COMMANDO

Could Arnold make a bad movie back then?

Long before DOOM changed the videogaming world by providing us with the image of a crazed soldier mowing down legions of hell-sent demon spawns with a chaingun, Arnold Schwarzenegger did just that in COMMANDO, arguably the greatest of all the "one man army" movies of the 1980s. How did this bloody gem come into being? Well, to this day I can almost imagine some demented screenwriter hacking away at a typewriter in a smoke-filled room, muttering: "I've slashed the plot...thrown out all sense of realism...reduced the dialogue to a series of one-liners...WHAT MORE CAN I DO?"What more, indeed?COMMANDO is the story of John Matrix (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a retired special ops guy who evidently spends 23 hours a day in a weight room when he's not playing single daddy to his daughter, played by a pre-tween Alyssa Milano. Everything's hunky-dory in Matrix's remote cabin until a platoon of bad guys shows up, kidnaps his daughter, and try to blackmail Matrix into one last job -- the assassination of some banana republic el presidente. Unfortunately for the bad guys -- played with tremendous relish by such staples of 80s films as Dan Hedaya, Vernon Wells, David Patrick Kelly and Bill Duke -- Matrix has no intention of killing el presidente. Instead, he wants to kill all of them, and for the next 90 odd minutes that's precisely what he does, in between forcing the ubiquitous Rae Dawn Chong to serve as his unwilling assistant, throwing out barbaric one-liners over the smoking corpses of his victims, and pausing momentarily to check his watch. Notice I didn't say "pause to reload" because, damn it, not only does Matrix "eat Green Berets for breakfast," he's also pretty much immune to mortal conundrums which would present us with difficulty -- you know, things like bullets and gravity and stuff. Watching this movie gives one the strange masculine sense of satisfaction which occurs when you explode a frog with a firecracker or feed a two-by-four into a circular saw. It's simply the pleasure of mindless destruction, set to a cheesily wonderful 80s soundtrack.The moral lessons of COMMANDO are those of the decade that spawned it, to wit: might makes right, bullets only hit bad guys, and there is no problem with a machine gun, high explosives and a HUGE killing knife cannot solve. As for the violence, it's a character in itself and makes up for the paper-thin plot and utter lack of any kind of believeability. It took Jason Voorhees ten or twelve hockey-mask wearing sequels to do what Ah-nold does here in under two hours. From the smug blackmailer who gets a bullet between the eyes for daring to say to Matrix, "So you have to do what we want, right?" (answer: "Wrong.") to the pint-sized kidnapper who gets hurled off a cliff after being humiliated via the classic line, "Remember when I told you I was going to kill you last? I LIED!", to the unfortunate mercenary who gets his scalp sawed off with a gardening tool, this movie is a fellowship of death, right up until the moment he impales the Gay Pirate on a steam boiler (after electrocuting him) and barks, "Let off some steam, Bennett!"Army? We don't need no stinking Army. We've got JOHN MATRIX.It must be said that everything about this movie is awseomely bad, and the worse the movie gets, the awesome-er it becomes. Arnold, fresh of triumphs in CONAN and TERMINATOR, is near his cigar-chewing, throat-slitting, single-entendre-spewing best here. So is Vernon Wells, the baddie from THE ROAD WARRIOR who has the misfortune to have to fight a bare-chested Arnold while wearing a tight chain mail shirt that serves mainly to remind the audience that his workout routine probably included lifting plates of donuts off the craft services table in between slugs of Foster's. (What was Dan Hedaya thinking, taking on mercenaries like Wells and Duke, so clearly in need of a Stairmaster? And while we're at it, how did hiring the 5'4" of fury that is David Patrick Kelly seem like a good idea?) Hell, even Bill Paxton gets in on the fun, though it must be said (ahem) that he doesn't actually get to kill anybody.The 80s are an easy decade to mock The fashions were bad, the hairstyles appalling, and a lot of the pop music made you want to slam an ice-pick through your eardrums. On the other hand, and possibly because of this, such a slew of amazingly good, totally irresponsible and uber-violent films has seldom been unleashed by Hollywood like so many slavering hell-hounds. Among the best of these? COMMANDO, a movie that scientifically proves that good will not only triumph over evil, it will pop a 5.56 mm slug through its forehead and then make fun of it as it twitches.

