red Dawn in 4K looks great and sounds great too especially when for most years I had the film on a pan n scan VHS tape. 4K is like Christmas for a film geek like me.

Hugely entertaining, packed with explosive action set pieces and a line up of A-list actors to die for, this is thrilling, escapist fun of the highest order. The film is released in a  4K UHD edition with a bonus disc filled with extras, as well as a collectable Steelbook edition and also on Blu-ray.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Original Theatrical Trailer

US Teaser

German Trailer

Red Dawn Rising: Making-of

Training for WWIII

Building the Red Menace

WWIII Comes to Town

RED DAWN IS RELEASED ON 4K UHD, 4K STEELBOOK AND BLU-RAY