Red Dawn is a 1984 American action drama film directed by John Milius, from a screenplay co-written with Kevin Reynolds, and starring Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson and Jennifer Grey, with supporting roles played by Ben Johnson, Darren Dalton, Harry Dean Stanton, Ron O'Neal, William Smith and Powers Boothe. Set during a fictional World War III between an increasingly isolated United States and the Soviet Union, the film follows a group of teenage guerrillas, known as the Wolverines, fighting against a joint Soviet-Latin American invasion force in Colorado.