After rewatches of The Running Man, The Terminator and T2: Judgment Day I thought it time for a rewatch of the 1985 Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie vehicle, Commando, which I’ve seen innumerable times but not in a long while (and in this case the director’s cut, for what that’s worth).
Opening with three seemingly unconnected men being killed in cold blood by the imposing figure of Bill Duke (who also appeared in Predator) as Cooke, along with some other sundry henchman, a tone is set
Then we cut to a gloriously preposterous montage of Arnold’s preposterously named, retired special forces colonel, John Matrix as he carries a tree through a forest before chopping wood and then having a remarkably sweet afternoon with his daughter, Jenny (played by Alyssa Milano), eating ice cream, practicing martial arts, feeding wild animals and fishing all of which somewhat up ends the initial expectations.
This is something that marks the whole film as it feels like half the cast and crew (including Arnold and director Mark L. Lester) are making a fairly straight and brutal mid-80s action movie, while the other half (including writer Steven E. De Souza and producer Joel Silver) are making something a bit more knowing and sending up the typical mid-80s actioner.
It’s not long before the main plot is established as Jenny is kidnapped by Cooke’s employer, Arius (a Central American crime boss and/or former president of a country who Matrix deposed – though lets be honest specifics don’t really matter), and his now chief henchman, and former special forces partner of Matrix, Bennett (Vernon Wells), who claim they’ll release her if Matrix kills the president of ‘Val Verde’.
Of course this plot, which feels knowingly overblown from the off, is just a framework to hang a series of ludicrous action scenes on, and they rarely let up from car chases to fistfights to shootouts so full on as to go out one side of credulity and in again at the other end.
While this is all so far, so macho, the script undercuts this by introducing Cindy (Rae Dawn Chong), a flight attendant who becomes embroiled in all of this before siding with Matrix, but throughout offers various asides, skewering the overtop action, before becoming central to the rescue in a way that it feels like a female character wouldn’t normally have been at the time.
Throughout all of this it’s clear that Arnold hasn’t really progressed beyond his Terminator acting style, which may have suited that film but here feels like unintentional pastiche (though it’s part of what makes the movie quite so enjoyable), though Wells seems to be doing enough ‘acting’ for both of them in a way that feels like a send up from the other side, making their final, crudely choreographed, fight scene a delight on several levels (not least its deadpan closing one-liner from Arnold).
Only adding to the ludicrousness is the main action set piece where Matrix goes into full ‘one man army’ mode and takes on seemingly an entire army with the aid of a few machine guns and grenades and then, in a spectacularly brutal moment that veers almost into schlock territory, a garden fork, an axe and a circular saw blade (I suspect some of this section being included is what made this a Director’s Cut) and throughout various ramps, springboards and jumps are plainly visible as bad guys bounce off them as they get shot and blown up.
As I’m sure you can tell by this Commando is something of an overblown and ridiculous mess of a movie but the knowing and satirical elements just about hold it together to make it something far more than it really has any right be (whether intentionally or not) making it an unlikely highlight of Arnold’s 1980s action movie phase if approached with the correct mindset (I suspect if not approached with that view then it could be a trying experience).
Tommy Girard 
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