Red Dawn Quotes

[Robert sawing off a shotgun]

Danny: They were people!

Robert: Yeah, well, so was my dad.

Aardvark: What was it like?

[Robert stops sawing]

Robert: It was good.

[Robert resumes sawing]

Jed Eckert: How did you get shot down, Colonel?

Col. Andy Tanner: It was five to one. I got four.

Col. Andy Tanner: All that hate's gonna burn you up, kid.

Robert: It keeps me warm.

Col. Andy Tanner: ...The Russians need to take us in one piece, and that's why they're here. That's why they won't use nukes anymore; and we won't either, not on our own soil. The whole damn thing's pretty conventional now. Who knows? Maybe next week will be swords.

Darryl Bates: What started it?

Col. Andy Tanner: I don't know. Two toughest kids on the block, I guess. Sooner or later, they're gonna fight.

Jed Eckert: That simple, is it?

Col. Andy Tanner: Or maybe somebody just forget what it was like.

Jed Eckert: ...Well, who *is* on our side?

Col. Andy Tanner: Six hundred million screaming Chinamen.

Darryl Bates: Last I heard, there were a billion screaming Chinamen.

Col. Andy Tanner: There *were*.

[he throws whiskey on the fire; it ignites violently, suggesting a nuclear explosion]

Jed Eckert: [at the execution of Daryl Bates and Stepan Gorsky] Do you want blindfolds?

Stepan Gorsky: This violates the Geneva convention.

Jed Eckert: I never heard of it!

Stepan Gorsky: Dogface! I show you how Soviet dies!

Robert: I've seen it before, pal.

Danny: [who is tied up in the distance, with the horses] This isn't happening! Jed, let him go! He was one of us!

Jed Eckert: Shut up, Danny! Shut up!

Robert: He told them where we were!

Jed Eckert: He did. Now get your rifles.

Matt Eckert: *No!*

Jed Eckert: WHAT DID YOU SAY?

Matt Eckert: *We're not doing it!*

Stepan Gorsky: [to Daryl] Boy, say at me you are friend, so I will not die alone.

Matt Eckert: What's the difference, Jed?

Robert: I'll do it.

Matt Eckert: Shut up, Robert!

[to Jed]

Matt Eckert: *Tell me what's the difference between us and them!*

Jed Eckert: Because WE *LIVE* HERE!

[kills Stepan; Robert kills Daryl]

Jed Eckert: My family would want me to stay alive. Your family would want you to stay alive. You think you're so smart, man, but you're just a bunch of scared kids.

Danny: So what do you think *you* are?

Jed Eckert: ...Alone, I guess.

Matt Eckert: [comes and stands with him] No, you're not.

Jed Eckert: [in the mountains] Matt and I have been coming up to these mountains with our dad our whole lives. We can hunt, we can fish, we can stay up here a long, long time.

Robert: How long, Jed?

[fighters and bombers pass overhead]

Jed Eckert: [indicating the jets above them] Until we don't hear *that* no more.

Jed Eckert: [they are surveying a wintery landscape, as several tanks gather on both sides to shoot it out] You got across *that*?

Col. Andy Tanner: Just part of it. I hope our guys are still there.

Jed Eckert: So this is the battlefield?

Col. Andy Tanner: It's a real war, kid. It's here every day.

Jed Eckert: [after the deaths of Aardvark and Colonel Tanner] It's kind of strange, isn't it? How the mountains pay us no attention at all. You laugh or you cry... The wind just keeps on blowing.

Matt Eckert: You're getting pretty low on feelings, aren't you?

Jed Eckert: I can't afford them.

Matt Eckert: Even if that had been me instead of Aardvark?

Jed Eckert: [the Wolverines discover that Daryl has been "bugged" by the Russo-Cubans] Daryl... Where is it? Where is it?

[Jed grabs Daryl, gets in Daryl's face and shouts]

Jed Eckert: GOD-DAMMIT, WHERE'S THE BUG?

Darryl Bates: They made me swallow it.

Matt Eckert: Daryl, what have you done?

Darryl Bates: [nearly in tears] I went into town... and got caught.

Jed Eckert: [shaking him and screeching with rage] YOU WENT AND GOT CAUGHT! WHY?

Darryl Bates: [His voice breaks] You said we couldn't...

Robert: You told them where we were, didn't you? You told them!

Darryl Bates: [sobbing] My father turned me in. Oh God, they do things you can't imagine.

Jed Eckert: [throws him down, growling with rage] AAAAGGHHH! You SON OF A BITCH!

Colonel Ernesto Bella: [in the now-occupied Calumet, Colorado] Look, I was always on the side of the insurgents. I have no experience in these matters, but it would seem necessary to win the support of the people. As our opponents used to say in Vietnam: "Win their hearts and minds."

