steven@ism70.UUCP (10/07/85)
COMMANDO Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rae Dawn Chong. Also starring Dan Hedaya, Vernon Wells and James Olsen. Directed by Mark Lester. Written by Steven E. DeSouza. Story by Matthew Weisman and Joseph Loeb III and Steven E. DeSouza. Produced by Joel Silver. Photographed by Matthew Leonetti. Production Designed by John Vallone. Edited by Mark Goldblatt, John Fink and Glenn Farr. Music by James Horner. From Twentieth Century Fox Pictures (1985). Or "CoRambo." Arnold plays Colonel John Matrix, a former expert top secret Army someone-or-other who used to kill lots of people, fortunately, in the service of the American way. His old commander, General Kirby (James Olsen, who provides audiences who've seen John Rambo in action with an unintentional laugh when he approaches Schwarzenegger's home saying "John, are you there? John, it's me."), informs Arnold that bad guys are coming to get him. Lo and behold, minutes later, here come some bad guys. They take Arnold's daughter (They missed a great in joke here; her name is Lisa, right? They should have named her Dorothy, so her name would be ... Dot Matrix. Okay, okay.) and tell Arnold to play ball. Take this 11 hour plane ride to your basic Mission Impossible Central/South American dictatorship and do us a favor or little Lisa becomes even littler. Arnold doesn't like this. He bails out of the plane as it takes off in what is by far the best sequence of the film and sets his Seiko to stopwatch mode: 11:00 to find his daughter (and kill anybody who comes in his way) and counting. Textbook (or is it cookbook) action filmmaking. Kind of homey for me, as I get to see the car dealership down the street and the shopping mall I hang out at get thrashed. Too slick for its own good, really. Script substitutes one-liners for character and a way overlong and ludicrous climactic assault to top the clever quasi-Bondian antics that begin the film. After seeing all the death towards the end, any reasonably sentient viewer begins to get this queasy feeling that robs him of enjoying the action scenes of the beginning. Too bad. Of its kind, pretty good. I'm questioning, however, my need to see any more of its kind. Two and a half stars out of four.
place@uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU (10/14/85)
Say what you will about the one-liners, but the audience I saw the movie with laughed at every one. Also, unlike Rambo, when you left Commando you quoted one-liners from the movie. Most notably, "I let him go." and "I'll be back." These have to be spoken in a Schwarzenegger deep unemotional voice for true impact. Very best moment in the movie was Rae Dawn Chong's first attempt with the rocket-launcher.