Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!kim!hamachi From: hamachi@KIM (Gordon Hamachi) Newsgroups: net.movies Subject: Commando--Stay Away Message-ID: <8510160438.AA29496@kim> Date: Wed, 16-Oct-85 00:38:45 EDT Article-I.D.: kim.8510160438.AA29496 Posted: Wed Oct 16 00:38:45 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 17-Oct-85 01:18:12 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.ARPA Organization: University of California at Berkeley Lines: 45 Micro review: Better than Rambo, but that's not saying much. If Rambo is America's violent revenge fantasy against the Vietnamese, then Commando is America's violent revenge fantasy against terrorists. Co-rambo, as it is sometimes called, is an apalling, sickening romp 'em, stomp 'em through an army of bad guys. Some sleaze balls kidnap the hero's young daughter to force him to assassinate the president of the South American country of Val Verde. Watch out! It's party time. Here comes the punch! Violence takes many forms. I happen to dislike close-ups of stabbings, impalings, and machine gun bullets stitching across people's chests. How about guys getting their heads cut off by circular saw blades? Some of the other stuff isn't too bad, like when Arnold throws a grenade and soldiers do very stylized forward rolls in the air. People die left and right. In the first few minutes we see a number of people killed as they are gunned down by garbage men (excuse me, sanitation workers), immolated at the touch of a button, and run over by auto thieves. What's the point? Uh, I think it is to establish that these are BAD GUYS, and that there's good violence versus bad violence. Okay, but it isn't very artfully done. Remember when, in the Terminator Arnold punches his arm through a car window, or when he runs over a child's toy in the street? Far from artful, there is nothing subtle about Commando. There's a surprising amount of humor early in the movie, before the slaughter begins in earnest. Arnold says, "I'll be back" just as he does in The Terminator (which, by the way, I liked a lot). We see him striding through the forest with chainsaw in one hand and a giant log slung casually over the shoulder. Rae Dawn Chong has a disappointingly weak part, although everyone but Arnold ends up with a weak part. Bennett, the good guy gone bad, looks like a refugee from a leather bar, obviously not in the same class as Mr. Clean Cut All American (excuse me, East German). The guy Arnold follows from the airport is a short sleaze who ogles women and then calls them whores when they don't get aroused by such foreplay. But back to Rae Dwan Chong. After Arnold's kid is kidnapped, Arnold kidnaps this innocent bystander, wrecks her car, gets her shot at, and finally, like Patty Hearst (we still remember her here at Berkeley) enlists her in The Cause. And listen to her screech. Plausible? Ultimately, Commando is the script writer's, producer's, and director's violent revenge <> against the movie going public. It made me feel sick, and I'm sorry I went to see it.