When I watch Commando, I am reminded of Entertainment Weekly's review of Uwe Boll's disastrous video game adaptation, Alone In The Dark:
"When the giant, intelligent bees of the future sift through the ashes of our civilization, they will find Alone in the Dark, and they will understand. It's so bad it's postmodern." - Scott Brown
We are the giant bees of the future sifting through the remains of the 1980s, and when we find Commando, we understand. Traditional boundaries between "good" and "bad" are demolished, and the concepts blur until they become one. Commando is good because it's bad, bad for exactly the reasons that make it so good.
Only in the 80s could a film like this have been taken at face value. In fact, the film acts as a sort of shadow play of the tackily neon, terribly hairstyled soul of 1980s American culture. In these more enlightened times, it's easy to laugh at Commando's 80s terribleness: the homoerotic undertones, the ridiculous dialogue, the implausible stunts, the comically excessive violence, the simple right-wing ideology underpinning the slaughter. But Commando transcends the tropes of the 80s action genre by embracing its own ludicrousness. It's almost as if the film-makers knew that the genre they were operating in was absurd, and decided to embrace the absurdity and push it to its very limits. They were making the film for the evolved future generations of movie fans.
Probably the biggest clue is in the film's plot, which I'll summarise: former commando John Matrix (!) has his daughter kidnapped by Arius, former dictator of a fictional Latin-American republic, who Matrix helped depose from his seat of power. In an ironic twist, Matrix is forced to assassinate the same president he helped to install, or his daughter dies. His character must struggle through an inner moral battle, with the life of his daughter weighed up against the freedom of a nation.
Except none of it ever happens. Arnie's character resolutely ignores the plot: he kills every bad guy who tries to talk to him, until they resort to strapping him down on a table just to tell him the plot essentials. Having been put on a plane to begin his mission, Arnie kills the goon watching over him and exits the aircraft mid-take-off in a scene that's completely implausible for at least three wonderful reasons. From there on, he spends the rest of the film murdering every bad guy in sight with a resolute lack of moral concern.
This is a film where the hero almost literally shoots the plot in the head until the film is over. It's as though another, much smarter film is in there, only for John Matrix, the essence of 80s action distilled and coalesced into one character, to symbolically shoot it in the head in favour of the quip-filled, hilarious, utterly stupid madness that actually makes it onto the screen.
The film acts out its generic meta-dialogue within its own screenplay. It becomes 80s action multiplied by 80s action. The 80s squared. The 6400s, if you will. This is why Commando isn't just an 80s action movie but THE 80s action movie, why the quips are funnier, the body-count higher, the bad guys more comical, the action more satisfying, the celebration of the hero's uber-manliness so over-zealous. The film-makers saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and it was the muzzle flare of a minigun.
"When the giant, intelligent bees of the future sift through the ashes of our civilization, they will find Alone in the Dark, and they will understand. It's so bad it's postmodern." - Scott Brown
We are the giant bees of the future sifting through the remains of the 1980s, and when we find Commando, we understand. Traditional boundaries between "good" and "bad" are demolished, and the concepts blur until they become one. Commando is good because it's bad, bad for exactly the reasons that make it so good.
Only in the 80s could a film like this have been taken at face value. In fact, the film acts as a sort of shadow play of the tackily neon, terribly hairstyled soul of 1980s American culture. In these more enlightened times, it's easy to laugh at Commando's 80s terribleness: the homoerotic undertones, the ridiculous dialogue, the implausible stunts, the comically excessive violence, the simple right-wing ideology underpinning the slaughter. But Commando transcends the tropes of the 80s action genre by embracing its own ludicrousness. It's almost as if the film-makers knew that the genre they were operating in was absurd, and decided to embrace the absurdity and push it to its very limits. They were making the film for the evolved future generations of movie fans.
Probably the biggest clue is in the film's plot, which I'll summarise: former commando John Matrix (!) has his daughter kidnapped by Arius, former dictator of a fictional Latin-American republic, who Matrix helped depose from his seat of power. In an ironic twist, Matrix is forced to assassinate the same president he helped to install, or his daughter dies. His character must struggle through an inner moral battle, with the life of his daughter weighed up against the freedom of a nation.
Except none of it ever happens. Arnie's character resolutely ignores the plot: he kills every bad guy who tries to talk to him, until they resort to strapping him down on a table just to tell him the plot essentials. Having been put on a plane to begin his mission, Arnie kills the goon watching over him and exits the aircraft mid-take-off in a scene that's completely implausible for at least three wonderful reasons. From there on, he spends the rest of the film murdering every bad guy in sight with a resolute lack of moral concern.
This is a film where the hero almost literally shoots the plot in the head until the film is over. It's as though another, much smarter film is in there, only for John Matrix, the essence of 80s action distilled and coalesced into one character, to symbolically shoot it in the head in favour of the quip-filled, hilarious, utterly stupid madness that actually makes it onto the screen.
The film acts out its generic meta-dialogue within its own screenplay. It becomes 80s action multiplied by 80s action. The 80s squared. The 6400s, if you will. This is why Commando isn't just an 80s action movie but THE 80s action movie, why the quips are funnier, the body-count higher, the bad guys more comical, the action more satisfying, the celebration of the hero's uber-manliness so over-zealous. The film-makers saw the light at the end of the tunnel, and it was the muzzle flare of a minigun.