Trautman: Oh you’re the one who’s making the mistake.
Murdock: Yeah? What mistake?
Trautman: Rambo.
In my humble opinion, the 1980’s were the golden age of Action films. Harrison Ford, Kurt Russell, Clint Eastwood, and Chuck Norris were all putting out kick ass movies with high body counts. This was the decade where movie goers flocked to cinemas to see one man armies take down hordes of bad guys in a ridiculous fashion. The kings of this period for me were always Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. This tandem of Action heroes were head and shoulders above the rest as they were, let’s face it, the most ridiculous. They were lone soldiers against hundreds of enemies, but were unstoppable nonetheless. In 1985, these two men provided their fans with their most over the top Action smashes. These films were each big stepping stones for their stars and would help give them momentum going on into the 1990’s, when their heyday finally ended.
Schwarzenegger had just come off of making Conan and The Terminator. He was now becoming a household name, but needed a film that made him truly larger than life. He was unstoppable in The Terminator, but at the same time he was also the villain. His next outing would get audiences behind him as he blew away everyone in sight.
Commando Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rae Dawn Chong. Directed by Mark L. Lester
After basically a montage of killings in the early moments of Commando, audiences get to see a side of Arnold Schwarzenegger not yet pictured on screen; a family man. Living up in the mountains with his daughter Jenny (a pre-hottie Alyssa Milano), Schwarzenegger’s Colonel John Matrix is a single father living the good life after retiring from the U.S. Army Special Forces. For a moment, we wonder if we’re watching the wrong movie. Did film makers fool us into believing this would be an action fest when in fact this is Schwarzenegger’s foray into dramatic acting? Wasn’t he wearing grenades on the poster? After about five minutes, Army helicopters show up and our fears are laid to rest.
It turns out all the men killed before the opening credits of the film were all part of Matrix’s outfit. As a precautionary measure, the Colonel’s former commander General Kirby decides to post guards at Matrix’s house to protect him and his daughter. Seemingly just minutes after Kirby leaves the premises, the guards are completely wiped out by assassins. The killing basically doesn’t stop in the film from this point on.
Turns out one of Matrix’s former subordinates, Bennett (Vernon Wells) has become a mercenary for an ousted dictator, Dan Hedaya’s Arius. Bennett has been killing Matrix’s men in order to learn the Colonel’s whereabouts in order to “volunteer” him to assassinate Arius’ rival in order for him to take control of his country. As leverage to force him to do this they kidnap Jenny, but instead Matrix goes on a killing spree of his own.
My love for Arnold Schwarzenegger movies started with the first Conan film, but this is where it really skyrocketed. It seems every action star has one or maybe two roles that define their career. From there on out, every other role is a variation on those particular blueprints set by his previous characters. Bruce Willis had John McClane. Clint Eastwood had The Man with No Name and Harry Callahan. Mel Gibson has Martin Riggs and Mad Max. For Schwarzenegger, most will say that role was in The Terminator, and while much of his success comes from it, I say that role for the Austrian Oak is actually John Matrix.
If you look at Schwarzenegger’s characters in Predator, True Lies and many others, they can all be traced back to Commando. This is where film makers really began to mesh the actor’s action skills with his penchant for humor. Commando is chocked full of one liners, one right after another, as Arnold’s little smirk keeps you laughing and his machine guns keep your adrenaline rushed. For example, as Matrix has a thug named sully over a cliff…
Matrix: Remember, Sully, when I promised to kill you last?
Sully: That’s right, Matrix. You did.
Matrix: I lied.
He then drops him over the cliff. Another moment has Matrix killing a baddie on a plane and then telling the stewardess, “Don’t disturb my friend, he’s dead tired.” That’s pretty much how the humor goes in the film, and Arnie would pretty much keep the one liners coming for the rest of his career.
What got people into the theaters though, was the film’s action, and action they got. After shooting, punching, stabbing, blowing up, wrestling, and throwing bad guys off of cliffs, Matrix scores 78 kills in this film, a personal high for Schwarzenegger on film (aside from the nuclear holocausts of The Terminator Trilogy). This film also has some of Arnie’s most creatively orchestrated action, from taking several heavies unarmed in a garden shed, to a boiler room brawl that still stands as Schwarzenegger’s best cinematic hand to hand fight.
