Commando: Glorious 80s Action Cheese

Arnold Schwarzenegger's Commando remains a highly entertaining classic of 1980s action cinema, and here's how it remains significant to this day.

Commando's theatrical release poster in 1985. Photo: 20th Century Fox

Commando is a ridiculously stupid film. That’s probably the best way you could summarise the film, regardless of whether you enjoy its absurdity or not. The Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring action film turns 40 years old this year, and if you couldn’t already tell from looking at the poster as to what decade the film was from, then after the 90-minute runtime has finished, you’ll have no doubts. Commando gloriously embodies the macho attitudes and over-the-top madness that dominated action films in the 1980s, and it only serves to make the film a glorious relic that is just as enjoyable today as it would have been back in 1985.

To say Commando has a plot would be both technically correct and abundantly incorrect. Commando’s plot is about as important to the film’s overall quality as hair on a head is important to a bald man. That is to say, it doesn’t matter one bit. As for the ‘plot’ itself, Arnold Schwarzenegger is ex United States Army Special Forces colonel John Matrix (It wouldn’t be a Arnold film if he doesn’t have an odd character name), who has his daughter (played by a young Alyssa Milano) kidnapped by bad guys, and he has to race against the clock to get his daughter back, and also cause as much havoc and chaos along the way.

Schwarzenegger’s previous big roles before Commando had him playing characters from the past (Conan the Barbarian) and from the future (The Terminator), so the novelty of playing someone in the present was there for the Austrian. In a feature with Empire conducting the complete history of Commando, screenwriter Steven E. De Souza (48 Hrs, The Running Man, Die Hard) recalled that Schwarzenegger said regarding the character, ‘I like this part. I’m not a robot from the future or caveman from the past. I’m in clothes and having a family. It’s a part John Wayne could play. I do this picture.”

Initially, Commando was not always intended to be a Schwarzenegger vehicle. The original script featured an Israeli soldier who had renounced violence, with the lead role originally meant for Gene Simmons of KISS fame, but he turned it down. It's fair to say, given everything that has happened in the past 40 years, that the idea of Arnold mowing down an entire army in the climax without so much as a scratch on him is more believable than an IDF soldier having a moral conscience. Fortunately, this original concept never came to fruition, and instead, we were treated to the glorious cheesefest that Commando is now famous for. The script was rewritten by Steven E. de Souza to better showcase Schwarzenegger's talents and his larger-than-life persona.

Schwarzenegger’s talents are prominently showcased through the intense action sequences his character partakes in throughout the film. No time is wasted once his daughter is kidnapped, and there’s no opportunity to flesh out characters or develop relationships; it’s simply non-stop from one scene to the next. From jumping out of a plane as it takes off to effortlessly holding a henchman by the ankle with one hand (thanks to a not-so-hidden support cable), and culminating in the previously mentioned over-the-top climax where he kills an entire army of soldiers without a scratch, this film is filled with outrageous moments. Take the scene where Matrix and Cindy (Rae Dawn Chong’s innocent flight attendant bystander who holds her own quite well opposite Schwarzenegger’s buff beefcake) break into a gun store to resupply the former in preparation for his fight with a dictator’s army. In a different film, one that would undoubtedly be incredibly inferior and boring, Matrix and Cindy would have simply broken into the store by breaking the locks or driving a car into the store. Commando scoffs at such a boring idea, so instead, Matrix breaks into the store by acquiring a bulldozer off-screen and proceeding to drive said bulldozer into the gun store. It’s so silly, I love it.

Vernon Wells's unintentionally homoerotic villain, Bennett. Photo: 20th Century Fox

To match Arnold’s ridiculous muscle man Matrix, opposing him is the central antagonist of Commando, lover of chainmail vests and tight leather trousers, Captain Simon Bennett, played by Vernon Wells (who also played a chainmail-wearing villain in Mad Max 2, but with a mohawk). If the chainmail vest didn’t make him come across as homoerotic, then his behaviour around Matrix would be enough to convince you that 1980s films were either homoerotic intentionally or by accident, with no in between. Wells’s insane and unhinged villain works wonders opposite Schwarzenegger’s muscular hero, uttering totally-not homoerotic lines such as “John, I feel good!”, “They offered me a hundred grand. You want to know something? When I found out I could get my hands on you, I said I'd do it for nothing.”, and “I'm going to shoot you between the balls!”. Unsurprisingly enough, this isn’t just looking back at 1980s films and thinking “Yeah, he’s gay”, as director Mark L. Lester stated in an interview that Bennett was "in love with Matrix but he hated him, too. He wanted to kill him but he was in love with him.". Even Rae Dawn Chong said in the previously mentioned Empire feature that “Bennett is clearly homosexual. I mean, hello? With that outfit, he looks like one of the Village People.”

With all that said, Commando is an incredibly goofy, but undeniably entertaining action film from a decade filled to the brim with iconic and memorable films. It could be argued that some of Arnold Schwarzenegger's most iconic one-liners come from Commando, such as the likes of "Let off some steam, Bennett", "Don't disturb my friend. He's dead tired." and "I eat Green Berets for breakfast. And right now, I'm very hungry!”. These one-liners are, in my humble opinion, worthy of rivalling the Austrian's other iconic one-liners such as "I'll be back" and "Hasta la vista, baby". It's a film that sits comfortably as being one of the best action films Schwarzenegger has ever starred in, and it's a film that will likely continue to be seen as the campy action masterpiece that it is.