May We Take a Moment to Remember...

...how exceedingly awesomely horrible the film Commando is.

This should come as no surprise to the 52% of the population not sporting external genetalia, but it is sometimes useful for the rest of us to put such films as this in perspective, for good and bad.

Unlike A-hnold's two greatest films, Predator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day, where Arnold almost seems to accidentally stumble into films where there's a great story happening, Commando is the exact opposite of that process. Sure, it's one of the early macho action movies, but when something can be done really well (Die Hard, Aliens) then it makes it all the harder to swallow the popcorn for the less fortunate of the breed. (Hear that Speed? I'm coming for you.)

Commando is the tale of retired special-ops warrior John Matrix (Schwarzenegger) extraordinaire, happy to spend the rest of his life caring for his daughter and chopping wood in a tight shirt when his daughter is kidnapped and his unwittingly flung back into a world of violence and intrigue he thought he'd left behind.
Sounds intriguing, right? Not really.

Dialogue is painful, especially involving an Arnold that was yet to clean up a lot of his dialect. In fact a good many portions of the film feel like they were overdubbed entirely. Rae Dawn Chong, who plays the...love interest(?) in this film is half-drug through the film, fighting any natural instinct to act any other way than helpless. But it's okay, because she's got Arnold, remember?

Daniel Hedaya plays a restrained mastermind villain who eventually gets pumped full of lead (who doesn't) but the real Bad Guy that Arnold gets to knife fight with is a former comrade-in-arms who speaks with some form of British accent and wears a chainmail shirt. (Apparently all of America's special ops crew are from European nations.)

Played by Vernon Welles, Bennet is everything Matrix is not. Fat, annoying, ugly and probably some of the worst Bad Guy instincts ever seen on screen. How he manages to hold off an attack from A-hnold for more than 1.5 seconds is a cinematic secret. Perhaps it was the giant serrated hunting knife he carries around that improves his warrior skillz.
And the chainmail. It conveniently protects whilst it covers the extra 30 pounds he brought to the set with him.

Apparently Commando was shot on the leading edge of special effects relating to pyrotechnics - or, more specifically, how to get dudes to fly through the air when a grenade goes off. At one point of the film grenades outnumber air molecules as they fly through the air, and every time a detonation occurs at least two fake-mustachioed Bad Guys do mid-air somersaults into some bushes, conveniently planted years earlier in case they were needed to break someone's fall.
I've watched enough "making of" TV specials to know about the pneumatic catapults used to create the illusion of tossing hapless victims around, but I guess they never considered doing it fifteen times in the span of 2 minutes might give audiences enough time to ponder if there was something...amiss. Apparently you will always be flung into a head-long somersault regardless of where the explosion occurs.

Among other awesome annoyances: apparently phone booths can be lifted out of the ground, kidnapping women in parking garages will make them your co-conspirator and yellow Porsches will still work after you've stood them on their side.

Commando is a rare film that fits an unusual category: simultaneously one of the worst, most annoying action films made but also a film that is kind of like sushi: when you crave it, ain't nothin' else gonna fill that hole.