Commando (1985)

Commando is the film that set the mold for the iconic Arnold Schwarzenegger screen persona, showing off his charisma and penchant for one-liners as he delivers his kill shots. Prior to this, his high-profile roles consisted of minimal dialogue in the gruff Conan the Barbarian and its sequel, as well as the robotic delivery of The Terminator. It’s in keeping with many of the one-man army films of the 1980s, popularized by First Blood and its sequels, featuring a high emphasis on bulging biceps and comic-book-level dialogue, cartoonish scenarios, high kill counts, and action-figure-ready displays of brawn.

Unlike Rambo, however, Arnie’s brand of action eschews political motivation of the Vietnam soldier experience in favor of the personal. He fights for daughter, not country, or what he perceives of as the national ideals. Nevertheless, how effortlessly Schwarzenneger assumes the role is impressive, and not nearly as impressive as he inhabits, and even epitomizes, the all-American soldier and quintessential action hero as a foreigner and non-native English speaker is perhaps the biggest feat he makes in his early career with Commando.

Schwarzenegger stars as Col. John Matrix, a highly-trained military special-ops expert whose unit was disbanded and now live under secret identities in retirement.  Matrix spends his days as a single father taking care of his spirited young daughter, Jenny (Milano), to whom he has promised not to go out on any more special missions.  However, John’s hand is forced when Jenny is abducted by a displaced South American dictator (Hedaya) of a banana republic named Val Verde who wants his old gig back, planning to use her for ransom as John puts out an assassination on the current leader.  Thinking that Jenny will be killed even if he fulfills the demands, Matrix sets about dismantling the small army the dictator has around him, with the help of an airline attendant named Cindy (Chong), in the hope that he can rescue his daughter before she is offed.

The idea for Commando started with an effort that would stay stagnant for years in so-called development hell, when Jeph Loeb, who would later make his claim to fame in writing comic books, wrote the original screenplay with collaborative partner Matthew Weisman about a former military black ops commando who had trouble escaping his past. Once it was complete, Loeb and Weisman had the notion that it would be a starring vehicle for a personal friend, KISS guitar god Gene Simmons, portraying him as a former Israeli soldier who escapes his violent past to the United States only to find that the deadly skills he thought he had retired for good would come into play when his wife and daughter would end up kidnapped. The bad guys would force him onto a plane to complete a mission for them, but he gets off the plane without their knowledge, setting his watch with a countdown on when the plane was slated to be landing, knowing he had until that moment to get his revenge or his wife and child would die for sure. When Simmons expressed disinterest, Loeb and Weisman would retool it to star Nick Nolte, changing the Israeli ex-soldier to an out of shape and out of practice former commando from the United States from his position in the Middle East.

New 20th Century Fox Chairman Barry Diller’s first order of business was to try to secure a starring vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger that could be made for under $12 million, feeling like he was ripe for the leap from stardom to superstardom with the right film. After looking through seemingly countless scripts, Diller determined that Commando would be the best option if the script were better tailored to Schwarzenegger’s strengths as an actor and personality, somewhat akin to the way he would handle blaxploitation films for Jim Brown in the 1970s. Diller would attach Lester, who had experience making exploitation flicks in this vein. Lester was just coming off of the hit Firestarter to direct after producer Joel Silver gave the script to Steven E. de Souza.

De Souza who had worked for Silver on the screenplay to 48 Hrs., to do a complete overhaul to give it a less earthy and serious tone, eschewing the reluctance to commit violence to have its main character actually killing unarmed baddies just because, then providing more opportunity for self-aware action genre parody, larger-than-life personalities, and gloriously jacked-up action. Additional revisions would end up punching up more of the script with the help of screenwriters Larry Gross and Richard Tuggle, but many of the tongue-in-cheek quips were improvised during the shoot. Arnold has a big sense of humor and would frequently joke around with cast and crew, and with Lester envisioning the film like an old James Bond movie where Sean Connery would wryly pun after performing a kill, many of the film’s punchlines came up on the spot.

This new angle pleased Schwarzenegger, feeling that it could break him out of the mold of sparse dialogue parts like Conan or The Terminator. He didn’t have to exist in the pat of the future, showing him as a modern man with a daughter and a home. He envisioned himself taking roles that John Wayne could play and deemed this was one of them, for good reason. The credited screenwriter, Steven E. de Souza, claims that much of the inspiration for Commando came from the tough but jokey tone of John Ford’s classic Western, The Searchers, as well as some plot and character elements from the Bogart film noir from 1949, Tokyo Joe. After some studio execs balked at Schwarzenegger being cast as the American soldier, suggesting they find a way to shoot the film without him talking at all, De Souza workes diligently with Schwarzenegger over dialogue, changing lines to minimize instances where his thick Austrian accent would become too obvious.

