Bang, Bang

"You're a funny guy--that's why I m going to kill you last." --Colonel Matrix, Commando.

SOMETIMES, WHEN YOU'RE in a conversation with some friends, someone will say something so unfunny, or just so stupid, that the entire group will pause in a stunned and tragic silence. Imagine 90 minutes of such conversation. Imagine filming the conversation; splicing in scenes of gratuitous and senseless violence. Now charge admission.

Commando is a new action-adventure film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the awe-inspiring Colonel Matrix, onetime leader of a special army operations strike force. Having retired to the mountains to lead a life of leisure with his 11-year-old daughter, the Colonel's life is suddenly thrown into turmoil when the little darling is kidnapped by a group of South American terrorists.

The rest of the film deals with Colonel Matrix's race to regain his daughter from the South Americans. There is little else to this movie. It is thus much easier to talk about what Commando wasn't than what Commando was.

Commando is not a film that discriminates against those with cognitive difficulties. After reading the opening credits, one can easily view the remainder of the film without further brain activity. This is as much for the benefit of the audience as for the actors, for Commando does not offer much in the way of development. Schwarzenegger portrays a two-dimensional cardboard cutout capable only of delivering sour one-liners comprising nothing more than the most basic of sentence constructions punctuated by several hundred rounds of automatic weapons' fire. Despite the assistance provided by the visual aids, it is readily apparent that Arnold would have problems acting his way out of a light covering of aluminum foil.

As the Colonel's wise-cracking, involuntary sidekick, Rae Dawn Chong is even less impressive than Schwarzenegger. Chong gives an airheaded performance. Not only do all of Chong's lines fall flat, but her scenes with Schwarzenegger lack both a sense of humor and a sense of adventure.

Apparently, Lefter seems to feel that the dead spots in this picture can be spiced up by capturing a slew of seek-and-destruct scenes on film. Hence, we get to see Scwarzenegger murder an incredible amount of terrorists. And destroy quite a few large buildings. There is a lot of violence in Commando. Most of the violence is of the cartoon variety. However, in cartoons, the Road Runner doesn't scream or bleed as Commando blows off his head with a M-60 machine gun.

Commando is a movie-industry manifestation of Reagan era jingoism. The capitalists in Tinsletown want to cash in on the rising tide of cultural bias. Thus, the emerging genre of movies that are cinematic representations of the ultra-conservative Id. This new genre usually features an actor such as Schwarzenegger, Stallone or some other symbol of the American y-chromosome bounding about blasting anyone with an accent or a darker skin tone. Commando is such a byproduct of political isolationism and flat-out hate.

There's a lot of hate in this film. There's an attitude that problems are not solved with talk but with muscle and assorted steel by-products. Granted that when you go into a Schwarzenegger movie, you should expect more violence and less categorical imperative. Unfortunately, Commando isn't even entertaining at the gut level envisioned by Director Lefter. It just isn't creative or spirited enough, and it is specifically creativity and spirit make a good adventure flick, not the final body count. If you're going to kill someone, at least kill them in an interesting way. Commando is nothing more than Friday the Thirteenth Part VI: 'Jason joins the army.'