Back to the 80s Month: Commando (Dir Mark L. Lester, 1h32m, 1985)

No actor epitomises the 1980s like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He begins the 1980s as an outsider, a muscle-man brought in to play silent heavies. Following a slew of action movies that include everything from two stints as Robert E Jordan's Conan the Barbarian, to a Stephen King adaption in the nightmarish gameshow of The Running Man, to going up against a hostile alien hunter in The Predator, to the role he would become synonymous with, in James Cameron's Terminator, Arnold enters the 1990s as one of its biggest (and best paid) stars. Alongside this, his comedy chops, long the thing that marked him out from cinematic sparring partner, Sylvester Stallone, are given suitable outings, not only where he plays unlikely double-act to Danny Devito in Twins but throughout his 80s output.

This quintessential era of Schwarzenegger is captured perfectly in 1985’s Commando, where John Matrix, a former soldier, sets out to rescue his daughter, Jenny, (Alyssa Milano), from the clutches of deposed generic South American dictator, Arius (Dan Hedaya), and get revenge. Schwarzenegger may have appeared in better, or more critically lauded films but none capture the pure essence of his qualities as an actor. Commando, in fact, typifies 80s action cinema as a whole perfectly-this is, after all, action cinema pre Die Hard, and the grounded everyman that populated the medium into the 90s, fallible instead of the nigh unstoppable force that Schwarzenegger and Stallone represented as they stormed through hordes of interchangeable villains of miscellaneous ethnicities and causes.

And it is this formula, of a progression from a villain’s underlings to his right hand men to the villain himself in a final showdown, with quips, set-pieces and suitably outlandish deaths along the way that Commando not only captures but perfects. Furthermore, Commando is a positive crystallisation of this formula, as John goes from attempting to hunt down and find out more about who has his daughter in a set of scenes in which he tracks down slimy Sully (David Patrick Kelly), and with the help of airport stewardess, Cindy (Rae Dawn Chong), dispatches him, to a final denouement in a near half hour gun battle on Arius’s island, where he once again comes face to face with his former colleague, the scenery-chewing Bennett (Vernon Welles), in a final confrontation.

But the sense of the 1980s permeates deeper than this-John’s introduction is peak 1980s, from the lingering close-ups on John’s rippling muscles, boots, chainsaw and the entire tree he carries home, to James Horner’s booming score, full of steel drums and 80s synth, that firstst appears at this quintessentially Arnold introduction and recurs throughout the film, picking up wherever an action scene rears its head . It is, however, undoubtedly the film’s weakest link, and up to its finale, the score frankly seems overwhelming, chaotic, a set of cues that seem to do much of the film’s heavy lifting when it’s entirely unnecessary.

Where the film is more refreshingly modern is in the portrayal of Cindy and Jenny. Lesser films, even of the same time period, push female characters to either a simple goal at the end of the film, or a helpless bystander, and whilst Jenny is largely restrained to a prisoner of Arius and his men, she makes a resourceful daring escape in the film’s final third, leaving even Bennett to haplessly chase after her. Cindy, meanwhile, for all her complaining-she is essentially shanghaied by John after the oily Sully comes on to her, as leverage to find more about his daughter-becomes a resourceful and tough foil to John, eventually rescuing him from the police when a search for weapons goes awry with a rocket launcher.

This is, of course, to say nothing of Commando's action scenes. From its very beginning, with the dispatch of the three former marines, in a trio of suspenseful scenes, to the arrival of Arius’ men at Matrix’s house, and a subsequent chase with Matrix’s powerless car, to his subsequent fight scenes as he winnows down the forces of Arius, from his henchmen, in a battering fight that includes a car chase with Sully, and a bruising fist-fight with Bill Duke’s Green Beret, Cooke, to the finale on the island. No action scene in the entire canon of 1980s cinema is so one-sided, a near twenty minute sequence wherein Arnold/John guns, grenades, rocket launches and stabs his way through a veritable army on the way to a showdown Arius and then Bennett. It is a pitch perfect finale in which Arnold becomes the epitome of the 80s action hero.

It’s fair to consider Commando a lunk-headed piece of action wish fulfilment, as countless (young) men have idolised this and Schwarzenegger’s other films over the last four decades. Schwarzenegger, undoubtedly has been in better movies, more intelligent movies, but few, save perhaps for Cameron’s Terminator and its sequel, have captured that sweet spot between the unstoppable towering colossus that strode across the cinema of the 1980s, and the film around him. Few films capture Arnold as an action star better, than Commando, and 35 years on, it remains a bloody good film, full of classic one-liners, a whip-crack pace, and all in all, is a damn fine action movie.

Rating: Highly Recommended