Directed by:
Mark L. Lester
Written by:
Steven E. de Souza
Cast:
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vernon
Wells, Rae Dawn Chong, Alyssa Milano
Cinematography:
Matthew F. Leonetti
Is this Arnold’s “Rambo”?:
According to Sly Stallone, yes it is.
For you
kids out there, it’s maybe impossible to imagine a world where a single movie
star ruled supreme in all of the entertainment industry.
But that
was Arnold Schwarzenegger for you.
His reign
was absolute. His shadow loomed above everything and everyone.
This is a
dude who hailed from some rural Austrian village, got into bodybuilding knowing
full well his goal was movies, and went to America without even speaking the
language. He got into real estate, made huge bucks, and then he lunged at Hollywood.
His first
flick was Hercules in New York, from 1970 and, by 1992, every action star wanted to be him and every cartoon
character looked like him. He was great in action and in comedy, becoming the reference for videogame heroes and for all
the characters from all the comics in the 1990s, male or female. Even the
hottest band at the time had him on
one of its music videos—it was the soundtrack to one of his movies, but still.
Things really began with The Terminator and didn’t slow down until The Eraser, maybe, in 1996. That’s a solid decade of playing more or less the same guy, because for all of his success, Arnie isn’t, and has never been, a particularly good actor (something he’d probably agree with). But his genius wasn’t so much at acting; it was on his selection of roles. This is a guy who was clearly aware of his limitations and worked around them, relying on charisma to really shine on camera—just watch the first ten minutes of Predator. If you think this is easy, think of the legions of dudes who have tried to recreate what Arnie did with his career, with much less success. What’s The Rock doing nowadays?
If you’re
still unconvinced, then let’s consider Mark L. Lester’s 1985 film, Commando.
Special
Forces Colonel John Matrix (Schwarzenegger) lives in this little cabin way up
in the mountains with his little daughter Jenny. It’s an idyllic life until
someone starts killing all of his former partners, so Major General Kirby pays
a visit to warn him that “Whoever is doing this, will come for you.” The Major
is barely gone when Matrix is attacked: Turns out, Matrix’s team deposed a
South American dictator, Arius, a long time ago, and now Arius is back, taking
Jenny hostage and forcing Matrix to kill a political rival in his home country
of Val Verde. Helping him is the Australian bastard and former Matrix
colleague, Bennett.
What
Arius and Bennett ignore is that John Matrix is one hell of a resourceful man
and taking his little daughter hostage will prove to be a biiiig mistake.
Commando plays off like a road-movie of murder. See, as soon as John escapes the enemy’s
goons, he begins this quest to find Arius (and Jenny, and Bennett), creatively
killing all the mercenaries and sleazebags that get in his way. He throws a guy
off a cliff, snaps the neck of some other dude at an airline flight (and tells
the flight attendant, “Don’t wake up my friend, he’s
dead tired”) and steals enough weapons to break the Geneva Convention just
on his own. To help him, he’s taken a girl hostage,
Cindy, played by Rae Dawn Chong, and the two of them actually create a nice
dynamic—but not that great. Legend
goes, yeah, Arnie and Rae filmed a romantic scene but it just didn’t gel, so out
it goes.
Matrix is
a pretty likeable guy. There’s this bit where he explains Cindy why he’s into
this whole mess, and he goes through a list of woes that comes off as almost
comedic (“When Jenny’s mom died, I was in Laos; when she was in grammar school
I was in Angola; when she had measles, I was in Pakistan, and now they’re gonna
kill her because of me.”) But Schwarzenegger sells it, it’s the one tiny bit of
character motivation behind Matrix (smart people call this type of things “pathos”),
it helps Cindy—and us—see he’s actually decent for a murderous bodybuilder, so
she ends up rescuing him from the police, and now John has to take on a small
army on Arius’ villa, all by himself.
But let’s
cut to the chase: the last 20 minutes are a glorious apotheosis of gunfire and
balls-to-the-walls action. It’s almost like some arcade videogame, with dozens
of goons and goons, and goons trying to stop the inevitable Matrix. Imagine a
war movie, Saving Private Ryan or,
I don’t know, Platoon, but instead
of a bunch of guys forming the “good” squad, there’s just one. Arnie.
I don’t
know if this sounds good on paper, but you really have to see it to get the
full effect; Commando displays all the difference between a mediocre or even
a competent action movie director, and a fucking genius director (Lester also helmed Showdown in Little Tokyo, a movie
that deserves way more love than it gets). The rhythm here is exciting, always
dynamic, very little time to catch your breath. Part of this is the excellent James Horner score that
sometimes reminds you a bit of his earlier job in 48 Hours, with drumming
that’s out of some Latin America island that might as well be Val Verde.
 |
| Why can't we be friends? |
There’s
this scene where, already in the villa, Matrix is wounded and hides in a shed.
The sorry bastards from Arius’ army surround the shed and blast it with
bullets, going then in to check on the body. I’m not gonna spoil you what
happens next, but it’s some amazing Friday the 13th shit that steps
right into grindhouse territory. If you have the whole uncut version of the
movie, there’s even a few extra seconds of the carnage that’s not a lot, but
once you see it, you’ll get why it was censored.
 |
| This could have been so stupid in the hands of a lesser director. |
This type
of in-your-face violence wouldn’t probably sit right if the antagonists weren’t
such pricks, and although Dan Hedaya plays an assholish Arius (sort of reminds
me of Richard Nixon), the real opposite of Matrix is Vernon Wells’ Bennett. The
guy’s an obvious sadist and quite a little bonkers, giving off a bit
of a gay vibe that’s totally on purpose; Vernon Wells has been on
record saying that he played the character as if he had been in love with
Matrix. A conflicted type of love because, I mean, Bennett’s fucked up in the
head, but yeah, that’s what he’s getting out of this. Can’t have John, so now
I’m gonna destroy him. By the way, speaking about Vernon Wells playing gay
characters, did you know he’s the same guy playing the Mohawk punk in Mad Max
2? This…
And this…
Are the same guy.
The whole
thing ends with a fucking kickass knife duel to the death and once the tension
is over, you wonder how come this didn’t turn into a franchise, like Rambo or Die Hard—which was going to be the actual sequel, until it was reworked and
Bruce Willis got in. Arnie has a bunch of movies that could have turned into
sagas and just didn’t (Red Heat, Kindergarten Cop, True Lies, Total
Recall, Twins) and Predator can even be seen as a continuation of
sorts, since Arnie is basically playing the same character, and Bill Duke’s in
it, too.
But
perhaps John Matrix settles the issue himself when the Major tells him, “until
next time.”
Matrix
pauses, looks at the genocide he just caused, and goes “…not a chance.”
Good things ain’t meant to last, folks.
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