Awesome movie

This is really a cartoon pretending to be a motion picture, exciting and fun, but totally unrealistic. Arnold Swartzenegger is the Commando, who shoots down the bad guys with impunity, but is never shot himself despite a barrage of high-powered guns being fired at him continuously. If you want to have a good time watching the body count climb ever higher, while hand grenades, trucks and helicopters are constantly exploding, this movie is for you. But if you expect drama and realism, forget it.

"Commando" is not the kind of film that takes itself very seriously, but when it rocks, it really rocks, and you feel the blood-and-thunder effects of a great old R-rated shoot 'em up that has now become a practical lost art in our age of cinematic CGI atrocities. When I read on Wikipedia recently that some misguided souls are plotting to ruin the film's legacy by funding an ill-advised remake of this title, I shook my head in disbelief that they intend to take a "serious approach" to the script. Oh sheesh, I say. (Sure, the original script was probably more serious and less Arnold-fied, but who cares? "Commando" is a kill 'em all movie that is fun for a reason. The filmmakers who try to make it "serious" are spoiling the sexist, macho, overly unrealistic structure that makes these movies fun for all guys who are still boys at heart--the point is that these are fantasies (as at ease on the SyFy channel as it is on TNT, for instance) in that they make no bones about their unbelievable elements. Is it an Oscar-worthy effort, a great movie? No. Would I rather watch it than a rerun of "Gone with the Wind"? Sign me up!The picture and sound quality of the movie (and the widescreen presentation) are fine, very good through a nice pair of headphones. The director's commentary (available on the theatrical cut only) is quite fun, but not as informative as I would have preferred...but then again, the movie doesn't require much thought or explanation anyway. Rae Dawn Chong is hilarious (and quite racially insensitive!) on her interview segments, whereas director Lester is also interviewed extensively on the film's two featurettes. Joel Silver apparently had a warped sense of humor (he was the one who told Black to tell those, ahem, lady jokes in "Predator") and his vision is thoroughly preserved on this 1985 classic. The best parts of the deluxe DVD are the deleted scenes, in which you see a longer version of the shed attack scene...watching this on TV when I was younger, I knew some stuff was drastically cut, but this is the most complete scene you'll get of this. Overall, the extras aren't all that revealing, but if you're a real fan, buy this edition, don't just settle for the old bare bones edition (which is currently going for cheap at Wal-Mart stores). A-

This movie is stupid. It's got all sorts of storyline errors, continuity problems, and goofs. But it is just so much fun. You want to see action? Do you want to see adventure? Do you want to see the big hero muscle man kill all the bad guys and rescue the one he loves, while dispatching the evil mustachioed villain in a one-on-one brawl to the death?Do you want one-liners that make you chuckle? Do you want Arnold at his most Schwarzeneggerest? Then this is the movie for you. Watch it. It will put a smile on your face. This is Arnold at his finest. Unapologetic 1980's action machismo. A body count the size of a small country. Machine guns that never run out of ammo. And all the cuss words, and gore the kids love.Fun for the whole family!

Friday movie night. This movie was perfect with pizza a wine. My husband and I had a great time watching it. Entertaining! The movie is not so much 5 stars, but the fun watching it definitely was.

Excelente calidad

Muy buen producto, muy buena calidad y precio

ottimo prodotto

Arnie at his best

Reçu aujourd'hui un instant le Dvd de commando avec Arnold shwarzennegher et alyssa milano qui joue le rôle de sa fille excellent film et bourré d'action je suis très content de pouvoir revoir ce film culte que tout ceux qui l'on vu save que c'est un film excellent je recommande ce film sans problème car je le connais très bien je l'ai acheté car j'avais envie de le revoir une nostalgie lol en tout cas maintenant que je l'ai acheté je pourrait le revoir et le montrer a la nouvelle génération de maintenant et leurs montrer c'est quoi des film excellent en tout cas je suis très content de mon achat merci beaucoup de pouvoir permettre grace aux Dvd de revoir ces films cultes qui on bercé mon enfance j'espère que d'autres films cultes serons pensé a les mettre en Dvd que ce soit action,aventure etc .En tout cas je recommande ce film sans problème si vous désirez de l'action.

Top film