Product Details

• Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong, Dan Hedaya, Vernon Wells, James Olson
• Directors: Mark L. Lester
• Writers: Jeph Loeb, Matthew Weisman, Steven E. de Souza
• Producers: Jeph Loeb, Joel Silver, Matthew Weisman, Robert Kosberg
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• VHS Release Date: April 1, 1997
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (212 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6300248089
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #77,734 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

A massively underrated action thriller that kept Arnold Schwarzenegger occupied between mid-'80s blockbusters, Commando may be one of the last shoot-out films ever to have real characters in it. Not, of course, that they're anything other than stereotypes, but they're painted with such detailed, positive strokes that it's impossible not to relate to them. Arnie plays a retired military special-ops officer whose daughter (played with an expert balance of cute/feisty by Alyssa Milano) is kidnapped by the baddest of bad guys, who'll only hand her back as and when he's assassinated a tiresome banana-republic president on their behalf. Needless to say, Arnie is deeply annoyed by this, rescues the moppet single-handed amid more bullets and explosions than you can shake a stuntman's pay cheque at, and... well, why spoil the fun by revealing any more? Co-star Rae Dawn Chong gets some nice one-liners as the innocent bystander who gets caught up in the mayhem. --Roger Thomas

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cult Classic with Absolute Perfection, August 16, 2007

By 

Justin Heath (Stevensville, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Commando (Director's Cut) (DVD)

This is by far one of the greatest movies of the century. I can't believe what an awesome movie it is. It has no morals, no lessons to teach, no political statements, no coherence, and no sense whatsoever. When Schwarzenegger's beloved daughter is kidnapped by a psychotic dictator, he doesn't try to reason with the bad guys or take precautions like most action heroes would. He just goes bonkers and starts killing everyone in sight. The movie is packed with fantastic scenes such as Arnie crashing a car at about 80 mph, without a seatbelt, and being perfectly fine, Arnie tearing a phone booth out of a wall, Arnie punching a guy through a wall, etc. It's gloriously entertaining.

Also, despite his reputation for bad acting, he delivers all his lines with perfect comic timing ("Let off some steam, Bennett"). Bennett is also a great character, but no match for Arnold. You'd have to be completely devoid of personality to not find this at least slightly entertaining.

This is my favorite film of all time, hands down. Buy it, don't think about it. It will be the greatest investment you ever make for an action flick of the 80's.

10/10 stars. Seriously.

88 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I eat Green Berets for breakfast and right now I'm very hungry!, August 30, 2007

By 

Dave Cordes (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Commando (Director's Cut) (DVD)

If you think you've seen Commando before on DVD then you're gonna pass on this one, right?

WRONG!

This guilty pleasure is one of my all-time favorite testosterone pumping 80's Ahnuld action flicks chock full of some of the most memorable and hilariously over-the-top one-liners ever assembled in a single Schwarzenneger film with an exhaustive body count tally of 81 confirmed kills. Now it's finally getting the UNRATED Director's Cut treatment it deserves so we can see even more of the Governator at his macho 80's Republican finest.

The Commando Director's Cut DVD features the original 90-minute theatrical film and restores 96 seconds of mostly graphic violent shots that were trimmed to garner the film an R rating in this never-before-seen unrated version as envisioned by director Mark L. Lester restored back into the film via seamless branching. Additional DVD special features include director audio commentary, 3 deleted scenes which have not been added back into the film, two behind-the-scenes featurettes, photo galleries and more.

Special Features:

Commando Director's Cut is presented in widescreen (1.85:1 aspect ratio) with English 5.1 Dolby Digital and Dolby Surround audio, Spanish Mono, French Stereo plus French and Spanish subtitles.
Bonus content includes:

* Seamlessly branched Director's Cut with never-before-seen footage
* Audio commentary by director Mark Lester (on theatrical version only)
* Deleted Scenes
* Pure Action featurette
* Let Off Some Steam featurette
* Photo galleries with over 150 images
- Creating Commando
- Domestic Bliss with John and Jenny
- Kill Arnold, Kill!
- Trashing the Galleria

Don't deprive yourself of some pleasure. Come on, Bennett... let's party!

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Arnold, December 1, 2004

By 

John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Cuyahoga Falls, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Commando (DVD)

Arnold Schwarzenegger is Col. John Matrix, recently retired from some sort of military special-ops career (in which he was, of course, the best there was), and now living in a cabin in the hills with his little girl (Alyssa Milano). She'll be crushed if he has to go back into action again, and he promises he won't. But somebody is killing the members of his old unit one by one, and they may be coming for him next.

Sure enough, not long into the film, his daughter has been kidnapped. And the bad guys explain that they'll return her if he'll just perform one teeny-tiny little assassination . . .

That's the setup; the rest of the plot consists primarily of Arnold kicking a$$. That's what you wanted to see, isn't it? If not, skip this film.

But if you like this sort of thing -- as, obviously, I do -- _Commando_ will be one of your favorites (if it isn't already). Would you like to see Arnold 'drive' a sabotaged pickup truck by shoving it down a mountain and hopping in? Disembark from a jet aircraft while it's taking off? Pick up a phone booth while it's got a bad guy in it? Deliver classic lines like 'I'll be back' and 'Trust me'? Do all of the foregoing while whomping the behinds of some unambiguously evil bad guys? This is your movie.

The major villain -- Bennett, played by Vernon Wells -- looks and sounds as though he'd accidentally wandered into the set still in costume from _The Road Warrior_ (in which he played Wez). But you weren't watching this for its gritty realism, were you?

Rae Dawn Chong is in it too, as the 'feisty stewardess' that appears in so many of these films (see Halle Berry in _Executive Decision_ for one of the more recent). She gets a few of the good lines, and she even gets to fire a rocket launcher.

But the show belongs to the Gubernator. This is classic Schwarzenegger.