There are seminal fights in movie history-Rowdy Roddy Piper’s Pyrrhic victory over Keith David in ‘They Live’ comes to mind-but few can touch the climax of the 1985 classic ‘Commando.’

Retired elite super-solder John Matrix, played by-who else-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has finally tracked his kidnapped daughter, played by Alyssa Milano, who has been taken to a South American villa by a gang of mercenaries led by Matrix’s former ally, the traitorous Bennett, played by Vernon Wells. Seems about right for the time period.

Anyway, Matrix mauls his way in search of Milano, leaving a trail of bodies and awkward one-liners in his wake (when he hears his daughter listening to Culture Club, he asks why their lead singer isn’t named Girl George; later he kills a man on a plane and tells the stewardess that the man is dead tired), before finally confronting Bennett, the only B.A. in the hemisphere capable of taking him.

Shot in the arm by his former partner and weary from having killed roughly 600,000 guerrilla soldiers, Matrix must resort to guile to conquer Bennett. With a pistol pointed in his face, Matrix ad-libs.

Behold, genius:

Matrix: ‘You don’t just want to pull the trigger. (Close up of Arnold’s face, under which a knife suddenly appears) You want to put a knife in me. … C’mon Bennett, let’s party.

Yeah, Bennett, put down the only chance you have. Let’s dance, Jets and Sharks style.

For unknown reasons, he tosses the weapon down and decides to party.

What follows is standard fare, the best boiler brawl since Mick Foley hit the WWF: punches, kicks, two-story falls, rudimentary knife work, an electrocution that gives Bennett superpowers and Matrix ending it all by ripping a pipe out of the wall and throwing it through his opponent (‘Let off some steam,’ he deadpans).

Brilliance.

Published on September 3, 2007 at 12:00 pm