Arnie shows that he has the screen presence to be a major player in the action movie genre, but that alone isn’t going to carry a movie from awful to good.  Although a few of the stunts are nifty, many performed by Schwarzenegger himself when finding a stuntman with his build proved difficult (he suffered a dislocated shoulder and a nasty self-inflicted knife gash on his hand that required a trip to the hospital), the substandard direction and weak story keeps this one in the realm of b-movie entertainment, despite Schwarzenegger’s penchant for deadpan one-liners. The production offered a modest budget but would require much location shooting, so most of it would be done in Central and Southern California, in places like San Simeon, Santa Barbara, Catalina Island, and Los Angeles. Fans of films of the 1980s will also recognize a familiar location in the compound of the would-be president of Val Verde; it was the same locale used as the mansion abode of the big bad, Victor Maitland, in Beverly Hills Cop. Even so, the shoot was brisk, starting in late April in 1985 and ending up in theaters in early October. 

The casting of Rae Dawn Chong as his comic relief sidekick yields lesser results, as she doesn’t quite have the comic timing of her counterpart. She had beat out the likes of Sharon Stone and Brigitte Nielsen (who starred with Schwarzenegger with Red Sonja the same year) for the part, primarily because, unlike other hot actresses of the time, they felt, based on her audition and the fact that she was the daughter of comedian Tommy Chong (of Cheech & Chong fame), that she would be sexy and funny at the same time. Her role serves mostly to make comments about the ridiculousness of the aggressive hypermasculinity she is witnessing between the brawny men she encounters, though the extreme contrivances involved in keeping her as part of the plot, especially as she becomes part of the action, is even more ridiculous. The role of the deposed dictator is a particularly awful one for Dan Hedaya, whose bad Spanish accent and faux-tan ups the cheese factor to the point where he can scarcely be taken seriously.  Mark L. Lester was uncomfortable with it as well, originally intending to cast Raul Julia in the part, but producer Joel Silver insisted that Hedaya was more than up to the task. In the end, Lester would be content with the results and proclaims it as his personal favorite film he has made.

Commando would mark Joel Silver’s first film production for 20th Century Fox, which would prove to be a lucrative collaboration, going on to also produce Predator and Die Hard. In addition to going after Schwarzenegger as his hero, Silver would also insist on spotlighting the use of weaponry, especially new weaponry usually not seen on film before, as part of the appealing visual aesthetic, emphasizing a wide variety of instruments of death to almost absurdly pornographic proportions. Had this been a comedy, all could be forgiven, but as funny as Commando is for the duration, most of the laughs come without intention. In addition to the lack of genuine laughs from Chong as the sidekick, there apparently wasn’t much chemistry between her and Arnie as love interests either; they reportedly were to shoot a love scene aboard an airplane as they headed to the private island run by the deposed dictator, but in staging it, they realized it was bad timing for the story and it would lack so much sizzle that it was nixed.

Even if he isn’t a gifted actor, Schwarzenegger is always fun to watch, especially in the way he can rise above the schlock to give a good physical and comical performance that allows the audience to feel a sense of fun right along with him.  When he’s off the screen, interest wanes considerably, and unfortunately, the cuts back to the bad guy’s lair come far too frequently for momentum to carry.  Even when Arnold is in front of the camera, he isn’t given much of a script to work with, as action scenes mostly consist of finding new ways for him to dispatch mostly cardboard henchmen until the predictable conclusion pits him with the dictator and Matrix’s former comrade, who apparently has an ax to grind and something to prove about being the best soldier in the world, Bennett (Wells).

In Commando, Schwarzenegger shows a lighter and more humorous side than he had shown before.  That caricature that spins into an overriding persona, which seems to match his own natural personality best, would become the template for other films to build around from here on out. Lester and the team seem to make a concerted effort to get Arnold shirtless whenever possible, whether chopping wood or carrying giant logs,  upping the titillation factor in glimpsing his Adonis-like physique in its full and oiled-up glory.

After originally being turned down after auditioning for the role, Vernon Wells, who impressed Joel Silver with his psycho performance in another film he produced that year, Weird Science, proves to be a fun foil for Schwarzenegger, chewing up just as much scenery in his villainy, with the kind of off-the-charts zany, homoerotic undertones to his character that he gave in his prior famous performance as Wez in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Wells says any gay subtext he gives to Bennett was completely unintentional (Mark Lester also disregards this take as well), despite some fans referring to the character as, “Freddie Mercury on steroids”. His character seems to have quite a bit of respect for John Matrix and his prowess for combat, to the point where it does come across like a sexual need to prove his manhood once they actually get into each other’s presence.

