Profiles In Cinematic Greatness: Commando

Well boys and girls, it is once again time for a Profile In Cinematic Greatness.  Today's film is titled "Commando".  Those of you who are not familiar with this 1985 film may think it was the story of a man who didn't wear briefs under his pants, but I assure, this was not the case.  No, this was one of the all-time greats in terms of 80's action movies.  And if you watch closely you may recognize that the lead is none other than former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  It seems that before he got into politics he dabbled in feature films.  There were many classic Arnold movies, but for my money this was one of his best.  It's no "Junior", but it's pretty good.

This movie started out the way most movies about former special forces members start out, with them trying to live a normal life.  But we all know that if it was the 80's or 90's you didn't put Arnold in a movie about being a normal dad.  Could you imagine if he would have made a movie about being a normal dad doing something like buying a coveted toy for his kid at Christmas?  Anyways, within five minutes into the film his daughter was abducted and he was forced to once again become a "Commando".  There was a lot of punching, shooting, and explosions.  All of this was pretty standard fare for a Schwarzenegger film.  I'd like to tell you why I thought this one was better than most of the rest.

If you were a fan of Arnold's movies, or even if you hated them but watched them for the phenomenal cinematography, you knew that he would use awful tough guy puns.  For this movie he put on a clinic.  I'm not sure that he had any lines in this movie that weren't terrible action movie puns.  I loved every deliciously cheesy syllable of it.  In the course of an average person's life they get maybe 2 or 3 chances to deliver a tough guy line.  My few opportunities I totally blew it and said something like, "Hey, I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that," or, "Let's just cool down and talk about this."  Arnold got the chance to do this about twenty times in this movie and totally nailed it every time. 

Another great thing about this movie was Mr. Schwarzenegger's co-stars.  The female lead in this movie was Rae Dawn Chong.  Rae or Rae Dawn of whatever she goes by, is the daughter of Tommy Chong.  It doesn't matter what era you're in or what kind of film you are making, if you have the chance to land a member of the distinguished Chong family of actors, you just do it.  Her role consisted of a lot of screaming and probably some other stuff too.   Also in the film was a young Alyssa Milano, who portrayed Arnold's daughter.  I'm sure we all remember Milano from her hit TV show "Who's the Boss?" and also from such films as "I Sure Wish Who's the Boss? Was Still On the Air" and "Remember When I Was On Who's the Boss?".  Finally, they had Bill Duke (aka the guy with the coolest gun in the movie "Predator").  Although, I am sure many would have preferred that they cast that sweet, sweet mini-gun from the movie "Predator", Duke really held his own in this movie.

They really pulled out all the stops in terms of the action sequences of this movie.  Let's review the checklist shall we?  Jumping out of a taking off airplane - check.  Throwing a dude off a cliff - check.  Blowing the crap out of barracks filled with mercenary soldiers - double check.  Do you like car chases?  "Commando" had two of them.  Do you like sea planes?  That's a stupid question, everyone likes sea planes, and yeah, they had one of those.  Do you like to see mall security guards get their asses handed to them in a 20 on 1 brawl?  That's two stupid questions in a row and by the way, yeah they had that too.  This movie was a medieval joust away from having every kind of action imaginable. 

So as you can see, this was truly one of the all-time great Schwarzenegger action movies.  As with all of the movies that I think are masterpieces, don't look for a lot of great acting, or brilliantly written scripts, or plausible storylines, or even coherent storylines.  That's why we have Cate Blanchett movies.