Bad people kidnap John Matrix's (Ah-nuld) daughter (Alyssa Milano). They demand that he assassinate the president of Val Verde. Matrix escapes his captors and goes on the hunt for his daughter.
The reason is simple:
Pound for pound, Commando succeeds at being the movie that it sets out to be.
I love Commando. I love it so much I wrote about it for a post-graduate paper - and various other places.
Ever since my first viewing, it has impressed me by its purity.
Commando is the archetypal 80s action movie. It takes all the ingredients and puts them together in just the right way: A muscle bound hero, an armoury of exotic weapons and an army of bad guys to kill them with.
Rambo 2 came out in the same year, but Commando is the movie which unlocked the key ingredient to making this kind of OTT concoction work:
Brevity.
Rambo 2 features a muscle-bound hero taking on an army but it seems almost embarrassed by it. The filmmakers want arrow grenades but they also want
This movie is all about keeping everything as simple as possible: motivation? Bad men have my daughter. Conflict? All the people who do not want me to get my daughter.
The great thing about Commando is that it knows exactly what kind of movie it is, and every aspect of its production is laser-focused on being that movie. What that movie is is an over-the-top action movie.
It also features a performer who cannot emote.
The filmmakers seem to recognise that it is silly and potentially bad. So the film avoids anything that will highlight their leading man's limitations.
It’s almost Bresson-like in its simplicity: Arnie’s boss warns him that bad guys are after him, leaves and said bad guys IMMEDIATELY pop out of the woods and open fire on him. It should not work. But the movie has such a sense of rhythm and awareness of its own absurdity that it never feels contrived.
To the leading man. At this point in his career, Arnold presented a conundrum. He is undeniably a screen presence but there is nothing behind his delivery. He can just about carry off Matrix's affection for his daughter and the stakes of the situation, but there is a blankness to his performance that stands out in comparison to his co-stars.
In later films, Schwarzenegger would become more confident in front of the camera, but there is something magical about his wooden-ness and the no-frills brevity of the story-telling. It is almost like he becomes the avatar for the movie's tone.
When I first watched Commando, I found Rae Dawn Chong a little annoying. Decades and endless re-watches later, she is essential to the movie's success.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is never going to be mistaken for an average Joe. A movie like Commando essentially works like a joke:
Set up: Matrix meets an obstacle
Punchline: Matrix destroys it
While that formula is present throughout the movie, it works because Chong is there to provide an average person's perspective. You need a straight man for the joke to work, and Chong is the straight man that makes Schwarzenegger stand out.
Vernon Wells was a late addition to the cast of Commando. He looks nothing like Schwarzenegger. He offers nothing specific in terms of physical presence.
But what he does have is acting (and a chain shirt).
He fills the movie with acting - wild facial expressions, expansive body language, rapid shifts in volume. Through his skills, he fills the frame in a way that complements Schwarzenegger's sheer physical presence.
Topping off the whole confection is James Horner's score - a mishmash of steel drums, synth keyboards and a saxophone.
Commando should not work. It could have tried to be more realistic, or developed a more overt sense of humour. Either choice could have been disastrous.
But it finds its specific lane - ironic but non-winking, over-the-top but with stakes - and sticks to it.
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