Oh no! Retired Col. John Matrix is pissed. The evil Bennett, a former cohort in the special ops group that Matrix ran, has kidnapped Jenny, his daughter. In his former life, Matrix helped to overthrow the president of Val Verde, and now Mr. Ex-President (Cher’s dad from Clueless with a really shitty Spanish accent) wants to be Mr. President again. Cher’s dad (er, El Presidente) figures that by kidnapping Matrix’s daughter, he can pretty much force him to do anything for him. Boy is Cher’s dad wrong. You don’t mess with John Matrix and get away with it. If there were a real John Matrix, Saddam Hussein would be shaking in his boots right now. The USA wouldn’t even consider attacking Saddam presently, because Matrix would have taken care of him the first time around.
Matrix sharing some rip roaring good times with his beloved Jenny
The screenplay for Commando was written by Joseph Loeb III, Matthew Weisman, and Steven E. de Souza. Loeb III, whose day job was being a comic book writer (and still could be, I don’t keep up on my comics much anymore). Joseph Loeb crafted Arnold’s character from the mold of an ungodly strong superhero— I think the only thing you can hurt on Matrix is his feelings, and even that may stray into an area of incredulousness. Now Matrix doesn’t have Spidey-sense or Superman type of special powers, but for an ordinary looking guy with bulging muscles, he must have some kind of superpower that is top secret because no one discusses it in the movie. One of his superpowers is an amazing sense of smell. When the fuckfaces come to kidnap his daughter, he actually is able to smell them before they attack. This must be one his weaker abilities however, because we don’t see him use it again and it really didn’t help much anyways. Even though he smelled them, they still stole his precious Jenny.
This picture is trying to show Matrix smelling the enemy. If you can’t see it in this image, pretend!
I think he must also have some special jumping ability that allows him to jump from airplanes that are taking off and land in non-existent swamp lands near LAX. I think we will call this special power the monkey move from now on. He uses the monkey move in a crowded mall to swing from some fucked up 80s sort of decoration (enormous, suspended, florescent wieners) to avoid the mall security guards that like to impress hapless consumers (teenage females) by packing heat. “Wanna see me kick some ass?” This must have been one crime-ridden mall, because even the rent-a-cops are strapped. Now with the otherwise surreal locale, we see two Schwarzenegger powers come into play. His driving skills are astonishing. Somehow he is able to make a Fiat chase down a Porsche with no problem and no dismemberment. Either the car was scared that Matrix was going to beat the piss out of it, if it didn’t go faster, or it was some prototype of the modern rice-rocket. Personally, I think it was accelerating due to sheer terror. Once he catches up with Sully, the 3 and 1/2 feet tall Porsche driver, he miraculously survives wrapping “super Fiat” around a telephone pole without a scratch. When people are in his presence, he is able to transfer some of his super powers to them. His power of rough absorption is transferred to the Dong chick he is riding with. Technically, she wasn’t really riding with him, it was more like he carjacked her and took her hostage, but in 1985, carjacking hadn’t entered our lexicon yet, so we pretty much forgave him and didn’t think anymore about it.
Arnie swinging on one of the wiener decorations at the mall from hell
But how is this event so? Where are we told this? because I know I missed it. How does he amazingly avoid being injured while going a million miles an hour and hitting a telephone pole? Sadly, we shall never know.
In the final scenes of the movie, we see perhaps what is Matrix’s most important super power. His ability to have literally thousands of bullets being aimed his way and somehow avoid being shot. Maybe this ties in with the car crashing ability in that he has a force field around him in all serious situations. It could be this, or another theory would be that the environment, trees, plants, insects, animals, everything around Matrix instantly becomes paralyzed with fear and suffers the need to please and not upset him. Can you blame anyone or anything for being afraid? I’m sure Matrix would bitch-slap God if he was back-talking him. But anyways, John is able to avoid getting shot and beaten to death by a fat man and saves his daughter. Of course, on his way to saving his daughter, he is able to kill hundreds of soldiers with a machine gun and some saw blades. Let me repeat that, he killed hundreds of soldiers on his own. If he’s not some superhuman, then I don’t know what is. Rambo isn’t even the killing machine that Matrix is. Rambo is more like how John was when he was five years old.
His most underrated special power has to be his incredible sense of humor. Maybe during his army days, he entertained his troops at the USO shows to keep up morale. I think he has a special sense of humor that must have come with his super powers, because even while he is on the verge of killing a couple of hundred bad guys, he still finds time to be funny. You gotta give the guy credit, I mean the bastards are trying to force him to overthrow a government or they will kill his daughter, yet he can crack one-liners with the best of them. These aren’t just your average “hasta la vista, baby” or “I’ll be back” one-liners. Those are great though. I mean, who hasn’t said those about a million times in their lives by now? But they just lack the humor of John Matrix one liners. Even when he has to drop a man off a cliff he finds the time to be funny. Who wouldn’t kill to have a sense of humor like that?
After further examination, really, what’s there not to like about Commando? Sure it has a cheese factor to it, and it’s sort of cliché at times, but it’s so farcical at times that it becomes really enjoyable. Not many movies can make you giggle your mother-fucking ass off every time you watch it. It’s really sort of like Rambo with a sense of humor. You get all the kick ass action that you could ever want and you get to laugh at the same time.
