Commando
Commando is one of my favorite films of all time. It brings together the ingredients I look for in this kind of movie: Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, over-the-top action, razor-sharp one-liners, a memorable bad guy, and the sleek, dazzling veneer of the 1980s. It also expertly navigates the fine line between self-awareness and self-parody—the movie knows what it’s doing, but it never feels hollow or forced. It comes by its cheesiness honestly.
In this project, I have split Commando up into 52 evenly-sized chunks of 104 seconds each (note: the last one is actually 9 seconds longer), and I will analyze one portion per week throughout 2021. I intend to bring a little bit of proper film analysis to the table—I have a film studies degree, after all—but I’m also going to talk about the stuff I think is cool. Why is Commando so rad? Why does the movie work so well? Which time when a guy gets killed is the funniest time when a guy gets killed? These are among the questions I will seek to answer.
This effort is inspired by a couple of things. First, the format comes from a film studies class I took in college, in which we analyzed Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror in a similar way, a little bit at a time over the course of a semester. (That movie was great art, but Commando has a lot more explosions.) Second, I’m inspired by the brilliant podcast Til Death Do Us Blart, in which a group of podcasters have vowed to watch and review Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 every American Thanksgiving until, as they put it, “the end of linear time.” Their ability to really drill down into the minutiae of a pop culture product is a model for me, as is their eternal commitment.
And so, the work begins. Thanks for reading!