General Bratchenko: And they lost, Ernesto... Morale is crucial right now. Keep the men in the secured areas. You'll see how they forget about these "Wolverines."

Colonel Ernesto Bella: [Toni blows up a nearby "Soviet-American Friendship Center."] You were saying, Comrade?

General Bratchenko: Oh, shut up!

[while giving guns to freed Americans]

Jed Eckert: C'mon! We're all going to die, die standing up!

Col. Andy Tanner: [using a crude diorama, the Wolverines prepare for an assault on the Calumet Drive-In, which is now a Russo-Cuban "Re-education Camp"] All right. Four planes. Cuban bunker, Russian bunker. munitions dump, troop tents. Four machine gun bunkers. Back here by the drive-in screen are your political prisoners. We'll cause a diversion over here... cut holes in the wire here, fire on all these machine gun positions. The B-Group comes across this area in a flanking maneuver... and when you reach this bunker, you lay down grazing fire on this defilade. I think that's pretty simple. Anybody got any questions so far?

Aardvark: What's a "flank?"

Toni: What's a "defilade?"

Robert: What's "grazing fire?"

Col. Andy Tanner: [out loud, to himself] I need a drink.

Mr. Mason: [the Wolverines arrive at the Mason house, where they will be joined by Toni and Erica] We got us some outlaws here.

Jed Eckert: Wow, a house.

Mr. Mason: Go on and find a chair.

Robert: Last time we were in a house was five weeks.

Mr. Mason: You look it.

Mayor Bates: [in Mayor Bates' office, where he is being questioned by Colonel Bella] Daryl, he wouldn't hurt a fly. I know my son, Colonel. He's not the guerrilla type.

Colonel Ernesto Bella: According to records, Mayor... your son is a prominent student leader.

Mayor Bates: Yes, well... he's a leader, but not in a violent or physical way. You see, Daryl... he's more of a politician, like his father.

Colonel Ernesto Bella: A member of an elite paramilitary organization: "Eagle Scouts."

Mayor Bates: Yes, but that's not military. If he's alive, he's scared, he's hungry... and he's just as anxious to avoid conflicts as you and me. He's not a troublemaker.

Colonel Ernesto Bella: Then who is?

Mayor Bates: ...It runs in some of the families.

Colonel Ernesto Bella: [to an aide-de-camp] This community is indeed fortunate to have a shepherd like him.

Mayor Bates: Well, I just want to see this thing through, Colonel.

Darryl Bates: [Pouring a can of soup in the pot] That's the last of it... except for the olives.

Matt Eckert: We still got plenty of meat left.

Danny: Just stuff you shot.

Matt Eckert: So tell me, dork, where do you suppose hamburgers come from?

Danny: Nobody shoots them.

Darryl Bates: We need food.

Col. Andy Tanner: [his dying words, after being killed while dropping a smoke bomb into a Russian tank] Come on, buddies! Come and get 'em! Shoot straight for once, you Army pukes.

[gets blown up by an American tank]

Tom Eckert: [at the Calumet Drive-in, which is now a Communist "re-education camp"] Remember when you used to go in the park and play... and I used to put you on the swings... and both of you were... so damn little?

Jed Eckert: I remember. I remember all of it.

Tom Eckert: [to Jed and Matt] I ain't gonna be around to pick you up when you fall now. Both of you gotta take care of each other now.

Matt Eckert: [after their flight from Calumet, Jed is fixing the radiator on his pickup-truck] Did you get it?

Jed Eckert: Yeah, I got it. Only thing is, we got one problem: we don't have any water.

Matt Eckert: How about pissing in it?

Jed Eckert: That's a good idea. Get up here.

[laughs]

Danny: How do you know it'll work?

Jed Eckert: How old are you, kid?

Danny: Fifteen. And the name's Danny, not "kid."

Jed Eckert: Well, when you grow up... then you'll know these things, Danny. Now get up here and piss in the radiator.

Erica: [after colonel dies] I'll never love anybody again!

Robert: If you didnt't love anybody, you wouldn't be here right now...

Toni: [her dying words, to Jed] Go on ahead. I'm just gonna stay here and listen to the wind a while, okay?

[He gives her a grenade, pulls the pin for her and kisses her goodbye; she then rigs herself as a boobytrap]

Matt Eckert: [after Toni and Robert are KIA, the Eckert Brothers plan a diversion while Danny and Erica cross the enemy lines] We're all that's left. Somebody's gotta live. Somebody's gotta make it. Me and Jed, we're all used up.

Erica: I'm never gonna forget... as long as I live.

Matt Eckert: Don't.

Danny: You're never gonna know who won.

Matt Eckert: Who WILL?

[last lines]

Erica: [closing narration] I never saw the Eckert Brothers again. In time, this war - like every other war - ended. But I never forgot. And I come to this place often, when no one else does.

