Niccolo Soldo

Oct 14, 2024

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There comes a time in very man’s life when they ask themselves the question: “What if I just killed everyone who is standing in my way?” None of us actually go through with it, with the act of killing being against the law serving as the best reason why you shouldn’t do it. It is nice to daydream, though.

A few years ago, I was reading “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood”, and it got me to thinking about how motion pictures served to make our dreams come true in a way, as the stories and fantasies of people dead or alive could be filmed and shown on a big screen for all to see. Almost all of the early productions beamed onto screens in cinemas were escapist fare, which brings me back to daydreams. What we call “daydreaming” is precisely the act of escaping from our present reality. In October of 1985, 20th Century Fox released the Joel Silver-produced and Mark L. Lester-directed COMMANDO, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rae Dawn Chong, answering the related question of just how a daydream about killing everyone blocking your path might possibly look like.

Almost forty years have passed, but I can still vividly recall that one Saturday afternoon when I got to see COMMANDO in the movie theatre at Fiesta Mall. I also remember that it was warm that day, meaning that it was Indian Summer, and that Saturday found me with my father at Lucky Strike, a bowling arena where he went to go bowl a few frames with his friends. Being a pre-teen, my options there were very limited: I could watch him bowl and hang out with his buddies, I could also ask him for some money to play five-pin (as I was too young for ten-pin), or I could bother him to give me a bunch of quarters so that I can play some video games in the arcade inside of the building. The first option was boring, the second option required finding others willing to bowl with me, and third option was always a longshot as video game arcades in those days were associated with teen boys who smoked cigarettes and were therefore “bad”, or “bums” as my father, a notorious chain-smoker, would call them.

Luckily for me, a couple of my father’s buddies also brought their sons, and they were a few years older than me. My father asked how they planned on killing the next few hours, and they told him that they were going to the movie theatres across the street. My father asked them if it would be okay if they took me along, understanding that I was nowhere near their age, and they agreed to do so. “No problem”, Andy said. “He’ll be fine with us.”

Nostalgia is notoriously bittersweet. It seems that we humans have universally evolved to look at our past in a rosier light, thus impeding our ability to objectively judge it. We have a tendency to remember that which we view as positive, while suppressing the negative. No doubt that we are hardwired this way so as to not drive ourselves crazy as we age (not everyone succeeds, of course).

Another difficult element of judging a past that we have lived through is that a person cannot be a 15/35/55 year old in separate decades. You cannot be the same individual in different times, as your knowledge, experience, opinions, desires, etc. change over time. When you put these two elements together, you end up realizing just how difficult it can be to compare one era that you have experienced living through with another. I won’t let this complexity stop me, of course. Nor should it ever stop you either.

As described above, COMMANDO is escapist fare. The story is incredibly simplistic and very shallow: An ex-US Special Forces tough guy (Colonel John Matrix) lives in a remote hilly area somewhere in California where he, as a single parent, takes care of his very young daughter to whom he is utterly devoted. One day, his former commanding officer (US Army General Kirby) arrives in a helicopter to warn him that a rogue group of mercenaries has been killing his former subordinates and are most likely out to get him too. Immediately after General Kirby departs, his home is violently attacked and his daughter Jenny is kidnapped. Reacting to this, he tries to rescue her, only to be sedated via a tranquilizer gun. He awakens to see a dictator (Arius) that he helped overthrow in his presence, alongside three other men. One of these three men is Bennett, a one-time member of Matrix’s operational group who was kicked off of the team. Bennett, still holding a grudge over his expulsion, informs Matrix that he must go to the fictionalized country of Val Verde to assassinate its current leader, paving the way for ex-Dictator Arius’ triumphant return to power. As the present leader trusts Matrix, only he can get close enough to kill him. Matrix is then told that if he doesn’t go through with the act, they will kill his daughter. It is at this point that the main conflict of the movie has been explained to the viewing audience, and in the most direct and economical way possible. The rest of the tasks itself with how Matrix will try and rescue his daughter from their evil clutches.

I describe the plot as simplistic because it really is. There is no bigger message in the story, no shade, no nuance, no gray areas to be on the lookout for. What you see is what you get. A movie like this would not get greenlit today unless it was coated in several layers of irony. There are only six characters of real importance in the movie, each one a familiar and instantly recognizable archetype:

