Commando

What Mark L. Lester shot was not the script that arrived. Jeph Loeb’s first draft followed an Israeli soldier who had renounced violence; Steven E. de Souza rewrote it around Schwarzenegger and moved the job to an invented Latin American country, Val Verde, to keep real politics out. The lead had first gone to Gene Simmons, who passed. Barry Diller, newly running Fox, would fund any Schwarzenegger action picture under twelve million dollars. The final raid swelled after Lester saw Rambo: First Blood Part II: a dozen guards became 150 extras, and the same stuntmen went back in with fresh costumes, moustaches and hair, several playing four parts. That recycling is why the raid reads as a shooting gallery rather than a fight. Rae Dawn Chong won her part by improvising a scream instead of the scripted line; Vernon Wells’s chainmail vest came from the director wanting a punk silhouette. In Britain the 1985 cinema print was classified only after cuts, not waived until the 2007 home release. A good fit if you enjoy spotting the same stunt performers redressed and sent back, and take the one liners as the argument rather than the garnish. Not for anyone who needs a gunfight’s geography to hold; by the director’s own account the raid was built to raise the body count.