everybody likes to argue about their FAVORITE MOVIE!!!!

Spritle, you picked a hell of an old movie, in fact its 8 years older than i am..... However i have actually seen the movie and I did enjoy it. The Movie does have a large list of rather famous and successful actors, i will concede that, and the director has had many successful films, but there are 3 reasons why I do not think that Red Dawn, as good as it was, did not deserve Best Picture Award in 1984... 1) The biggest problem I had while watching the movie was trying to make sense out of the plot and background setting. I understand the resistance movement against foreign occupation idea. In Red Dawn though the entire movie is based on the fact that NATO had crumbled, a communist revolution occurred in Cuba, Cuban spies crippled the strategic defenses of the United States, and the fact that Cuban and Russian soldiers in disguise deployed deep into American territory via parachute.... These story lines are so absurd that even Hollywood couldn't make them seem feasible, I assume that is why the director channeled attention away from the settings to focus almost exclusively on the resistance story. The fact that Russian military intelligence believed that sending paratroopers into Calamut Colorado would provide a strategic advantage for an invasion is something that no one could believe when watching the movie... 2) All the actors in the film went on to have great careers, however their performances within the film itself didn't help any of them achieve any awards at all. Red Dawn is a fight-the-power movie where high school students take up arms to fight those occupying their country, but it doesn't take great acting to impersonate a high school student.... To claim that the actors and actresses are stellar at their job is one thing, but you have to look within the film to evaluate their performance. Looking at just the movie I wasn't impressed with their portrayals of their characters. The Same thing goes for the director, John Milius, he was a stellar director if you only look at the movies he released in the early 1980's... Milius's only commercial success as director was Red Dawn and Conan the Barbarian. He did NOT direct Apocalypse Now and Dirty Harry, those were directed by Francis Ford Coppola and Don Siegal. Milius directed many other movies that were low budget even in the 1970's and 1980's that did not generate much revenue in the box office. His final film which was Flight of the Intruder which was his costliest movie to produce ever, it cost 35 million but it only generated 14 million in profit. That gives Milius two box office successes which i do not believe qualifies him as a very skilled director..... 3) The film came out in 1984, so that would mean that it would have won best picture when the awards were given out in 1985. However, Red Dawn received no academy awards for best director, actor, actress, screenwriting, or anything. The film in fact was not even NOMINATED for any of the categories. The award for best picture went to the film Amadues, A Movie about the life of the famous musician Mozart that ended up WINNING 8 academy awards, including best picture. Amadues was an amazing film that ended up grossing more money than Red Dawn did, and the film received 40 awards from various film critics and organizations for its plot and story, including a few for acting at the golden globes. The movie story line itself is hard to understand and accept for a member of the audience both in the past and in the present, the director is not as skilled as you give him credit for, and the film that did win best picture that year was a far better film then Red Dawn was.