• ex-Dictator Arius (Dan Hedaya): An evil leader who wants to get back into power and will do anything necessary in order to achieve his goal
• Captain Bennett (Vernon Wells): A spurned former associate of Colonel Matrix, his only desire is to harm his former commanding officer in an act of retribution for his dismissal from his unit
• Sully (David Patrick Kelly): A slimy and sleazy wheeler-dealer who works with Arius and Bennett, but whose specific role is never really explained to the audience
• Cindy (Rae Dawn Chong): An innocent bystander who gets swept up in the conflict, eventually choosing to help Matrix in his mission
• Jenny (Alyssa Milano): The innocent daughter who is kidnapped by the “bad guys”, and who represents purity and redemption, especially in her father’s jaded eyes
• Colonel John Matrix (Arnold Schwarzenegger): The musclebound hero that harkens back to the ancient tales of feats and glory, tasked with the rescue of a kidnapped innocent

Beyond the physical settings of the shopping malls and warehouses, almost nothing in the film gives away the era in which the story takes place. In only two short conversations do we get rough hints: the first is when General Kirby warns Matrix of the threat posed to his life, telling him that he is unsure who they are are, and could be Syrians, Russians, or even South Africans. The second is when Matrix relates to Cindy how regrettably was absent for long stretches from his daughter’s life as he was on mission in places like Laos, Angola, and Lebanon. If one was to read the script, the average person would have a tough time placing it in a historical timeframe.

Luckily for us we have watched the movie, and COMMANDO is nothing if not pure 80s Americana. From the neon and day-glo signs in the Galleria Mall, through to the big and baggy pants on Sully, COMMANDO is awash in 80s visual signifiers. Not just visually, either; the entire film is an exercise in over-the-top directness, with nuance being a foreign toxin that was never to be allowed entry in the first place.

It is this element that makes COMMANDO emblematic of the 1980s, at least in the North America of that decade. And it is precisely at this point in this essay where I ask you to go gently on me, because I will be making broad and sweeping generalizations that are based off of my experiences during that time, coupled with what I have learned from others who also lived through that decade.

The 80s were a very positive time for most, as the 1970s saw the USA somewhat slipping on the global stage, with the Oil Embargo significantly impacting western economies for the worse. Famously, the word “malaise” was used to describe the USA under Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan’s arrival on the scene was intended to turn that country’s fortunes around. A deep recession bit into the USA and Canada at the beginning of the new decade, but by 1983 things were looking up, and in 1984 a profound change in public attitudes really began to take hold, leading to Reagan’s monstrous landslide victory that year. “Things” were indeed getting better for most people. Optimism was back in, but without the idealism of the late 60s (which gave way to the increasing cynicism of the 1970s). Yuppies were making big bucks, having finally made peace with the establishment in return for their slice of the pie.

The decade was marked by a sunny optimism and a conviction in the superiority of democracy and free market capitalism. The USSR was increasingly the butt of jokes, as the scary Andropov prematurely exited the scene (and with his exit, the fears of a nuclear exchange between the Soviets and the Americans dissipated overnight), with his replacement a geriatric and bewildered-looking Konstantin Chernenko, who himself would kick the bucket only a few months later. The arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev and his reformist agenda signaled the beginning of a thaw between East and West. Even though no one could predict the Fall of the Berlin Wall, a visible self-confidence took hold in America, with an earnest pride on display and impossible to miss. It was “okay” to wave the flag once again, because the USA was the “best country in the world”.

…..which brings us back to COMMANDO. In COMMANDO, the good guys win, and the bad guys lose. Never was there any doubt that Colonel Matrix would succeed in his mission. Jenny expresses the confidence and self-assurance of that decade when she defiantly tells her captors that she “can’t wait to see my daddy kick your asses”, which can be read as an unintentional nod to Star Wars and the fear that it sparked in the Kremlin. The fates of her captors were already sealed when they chose to “mess with the best”. Lastly, who better to cast as the kickass hero than Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Think about it: Arnie had already conquered the bodybuilding world, and by COMMANDO he was well on his way to conquered Hollywood as well. Fresh off of his triumph in TERMINATOR (1984), he landed the role of Colonel John Matrix at a time when Americans were insatiably hungry for action films with plenty of violence and explosions. Arnold was big, muscular, and charming, and unlike his rivals in the action genre, he frequently displayed a sense of humour and willingness to poke fun at himself. Arnold represented the optimism, spirit, and can-do sensibility of that decade. He craved both fame and wealth, and his long-held ambition meant that there was only one destination for him that would make that possible: the United State of America.

We did not know it at the time, but if you told people that Arnie would best represent what the American Dream was back then, I wager that most people would have gone along with it. Here was a guy from Southern Austria with little formal education and a horrible grasp of the English language arriving in America and finding success, wealth, and fame while there. Conquering the world of bodybuilding, he then became the biggest action move star in Hollywood, leading him to marry into the Kennedy Family (the closest thing to American royalty that exists), and eventually becoming the Governor of California, the largest state in the union. This is the ultimate pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps success story that is so ubiquitous in US history, and that serves as a touchstone for the Boomer generation that Arnie belongs to. Only in America could he have gotten as far as he has. His life is The American Dream.

