I hope I never get too old to appreciate the cinematic masterpiece that is Commando
get out of the theater, grampa
Commando might not be a very good action movie, but it features Arnold at his funniest. It’s really a must-watch.
The genre of plotless action films continues on with The Transporter series. And the Rush Hour series. And The Transformer series. And The Fast & the Furious series. And the Pitch Black series. And the District 13 series. And The Punisher series. And the Iron Man series. And The Predator series. And the Rambo series continues on and on.
You can argue that spme of them have plots, but they boil down to three choices:
- Bad guys chase good guy, and he kills them.
1 a) Good guy recues people from bad guys, who start chasing good guy, and he kills them. - Good guy hunts bad guys down, and he kills them.
And shit.
Jees, that’s snarky - she’s just offering a different perspective. Worldwide box-office does count, and Spanish dubbing would cover most of South and Central America as well as Spain (which isn’t exactly tiny).
Yeah, but that bald guy happens to be death himself.
Commando was the epitome of Reagan era, “blow shit up real good,” cinematic awesomeness.
Arnie delivering killer one liners: Check.
Villain with his own private island lair and small Latin American army: Check.
Said villain played by a scenery chewing character actor (in this case Dan Hedaya, aka Nick Tortelli): Check.
The hero performing seemingly impossible stunts like jumping from an airliner right as its taking off (sans parachute of course): Check.
The hero making creative use of weapons (like using circular saw blades as throwing stars): Check.
Sure, it’s way over the top, but it’s one of those films where if you’re willing to turn your brain off for an hour and a half and just go along for the ride, you’re going to have a blast.
No, he meant the other bald guy. The dumb one. Death was cool.
Death was Ian Fuckin’ McKellen.
Eh, let it go, already.
I went in understanding it was a parody and still disliked it.
Just because something is satire doesn’t mean it gets a pass for having a bad script. The film was poorly paced, had a shitty, irritating protagonist, wasn’t well acted, and the jokes weren’t as funny as they should have been.
It would have been a much better movie if it had been closer to the original idea.
You’re right. I forgot about him. My bad.
Another thought: they aimed at two different audiences, and both hated half the film.
Because the bald guy with an axe KILLED SLATER’S SON. Benedict was going for what would torture Slater the most. Godzilla, while cool, could never have affected Jack Slater like getting The Ripper.
Well, Godzilla coulda stepped on him. I say advantage: Godzilla.
What about the woefully underrated Charles Dance as Benedict (the villian with the cool contact lens)? Made the movie for me- could not believe it was the same actor in Alien3.
Knock off the personal insults.
No warning issued.
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
He insulted me first for being 20
If someone insults you (and I don’t see a correct guess about your age being an insult, but I’m well past my 20s), report the post, don’t respond in kind.
Hmm. I think what I’m seeing here is that some people were distracted by the fantasy elements of the movie, e.g. the ticket, Death, etc. What the movie was really about was how action films have no basis in reality, and a very realistic “what if” about how movie cliches would react in the real world. And then, if you look at how they broke down many of the cliches, that’s what makes it great. I think only Scream did a better job of pointing out the absurdity in a genre (I haven’t seen the Princess Bride yet for fantasy films.)
And offering it with the specific labeling of “as an example” of how to lose dollars by saving pennies. If the dubbing in Germany, Latin America (I don’t know whether LAH got separate dubbings for Spain and LA and can’t check imdb right now) or France to name three other dubbing locations was also done badly, that’s a lot of money lost to word-of-mouth bad advertising.