As a man sitting in front of me shrieked delightedly to his date, right after Vernon Wells' burly henchman Bennett got electrocuted on a fence and it only made him madder, "It's a motherf-g cartoon!" "Commando" might be the first entirely postmodern action thriller, serving up many of the cliches that audiences saw in "Rambo, First Blood Part II" four months earlier (including close-ups of a glistening muscleman strapping on weapons) but putting a half-mocking spin on them. There are jokes in the script about red meat and macho b.s., but they're mainly in there so the film can wallow in the things it decries. From the instant that Arnie made his entrance in "Commando," clomping through a forest with a chainsaw in his right hand and a giant log on his oiled left bicep, you knew you were watching a film that was in on its own joke-and in case you weren't convinced, the film had its hero row to the final showdown in a Speedo. As a historical witness (cue Civil War fiddle music-or maybe Horner's turtle drums) I can testify that yes, "Commando" was a big deal-not just because it was continuously violent (hundreds of killings) and mordantly funny ("I lied"), but because any viewer with eyes could see that Schwarzenegger was already putting his own distinctive spin on the persona he'd created with James Cameron. I'm the right age to have seen all of the now-nearly-canonized 1980s R-rated adventures (including this one, the Rambo pictures, " Aliens," " Predator" and " Die Hard") in first-run theaters. ![]() Even though he played a villain in the latter, he imported his signature moves and performance tics into the role of a stoic meat-slab trying to save his daughter from Latin American death squads and their mercenaries. ![]() A perfect engine of meaningless destruction, "Commando" followed Arnold Schwarzenegger's breakthrough hit "The Terminator" by less than a year.
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