[we see "Partisan Rock," with its memorial plaque, which she reads for us]

Erica: "... In the early days of World War 3, guerillas - mostly children - placed the names of their lost upon this rock. They fought here alone and gave up their lives, so that this nation should not perish from the earth."

Jed Eckert: [having killed Colonel Strelnikov, who has mortally wounded Jed and Matt] You can rest now. Just hang on, Mattie. It's okay... Daddy'll be here soon. Come on, Mattie. I'll hold you as long as I can... You can lean on me, Mattie... I'm so tired...

[He and Matt die in each other's arms]

Erica: [to Stepan] Sprechen sie Deutsch?

Matt Eckert: So what if he does? You don't.

Stepan Gorsky: Gorsky, Stepan Yevgenyvitch...!

Robert: NOBODY GIVES A DAMN WHO YOU ARE!

[He and his fellow Wolverines proceed to beat up Stepan]

Danny: [as he and Toni look on] They're gonna hurt him!

Toni: Good!

Radio Free America Announcer: It's 11:59 on Radio Free America; this is Uncle Sam, with music, and the truth until dawn. Right now I've got a few words for some of our brothers and sisters in the occupied zone: "the chair is against the wall, the chair is against the wall", "john has a long mustache, john has a long mustache". It's twelve o'clock, American, another day closer to victory. And for all of you out there, on, or behind the line, this is your song.

[the Battle Hymn of the Republic begins to play]

Col. Andy Tanner: [Describing the invasion] West Coast. East Coast. Down here is Mexico. First wave of the attack came in disguised as commercial charter flights same way they did in Afghanistan in '80. Only they were crack Airborne outfits. Now they took these passes in the Rockies.

Jed Eckert: So that's what hit Calumet.

Col. Andy Tanner: I guess so. They coordinated with selective nuke strikes and the missiles were a helluva lot more accurate than we thought. They took out the silos here in the Dakotas, key points of communication.

Darryl Bates: Like what?

Col. Andy Tanner: Oh, like Omaha, Washington, Kansas City.

Darryl Bates: Gone?

Col. Andy Tanner: Yeah. That's right. Infiltrators came up illegal from Mexico. Cubans mostly. They managed to infiltrate SAC bases in the Midwest, several down in Texas and wreaked a helluva lot of havoc, I'm here to tell you. They opened up the door down here, and the whole Cuban & Nicaraguan armies come walking right through, rolled right up here through the Great Plains.

Robert: How far did they get?

Col. Andy Tanner: Cheyenne, across to Kansas. We held them at the Rockies and the Mississippi. Anyway, the Russians reinforced with 60 divisions. Sent three whole army groups across the Bering Strait into Alaska, cut the pipeline, came across Canada to link up here in the middle, but we stopped their butt cold. The lines have pretty much stabilized now.

Robert: What about Europe?

Col. Andy Tanner: I guess they figured twice in one century was enough. They're sitting this one out. All except England, and they won't last very long.

[Yuri's 2 fellow soldiers have just been killed by Toni and Robert, and Yuri has managed to escape back to the jeep despite serious wounds]

Yuri: [speaking Russian into radio mike] God help me!

Yuri: God help me!

[Jed catches up to Yuri at the jeep, armed with a .45 pistol. Yuri looks at him with terror, then turns his head away, knowing what is coming. Jed then executes the Soviet soldier with the pistol]

[3 Soviet soldiers on patrol in the highlands of Arapho National Forest have found an arrow at the side of the road]

Yuri: [speaking Russian] Look. Look what I've found. An Indian arrow.

Soldier #1: [notices it is a manufactured arrow] I did not know these Indians used steel.

Yuri: Sure, you fool. They used the melted sabers of Federalist Cossacks.

Soldier #1: [notices the platic tail] Did these Indians work in plastic too?

Yuri: You idiot, this is bone, polished to a high sheen.

Yuri: [after spotting Toni & Erica] Stop!

Soldier #2: Watch out! She has a weapon.

Soldier #1: [speaking Russian] Stop, damn it!

[fires his AK-47]

Soldier #1: [Danny has managed to draw a bead on the first soldier & shoots him in the back with an arrow. The man screams & backs away from Erica, then tries to climb up the bank but is pulled off balance by Toni & Erica]

Soldier #1: [speaking Russian] Help me, comrades! I'm dying!

[Toni has managed to get control of the man's AK-47 & kills him with it. The second Soviet soldier goes down a hill when Robert steps out from behind a tree. As the soldier raises his AK-47 to shoot, Robert kills him with a shotgun blast. Yuri takes off toward the jeep with Daryl, Robert & Jed in pursuit and shooting at him]

Erica: You American?

Col. Andy Tanner: Red-blooded.

Erica: What's the capital of Texas?

Col. Andy Tanner: Austin.

Erica: Wrong, commie! It's Houston.