Arnie’s choice of relocating to the USA to fulfill his life’s ambitions reflected the self-confidence that coloured the 80s. As legendary boxing promoter Don King would routinely exclaim: “ONLY IN AMERICA”. Only in America could someone achieve all of this. You could never do in the USSR what Arnie was able to do in the USA, as the Soviet system was designed to work on behalf of the collective, and only the collective. The individual was nothing but a cog in the larger machine.

Arnie as Matrix is all the more enjoyable because he is in on the joke. The one-liners that are peppered throughout the script tell us to suspend all disbelief and just go with the flow and enjoy the over-the-top action and dialogue. When Matrix (and Cindy) ram Sully’s Porsche up on Benedict Canyon in the Hollywood Hills, Matrix holds Sully up by one leg and dangles his body over a cliff, informing him that “gravity” is now his biggest concern.

Matrix: “Do you remember Sully when I promised to kill you last?”

Sully (panicking): “That’s right Matrix!  You did!”

Matrix: “I lied.”

(Matrix then proceeds to drop Sully who then descends to his death)

Cindy: “What did you do with Sully?”

Matrix: “I let him go.”

The bad guy got his just desserts, and with a funny line thrown in for good measure. Here is a physically intimidating hero who is a good guy, and is funny as well. Sully was a sleazy bad guy who got what he deserved. Cue the cheering from the audience.

COMMANDO is camp, and nowhere is this made more obvious than in the final showdown where he engages in one-on-one hand-to-hand combat with his nemesis, Captain Bennett. Decked out in something that seems like chain mail and possessing an Antipodean accent, Bennett eerily reminds one of Freddie Mercury, the very, very flamboyant and campy lead singer of the rock band Queen. Instead of having Matrix fight someone physically more imposing than he already is, the creators of COMMANDO separate this movie from films like PREDATOR, because the ridiculous aspects of the plot are just as important as the central story is. Bennett is large and wields a knife, but does not appear to be anywhere as physically strong as Matrix. It is his impersonation of a menacing Freddie Mercury that really drives home just how intentionally silly the movie is, and why it is superior to a production that would play it entirely straight. Just like the 80s were, COMMANDO is both silly and fun.

So transparent is this movie in its over-the-top approach that even pre-teen me couldn’t help but laugh at the penultimate scene where Matrix is strolling along the finely-manicured grounds of Dictator Arius’ island villa, casually killing scores of soldiers without breaking a sweat:

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s highest single-film kill count comes from Commando (1985), where in the final island scene he racked up 74 kills: 2 throats slit, 51 people shot, 1 person stabbed, 2 people stabbed by circular blades, 5 people blown up by grenades, 5 people blown up by rocket launcher, 7 people blown up by planted explosives, and 1 unfortunate person impaled.

It is made clearly evident by this point that in the movie that Matrix is some kind of “superhero who doesn’t wear a cape”, but who does like to wear camo face paint while slaughtering several platoons of soldiers in the course of less than five minutes. This is not to be confused with irony as COMMANDO is earnest in what it does, and what it does is mindless escapism.

This also introduces us to a unique paradox that sums up my thoughts: most people did not seek to escape the 80s as they were quite content to consume the escapist fare that blatantly celebrated it in its own ways, with COMMANDO being the most distilled offering on display.

Additional Notes

The car chase scene between Sully and Matrix beings on Ventura Boulevard and ends up in Benedict Canyon, the neighbourhood where Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Woytek Frykowski, Jay Sebring, and Steven Parent were murdered by members of the Manson Family in August of 1969. As many of you are already aware of, I have a fascination with the Manson Murders, and the wider story as well. Chalk this up to me being a Gen Xer who grew up in North America.

Every few months, I’ll get an email from someone reading this site and making note that the physical address listed for this Substack is 10050 Cielo Drive Beverly Hills, CA 90210, USA. That was the address of the house where Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski were living at the time, and where the murders that night took place. When I set up this Substack, the software insisted that I include a physical address, so I chose one of the most famous ones in history. It is no longer a real address, as the original house was torn down to make way for a monstrosity that was assigned a new address: 10666 Cielo Drive (not a joke).

There is also a tenuous Arnie tie-in to the Manson story. Check out this photograph:

This photograph was taken in Los Angeles in 1976. On the right is actress Nastassja Kinski sitting on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s shoulders. On the left is his acting buddy Johnny Crawford. On his shoulders sits Debra Tate, younger sister of slain actress Sharon Tate. Click here to see the entire set of 15 photos.

And last but not least, I wrote an essay about the 1967 screwball comedy DON’T MAKE WAVES, starting Sharon Tate:

Cahiers du Cinéma

Film Review: Don’t Make Waves (1967) USA

Niccolo Soldo

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