Still Kicking Ass Two Decades Later
Enter Commando, the 1985 Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick that featured Schwarzenegger as a badass one-man army with a soft heart. Schwarzenegger plays John Matrix, a retired colonel in a special operations force, Schwarzenegger tries to live a quiet peaceful life on a secluded mountain with his young daughter, but now that wouldn’t be very interesting would it? So his former commander flies in to inform him that his former comrades in his group are being killed, and he could be next. Matrix is forced to take arms when his home is suddenly overrun by a bunch of gun-toting militant thugs. They capture his daughter and look to have made a clean getaway; to get her back, he’s going to have to cooperate, right? Right? Wrong . If you didn’t get that last line, it’s just another reason to see the movie—plenty of catchy, ok cheesy in most cases, one liners.
The film is essentially a non-stop action flick with a faint romance story between Matrix and a young flight attendant who gets pulled into this rescue operation. The nice thing about how they did the romance story was that it wasn’t a big part of the movie at all; the action is the first and only important priority of this film, and it’s done is that great, over-the-top and in your face type of way. This is perhaps best exemplified in the final assault where Matrix storms an island base of bad guys and proceeds to take them all out by himself.
Making the Director’s Cut
This is one of those DVD releases that might irk some fans of the movie, including myself, because guess what? I already bought Commando on DVD (and I’ve had it on VHS for years). Now like so many other releases, I am forced to decide if yet another purchase of the same movie is worth it; and you already know it’s going to come out on Blu-ray or some other format in the future, there is little doubt about that, meaning a potential fourth purchase. But anyway, what makes this the Directors Cut? Well, for one thing, there are two versions of the film on this DVD, the directors cut and the original theatrical. The Directors cut features about another minute and a half of unrated (i.e. extra violent) content. The film also offers an improved visual experience and 5.1 surround sound, which is a big bonus and makes quite a bit of difference as you can imagine.
Also included are quite a bit of new features, including a commentary track by Mark Lester, which was really fun to listen to; he was enthusiastic and provided entertaining insights into how certain scenes were done and what Arnold wanted to do instead in the shed scene, and so forth. For example, did you know the scene where Arnold hoists up the phone booth that Sully is in over his back? That phone booth was made of balsa wood, hah. Honestly, at that time in his life, I would have given Arnold pretty much the benefit of the doubt of being able to do nearly all of those ridiculous feats of strength.
Okay, so other nice features include a handful of deleted scenes, roughly three or four minutes worth. Obviously there isn’t anything major going on in these deleted scenes, but I usually like deleted scenes because it’s interesting to see what the people behind the film decided to cut out. Furthermore on this disc you will discover a massive photo gallery that includes some neat shots of the stars during filming and of course during the movie. There are also a few featurettes, none of which having a modern Arnold interview unfortunately, but there is a lot of commentary from some of the other stars and of course the directors and producers of the film.
Final Thoughts
Commando is one of the best action films ever made, and certainly one of the best of its time. It was released during a time which was really the start of the heyday of awesome action films that featured, and paved the way for, the likes of Van Damme and Segal, Stallone and Norris. Yes this film is filled with over-the-top action and lots of unrealistic feats by Arnold, but it’s fun, and very entertaining, it’s a film I’ve seen a dozen times and I still enjoy. Despite already owning this film, it was a must purchase for me thanks to the additional content and improved audio/visual presentation.