Matt Eckert: Why don't you make yourself useful?

Erica: You wash it! We're never doing your washing again! Me and her is as good as any of you!

Matt Eckert: So what's up your ass?

Erica: Shut up! Don't you ever say that again! Hear me? Say that again, I'll kill you! Hear me? I'll kill you.

Matt Eckert: So what did I do?

Toni: What you said was wrong.

KGB Major: Do you want to see me?

Colonel Ernesto Bella: Yes... yes. Go to the sporting goods store. From the files obtain forms 4473. These will contain descriptions of weapons, and lists of private ownership.

Alicia: They're looking for you.

Jed Eckert: Who?

Alicia: The KGB.

Jed Eckert: The Russians?

Alicia: And the Cubans.

Danny: You got a family?

Col. Andy Tanner: [long pause] I don't know. They got - caught behind the lines down in Texas. I like to think they're alive; but, I hear stories about what they're doin' to civilians.

Tom Eckert: Boys.

Matt Eckert: Daddy. Dad.

Tom Eckert: Don't talk. Don't say anything. Let me look at ya. I knew I was right. I knew it. You're alive. I was tough on both of you. I did things that made you, made you hate me sometimes. You understand now, don't you?

Jed Eckert: What happened, dad? Why are you here? What'd you do?

Tom Eckert: Doesn't matter. One way or another, for one reason or another, we're all gone. It's all gone. Remember. Remember when you used to go in the park and play, and I used to put you two on the swings? Both of you were so damn little.

Jed Eckert: I remember. I remember all of it.

Tom Eckert: Well, I won't be there to pick you up when you fall now. Both of you have to take care of each other now.

Matt Eckert: We'll never see you again, dad.

Tom Eckert: Yes you will. I don't want to hear that, Maddy.

Matt Eckert: What happened to mom, dad? Where is she?

Tom Eckert: You can't afford to be crying anymore now. I don't want either one of you to ever cry for me again. Don't ever do it. Not as long as you live.

Robert: Where's my dad, Mr. Eckert?

Tom Eckert: I don't know son. I don't know. You all get going. Get out before they find you.

Jed Eckert: Dad, I love you.

Tom Eckert: I know you do, son. I love you too.

[Tom, Jed, and Robert Leave]

Tom Eckert: Boys! Avenge Me! Avenge Me!

Mr. Teasdale: The Great Huns would always begin with the army spread out in a semi-circle, I would say, about the size of Rhode Island. Then they would ride forward, driving everything before them, beasts, men, even bugs. Now, the ends would kinda close in to form a shrinkin' circle. And everything within that circle panicked to get out. When the Mongols could see each other, they had worked themselves up into a purty good frenzy. Now, when this killing started, it last for days, weeks, even months. And it went on until the young son of the Khan asked his father that the last creature alive - be allowed to go free -

[sees parachutes landing outside his classroom window]

Mr. Teasdale: - oh, now, my friend, oh, now,

History Student #1: Wow, check it out.

History Student #2: All right.

History Student #3: Looks pretty cool, though, man.

Mr. Teasdale: I would say they were *way* off course. This is very unusual.

Alicia: Okay, listen. I'm gonna tell you something I'm not supposed to talk about. Nobody is. But...

Jed Eckert: But, what?

Alicia: That they took a lot of people away. People that they thought were gonna make trouble for them. People that had guns or things they wanted. They just took them away!

Jed Eckert: Where?

Alicia: Re-education Camps. That's what they call it.

Mr. Mason: We all figured you boys had headed for FA by now.

Robert: What's FA?

Mr. Mason: Free America. That's the safe zone.

Jed Eckert: Well, where are we?

Mr. Mason: Hell, you boys is in the occupied territory. You're 40 miles behind enemy lines. That's smack dab in the middle of World War III.

Yuri: [Looking at an historical marker for "Arapaho National Forest"] What is written here?

Russian soldier: You studied English. Translate.

Yuri: American history... I know this well.

[mistranslating the words on on the marker]

Yuri: Arapaho National Battle field. Here was a great peasant uprising in 1908 of wild Indians. They were crushed by President Theodore Roosevelt leading imperialist armies and cowboys. The battle lasted all winter, more than 35,000 were killed. It was the greatest battle of the American West.

[sign actually reads: Apapaho National Forest. Founded by President Theodore Roosevelt under the Forest Service Act of 1905. The Forest comprises 40,000 acres of virgin timber. One of the largest strands of Blue Spruce in the American West]

Russian soldier: Bravo!

General Bratchenko: What is a "Wolverine"?

Colonel Ernesto Bella: A small animal, like a badger, but terribly ferocious. It is also the name of the local sports collective.

General Bratchenko: They're beasts, Ernesto. You must kill every one of them eventually. It's the same as Afghanistan. They'll never stop.