The somewhat portly Wells, who was flown in from Australia after the originally cast Wings Hauser was fired by Mark L. Lester on the first day of shooting because he just didn’t seem to click as a maniacal counterbalance to Arnold’s larger-than-life portrayal of Matrix. Wells would have to wear the too-tight wardrobe designed for Hauser’s smaller frame, which further didn’t compliment his paunchier physique. Due to the fact that he seemed such a nice guy and was holding back when rehearsing the scenes, Schwarzenegger was initially skeptical he could handle the role, physically or menacingly, and reportedly even called him, “a bit of a wuss”.

However, once they got into a scene where Wells had to put a knife to Arnie’s neck, his wild-eyed intensity and humorously winking attitude in his performance won Arnie over, resulting in that necessary counterbalance to Arnie’s resolve. In fact, Wells’ performance in that scene felt so intense to Arnold that he insisted that any scene involving Bennett using a knife would have to be with a plastic prop. His character’s infatuation in being the one to take out Matrix makes their tango at the end quite a bit of fun to observe, even if the tension is not entirely palpable. Despite Schwarzenegger’s quibbles on his casting, they became good friends during the shoot, and remain so to this day. The twelve-year-old Alyssa Milano also found friendship with Arnie during the making of the film, and she has claimed he even helped with the algebra portion of her homework on occasion during the shoot.

Some of the lines might seem a bit familiar, from “Wrong”, “I’ll be back” and “F- you, a**hole” being two of the few lines he delivered in his equally monotone fashion in The Terminator just the year before. This was one of the main films made in the 1980s that realized the potential for playing up its ridiculousness to the max, and the makers seem to relish going far over the top in its camp to make for an entertaining time. During the shoot, Lester saw how many people John Rambo would kill in Rambo II and knew he would have to top that for Arnold, upping the kill count when Matrix begins to attack the dictator’s compound into triple digits. Stuntmen would their appearance to get killed several times. The cost of this killing extravaganza put a huge dent into the budget, however, to the point where it became too costly to shoot the intended ending of Matrix chasing Bennett on speed boats to have a knife fight on the beach of another island. They had to have that final knife fight in a basement instead.

Commando was a big hit for Arnie in 1985, becoming the number one movie in the country for the first three weeks of its release. All told, it racked up $35 million in the US and another $22 million internationally, all off of a reported $9-10 million budget ($1.5 million was Arnie’s salary alone), which was about $3 million more than they had wanted to spend, but rewrites and additional revisions would see the film go over schedule by a bit. It may be even more highly regarded internationally than in the United States, especially in Russia, where they even would do a remake of it in 2008 with big Russian action star Mikhail Porochenkov in the main role. In 2010, rumors surfaced about an attempt for another Hollywood remake but nothing has materialized. It is also a favorite film in Japan, catapulting Alyssa Milano to stardom there, to the point where one record company executive even offered her a five-record deal as a singer, even though she wasn’t really one. All five records would go the equivalent of platinum in Japan.

Although the film ends with the notion that there would be no return of Matrix as an action hero, Steven E. de Souza would write a screenplay draft for a sequel the following year, with revisions done with the aid of Frank Darabont, and Predator‘s John McTiernan tagged as a potential director. De Souza revealed many years later that the plot involved Matrix running his own security firm hired by a major corporation to protect their executives and other assets but later discovers that the corporation is not on the up and up, doing illegal arms sales as their main source of revenue. He would have to go one-man-army again to take down not only the corporation but also all of the super-macho security guards he had hired, with an ending where he has to break into the building he was tasked to make ultra-secure to save Rae Dawn Chong and Alyssa Milano’s characters who are trapped there with the bad guys. Some have claimed that many elements of this screenplay would eventually get used in his script for Die Hard, coincidentally directed by John McTiernan, though de Souza, who co-wrote the script for Die Hard, vehemently denies it, stating it is directly adapted from the Roderick Thorp novel, “Nothing Lasts Forever”

Admittedly, there’s not much of an interesting plot to follow or characters to dig into beyond their thinly defined (albeit colorful) facets, so Commando‘s appeal is limited strictly to seeing Arnold rack up a high kill count without much need for lengthy explanation.  It’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’re a huge fan of Arnold, or just wantonly violent and grandiosely preposterous action flicks, Commando is probably already a favorite film of yours.

• The Director’s cut adds a little of a minute and a half of footage, revealing the reason why Matrix is a single father as well as some of his back story on why he is so keen on spending as much as he can with his daughter.

Qwipster’s rating: C+

MPAA Rated: Rated R for strong violence, language, and nudity
Running Time: 90 min.

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong, Dan Hedaya, Alyssa Milano, Vernon Wells, James Olson, David Patrick Kelly, Bill Duke
Cameo: Bill Paxton
Director: Mark L. Lester
Screenplay: Steven E. de Souza