This film firmly put The Oak on his way to becoming the world’s greatest Action star, as his star would keep rising all the way to reaching his height of popularity with Terminator 2 in 1991. Of course, Arnold’s biggest rival was already an Action superstar when 1985 rolled around. Not only was he responsible for one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises in the Rocky series, but had recently scored a solid hit with First Blood. In the film, Sylvester Stallone played John J. Rambo, a wandering Vietnam veteran who declares war on a small town when he’s publicly disgraced by the constabulary. The next installment would have Rambo excising his demons by taking it right back to those who hurt him in the first place.
Rambo: First Blood, Part II Starring Sylvester Stallone and Richard Crenna. Directed by George P. Cosmatos
When we catch up with our muscle-bound hero, he’s dutifully serving his sentence for his rampage in First Blood.Within minutes of the film’s opening, he’s given a chance for redemption and vengeance. Richard Crenna’s Colonel Samuel Trautman, who brought a sobering voice to the mayhem of the series’ first entry, offers Rambo the chance to return to Vietnam and do recon for POW’s. By the time Stallone utters the line “Do we get to win this time?’, you know exactly where this film is going.
Taking its place amongst the similarly themed Uncommon Valor and Missing in Action, Rambo: First Blood, Part II is definitely the biggest in scope of the revenge fantasies where America goes back to get some payback for the Vietnam War. Where Uncommon Valor attempted to be a bit more realistic and Missing in Action had constraints due to its budget, this second Rambo installment seems to know no boundaries.
Written by Stallone and James Cameron, the film is loaded with action, as the star puts his body on the line over and over. The film is definitely a physical feat for the actor, as he molded his body into the unstoppable force he’s supposed to be. Too bad much of the picture falls flat because of plot holes and shaky dialogue.
The worst offender is Julia Nickson-Soul as Rambo’s liaison in Vietnam, Co Bao. She is supposed to be a Vietnamese peasant working secretly for the Americans. First of all, this lowly incognito peasant just happens to be stunningly gorgeous, but even over looking this, her dialogue isn’t as much that of a peasant who barely speaks English as it is like a two year old learning what it means to be expendable, but barely grasping the concept.
Also, just as I’d pointed out on Missing in Action, why are these POW’s being kept alive? If the war was over and these men had no useful information, why spend money to keep them alive. I suppose they are cheap labor, but other than that, you would think they would just shoot them. Of course, none of this matters in the long run as the real reason people went to the theater was Sylvester Stallone, scarred muscles flexing while taking out his rage on Communists with an M-60. This is what they got in spades. An amazing scene has him going into ninja mode, killing Russians and Vietnamese by using stealth and silent weapons. The best portion of the sequence has Stallone being virtually invisible against a wall of mud, until creepily he opens an eye. In a film full of guilty pleasures, this is one of the best.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Charles Napier’s Murdock, the American bureaucrat who sets Rambo up to fail. Napier is in all his slimy glory, weaseling his way out of trying to help Rambo when he learns of the political can of worms that will be opened if POW’s are actually found. This may actually be the one real acting job done in the film, as Stallone’s grimacing and barely intelligible speeches hardly count.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about the production is the cinematography. Jack Cardiff, who shot classics such as The Red Shoes and Peeping Tom makes this film look like a million bucks. Never has watching a guy being tortured by leeches been so pleasing to look at.
When it comes down to it, Commando’s humor and unabashed excess has stood up better than Rambo’s solemn explosions, but not by much. Each of these stands as a testament to 1980’s Action cinema as the most over the top pictures Hollywood put out over the decade. In the end, we got two 80’s icons at their most testosterone heavy, and two movies that may not have stood the test of time, but at the time were the best Popcorn out there. These movies are like Action movie porn, the acting’s not to great, the storylines are ludicrous, but boy they’ve got hard bodies giving you action you want to see in spades.
Picture Credits: eccentric-cinema.com, impawards.com, bad movies.org, filmhai.de
