Movie · 1985 · Action, Adventure, Thriller · 1h 30m · R · English
Curator score: 3.8/10 (315K ratings)
Somewhere, somehow, someone's going to pay.
Overview
John Matrix, the former leader of a special commando strike force that always got the toughest jobs done, is forced back into action when his young daughter is kidnapped. To find her, Matrix has to fight his way through an array of punks, killers, one of his former commandos, and a fully equipped private army. With the help of a feisty stewardess and an old friend, Matrix has only a few hours to overcome his greatest challenge: finding his daughter before she's killed.
Ratings
Curator score: 3.8/10
IMDb: 6.7/10
Letterboxd: 3.40/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 68%
Metacritic: 51
TMDB: 6.7/10
Director
Mark L. Lester
Production
SLM Production Group, Silver Pictures, 20th Century Fox
Cast
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong, Dan Hedaya, Vernon Wells, James Olson, David Patrick Kelly, Alyssa Milano, Bill Duke, Drew Snyder, Sharon Wyatt, Michael Delano, Bob Minor, Michael Adams, Gary Carlos Cervantes, Lenny Juliano, Charles Meshack, Chelsea Field, Julie Hayek, Hank Calia, Walter Scott
Curator Review
Verdict
A gleefully over-the-top 80s action machine: absurdly muscular, brutally efficient, and built around one-liners, practical mayhem, and a straight-faced commitment to nonsense. If you want a fast, funny, high-body-count rescue mission that plays like a comic book with explosions, it delivers.
Best for
fans of 80s action excess
viewers who enjoy quotable one-liners
people seeking a short, high-energy revenge/rescue plot
audiences who like practical-effects stunt work and big set-piece chaos
Skip if
you want realism or grounded tactics
you dislike cheesy dialogue and macho posturing
you prefer character-driven drama over pure momentum
you are sensitive to cartoonish violence and crude humor
Overview
Commando is one of the purest expressions of 1980s action cinema: lean plot, maximal carnage, and a star persona so oversized it becomes the special effect. It turns a simple kidnapping premise into a nonstop parade of explosions, gunfire, and deadpan punchlines, all delivered with complete sincerity.
Worth noting
What makes it endure is the balance between brutality and comedy. The movie knows exactly how ridiculous it is, but it never winks so hard that it loses momentum. Every scene is engineered to get to the next outrageous stunt, the next memorable line, the next impossible act of physical dominance.
Bottom line
It is not subtle, and it is not trying to be. For viewers in the mood for a glossy, shameless action fantasy, that’s the appeal: a compact, crowd-pleasing blast of pure muscle-bound spectacle.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Richard (5★) · 1955 likes
Perhaps the single most important film ever made.
DirkH (4.5★) · 1320 likes
- perfect cheesy one liners/corpses ratio.
- bullet proof bushes your average Austrian Oak can hide behind when shot at.
- perfect bullshit/bullshit ratio.
- perfect road map to 'switch off your brain and laugh like an idiot' town.
I love it without shame.
matt lynch (4★) · 1001 likes
Still waiting patiently for COMMANDO II: MATRIX RELOADED.
Patrick Willems (4★) · 598 likes
This movie is pretty much perfect in every conceivable way.
Matt! (4.5★) · 580 likes
This shit still has everything you could ever want. Car-pushing, phone-booth-flipping, bulldozer-crashing, saw-blade-scalping, pipe-spearing, death/physics/logic-defying 80s action B-movie glory courtesy of peak musclehead Arnie as the iconic John Matrix. R-rated bloody deaths and badass explosions. Too quotable for me to even rationalize. Unpretentious and wholehearted in its self-aware-but-I-don’t-care extremism. Cheeky, brazen, borderline satirical hyper masculinity. James Horner’s electrifying score that might as well be smelling salts for your ears. Everything about this is hammy action flick perfection.