Commando is an 80s action movie, and is one of the most unintentionally gay movies ever made. It stars Arnold Schwarzeneggar, a very young Alyssa Milano, Rae Dawn Chong, Vernon Wells, Dan Hedaya, James Olson, David Patrick Kelly, and Bill Duke.
John Matrix (Schwarzeneggar) is an Army badass of some kind who has retired and lives out in the woods with his daughter, Jenny (Milano). One day, his former CO (Olson) shows up saying some of his old unit have been killed, and he's going to have a couple of soldiers hanging out with him till they get it figured out. And seconds later, said soldiers are shot dead, Jenny is kidnapped, and Matrix get tranked and wakes up facing down his old comrade, Bennett (Wells) and a former South American dictator named Arius (Hedaya, which is weird casting, but whatever). Matrix is thus blackmailed into killing Arius' lawfully elected replacement so he can resume being evil dictator of Val Verde, but whatever, Matrix isn't going out like that.
The rest of the movie is Matrix killing his way through Bennett's henchmen until he finds where they're keeping his daughter, and then killing everyone on that particular island. He abducts a flight attendant named Cindy (Chong) along the way, but like, she's on board after she sees a picture of Jenny.
Actually, this was something I noted about the movie upon watching it again - everyone is totally cool with Matrix and his methods. Like, I don't know where the island was supposed to be, but Matrix lands, kills dozens of people including a former head of state, using a bunch of weapons he stole from an Army surplus store (including a rocket launcher, which, sure, they sell those at Surplus City) and his CO just wants to know if he'll come back to work someday. It stuck with me, I think, because we get a lot of superhero movies nowadays, but they don't have the kind of cheerful carte blanche that Matrix does in this movie (that is, responsibility for their collateral damage is at least mentioned on occasion).
And then there's the gay thing. Look, if you want to read more, just google it, because it's already been written by smarter people than me, but let's just say that if your villain is a leather daddy wearing chainmail, you're probably going to get some attention from queer theory folks, and rightly so.
Really, it's an 80s action movie and it hits all of the required cliches. No one in the movie has a lot of real backstory; there are lines here and there that give tiny hints (Matrix being born in East Germany, Kelly's Sully being in the military with Charles Meshack's character, Cindy's cancelled date), but we never hear a thing about Jenny's mother or why she and Matrix live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere (other than to keep them safe because of Matrix' former life, but that seems weak, considering how invincible he is). Arnie gets plenty of one-liners, some of which land ("I lied.") and some of which just clunk ("We'll take Cooke's car. He won't be needing it."). The action scenes are fun, loud, and hella macho, and we even get Cindy calling that out occasionally.
Maybe it's just because I'm an 80s kid, but I find these movies, as not-good as they are, strangely comforting. Nostalgia, probably.
My Grade: C+
Rewatch Value: High
Next up: Escape Room
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