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From: steven@ism70.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: notes on Commando
Message-ID: <13100141@ism70.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Oct-85 16:52:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ism70.13100141
Posted: Mon Oct  7 16:52:00 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Oct-85 05:38:08 EDT
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Nf-ID: #N:ism70:13100141:000:2231
Nf-From: ism70!steven    Oct  7 16:52:00 1985



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.