Commando. A glorious slice of 80's cheese.

"Get to da cho...".......eh wrong film

Commando was the film you needed to see to be cool when you were 12. It was the film everyone was talking about in school. Every day someone else came blazing in the door shouting about how awesome it was. "AW MAN ITS DEADLY, ITS SO COOL! ARNIE KILLS EVERYONE". I was dying to see it but there was a problem. I was 12 and it was an 18 certificate film. My parents usually let us watch what we wanted but not a hope were they going to rent this out for me. I was annoyed. I wanted to know what everyone was raving about. Eventually i got to see it in a friend's gaff. This was it. Oh deadly.

It was magnificent. It was everything i had hoped it would be and more. It was blisteringly violent and just non stop. It had boobs. It had swearing. It had everything a young chap could ever need.

I didn't see it again for years. I was in HMV browsing one day and i noticed it on dvd. Jesus, memories. I hesitantly bought it, half dreading watching it again in case it sucked as tends to be the case when you go back to childhood favourites.

It was magnificent again. OK, it's no classic and i spent the entire film noticing plotholes and mistakes and strange undertones i didn't understand as a baba but goddamn it was entertaining as hell. And short. I cannot underestimate how much i love a movie that doesn't overstay its welcome. 90 minutes. Lethal.

Arnold Schwarzeneggar aka Jon Matrix (?!) is a retired Delta Force operative. Life is sweet and he spends his time gardening and eating ice cream with his daughter Chenny ( her name is actually Jenny but this is Arnie and his accent ) in his mountain retreat. No sign or mention of a Mammy whatsoever. Their peaceful existence is shattered when Chenny is kidnapped and John is asked to assassinate a politician in a made up Central American country as her ransom. Knowing Chenny will most likely be killed anyway John says fuck that and decides to go on the run and rescue her using his delta force training. He has 11 hrs to find her before the baddies realise he is on the loose. No time to waste. 

Don't mind me, i'm just carrying A TREE

He enlists an air hostess ( Rae Dawn Chong in an utterly pointless role ) to help him and he polishes off the baddies hired to watch over him by breaking one chap's neck, on a crowded plane and no one bats an eyelid. Lobbing one odious little gowlbag off a cliff ( "Remember i said i'd kill you last Sully? I LIED!") and impaling the other on the blunt leg of a chair. He then stocks up on enough weaponry to take out Ireland and makes his way south to fight for his daughter's life.

And fight he does. He singlehandedly takes out an entire amry by himself. If you aren't in tatters laughing at this there's something broken inside of you. It's an awesome spectacle. Arnie fighting with guns, knives, bombs, axes, pitchforks, yes pitchforks and just plain making absolute shit of everyone. He doesn't get a scratch. It's just brilliant. It makes Bond look real. When will someone make a film where the baddies can actually shoot?

Arnie don't need no body armour

Once he's made his way through the cannon fodder it's time to take on the head honchos. Dan Hedaya ( looking very darkened up in a way that would cause twitter war these days) is turned into ketchup by a few dozen shotgun blasts and then it's on to the main event. John vs Bennett. A chainmail wearing Freddie Mercury lookalike who...gasp...once worked with John a long time ago and has a score to settle with him. 

This fight. The part everyone remembers. A scene that has inspired dozens of web articles. The most homoerotic scene ever. Well apart from that volleyball scene in Top Gun but this is up there. 2 sweaty blokes. 2 big knifes. The lines "put the knife in me" and "Don't deprive yourself of some pleasure, come on let's party". Bennett looking like he's taken a triple dose of viagra and so on. They beat the living shit out of each other and John wins by impaling Bennet on a big hot pole. Of course. They also do all this in front of Chenny who will no doubt spend the next 6 months utterly traumatised but let's not worry about that. We need a happy ending.

Brilliant. 

The opening scene feels like a pisstake, something from Hot Shots film but also as pointed out in many an article, oddly feels like a nazi propaganda film. All close ups of muscles, trees being chopped down, shiny white teeth. The Superman. The Ubermensch. It's actually bizarre. I'd love to see what a Commando virgin would think of it. I love that Arnie IS basically Superman with guns instead of superpowers. Not once is he in danger. He's a super-soldier. At one point he even smells the bad lads coming for him. Nope, i'm not lying. He has the best aim ever. He wears nighttime camouflage during the day. He can drive a truck with no engine. He can magically heal wrecked convertibles. He looks cool doing a tarzan impressions in a packed shopping centre. He jumps 100's of feet from a plane and doesn't even twist his ankle. He's inside a truck that gets blown up and doesn't get a scratch. Not one enemy bullet touches him even with 100 people shooting at him. It feels like a spoof and has great fun doing it. I won't mention the speedo scene. No one should ever talk about that.

It's not all perfect. Nothing is. Rae Dawn Chong is wasted in a role that requires her to scream a lot. Dan Hedaya, a white actor of Syrian descent, is tanned up to the eyeballs to play a part of a hispanic man in a role that should have gone to a hispanic actor. It's pretty cringeworthy. Things like that were overlooked and ignored in the 80's but wouldn't make it into a film these days. You'd hope anyway.

The one liners are awful when written down but brilliant when heard in Arnie's monotone voice -

• "Don't disturb my friend, he's dead tired." Said to an air hostess after he's broken a dudes neck.
• "I eat Green Berets for breakfast. And right now i'm very hungry."
• "C'mon you piece of shit, fly or die." He then punches a plane and it turns on.
• "Let off some steam Bennett." After killing the head baddy by throwing a steam pipe through him.

It's a film that cannot be taken seriously but crack a few beers and get your buddies around to watch it with and you'll have a whale of a time. It's just pure cheesy entertainment. Just don't forget to turn off the cynical part of your brain.