I kiss my ass. I can't hear you. Say it a
little louder then get fucked. Listen, loyalty is very touching, but it
is not the most important thing in your life right now. But what is
important is gravity.
I have to remind you, Sally, this. Is my week off.
You can't kill me, Matrix. You need me to find your daughter.
Where is she? I don't know. But Cook knows. I'll take
you where I'm supposed to meet her. But you won't. Why not? Because I already
Remember Sally when I promised to kill you last? That's what made you,
you did. I lied.
It's Two Dads, One Movie. It's the podcast where two middle-aged dads
sit around and shoot the shit about the movies of the 80s and 90s.
Here are your hosts, Steve Follow and Nick Brianna.
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of two dads, one movie.
I'm Steve. And I'm Nick. And today we're talking about the movie Commando
from 1985. We're wrapping up the month of January
with, I don't know, in some ways, maybe like the most quintessential
Arnie action flick. Like, it just feels like such an Arnold action
movie, right? Yeah, for sure. I definitely would describe this as kind of the most
condensed, like the purely distilled version of Arnie that you can find. This is
black tar Arnie. If you love what Arnie does, this has
a lot for you. Yeah, so I can't wait to talk about this one,
man. We'll get into it in just a minute. Before we do, I wanna say
to the listener, hey out there, go check out our website@twodads1movie.com We've
got all kinds of stuff going on there, including if you sign up for an
account, you can see sneak previews of upcoming episodes, you can explore the connections
between the films that we've covered, look at things like our stats,
which is really interesting. It shows like how many times we've given fives to movies
that are totally undeserving of it. And you can totally rag us for it.
You can reach straight out and contact us from there. So check it out,
twodads1movie.com, the number two and the number one. Okay, this is Commando. This is
Janu Arney. And Nick, this was your choice. So tell us a little bit about
your history with Commando. Yeah, I might have picked this one up on TV
at some point in my teens, but definitely in college. This is where my
love of Commando really accelerated. We had, very few DVDs
to choose from. And if you were tired of somebody showing you the Matrix or
the beginning of Saving Private Ryan over and over, you had to watch actual
cinema sometimes. And that's where Commando stepped in. I just
feel like this gives you such a great spectrum
of Arnie's stuff, good and bad. And this movie is just not
very serious. And it's, I appreciate, I told
you this before, since we started the podcast, I appreciate a 90-minute movie so
much now. Like it gets an extra star for being 90 minutes generally,
you know? Yeah. But yeah, so it was fun and we would always watch it
and we would like bust on it, like make jokes during it and stuff.
So this was like really a part of my like early 20s and I've loved
it since then. That's fantastic. What about you, Steve? The first
time that I saw the movie Commando was three days ago.
Amazing. Somehow this one missed me. I'm not even really sure how.
Like I said, like we saw Predator a few weeks ago and talked about it.
That's like one of my favorite movies of all time. I adore Predator. I love
movies like, I mean, all the movies we've done I'm glad for January, Janu Arnie,
True Lies and Total Recall, whatever. They're so good. Terminator and Terminator 2. I grew
up loving Arnold Schwarzenegger. Somehow, for some reason, I never watched Commando.
I don't know why, but now I have.
We'll leave it at that for now. Let's get into the episode. How about
just the facts on Commando? Here we go. The movie Commando was released
on October 3, 1985, with an R rating and a running time,
Nick, as you said, of exactly 90 minutes. It is really a, it's a sweet
spot, right? Directed by Mark L. Lester and written by Steven E.
D'Souza, who we've seen before. He, of course, the screenwriter for Die Hard.
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ray Don Chong and Dan Hedaya.
Scores on Rotten Tomatoes, 68%. That's a respectable fresh
score, not too bad. IMDB, a 6.7.
It's so funny, they sound so similar, right? 6.7 out of 10, 68 out of
100. Really a 6.7 on IMDB. Uh-oh. Oh, my kids aren't listening, thank God,
a 1986. Saturn Award, and if you've listened to the show, you know the Saturn
5.75 times what it cost. Which is definitely a blockbuster. No doubt about it,
especially at rated R, you don't tend to see as many multi hundred millions on
a rated R film. Absolutely. A couple extra facts on this, I'm gonna start throwing
in a few of these here and there. Arnold himself reportedly was paid $2 million
for this movie. So 20% of the film's budget went to paying its star.
And then of course, Jenny, Arnold's character, John Matrix, his daughter, is played by,
at the time, 13 year old Alyssa Milano, who we all know and
love. But many other actresses mostly in
a similar age range at the time, were. Also auditioned for the role.
Winona Ryder, who was 14 at the time, Shannon Doherty,
also 14. Elizabeth Shue, who was 22 when she auditioned, and that would have been
a little, that would have been a different story, maybe. Yeah, you would have had
to shoehorn her into that role. Ah,
hey, yo! Similarly too old for this role, Patricia Arquette, who was 17,
Drew Barrymore, who was 10, and Jennifer Connelly, who was 15.
They all auditioned for the role of Jenny Matrix. Uh, and then last
thing, 1985 in general, this was the year that started, I don't
know, I know this was a thing when I was, you know, growing up,
I'm sure it was for you too, Nick. Stallone versus Schwarzenegger.
We used to play in our friends backyards. It was more
like Rambo versus Schwarzenegger because Stallone's main kind of big,
big super soldier role was John Rambo. But that started,
85 started that sort of paradigm because Rambo, First Blood Part 2 also came out
in 1985. Of course it did like, 300 million or something
at the bottom. It was a massive hit compared to Commando, but it did kind
of start off like, hey, look, there's these two muscle bound idiots who play super
soldiers. Let's, let's continue to compare them for the rest of their careers. Well,
in Rambo, too, I mean, he. Definitely, that's where he became this kind. Of Superman
soldier guy, just the way. That John Matrix is in Commando. Absolutely. Who I don't
think until the very end even gets a scratch on him, which is what,
what I love. I, there, you're not, you're not gonna I get a big ass
grin on my face because I cannot wait to dive into this fucking movie.
Are we ready to roll? Kick it off, man. All right, kick it off.
So, Cold Open. We love a cold open. Absolutely. A lot of fine cinema has
it. And it really gets at a key part of the human condition as somebody
who's in charge of the garbage for their household, which is waking
up in the morning to the sound of a garbage truck down the
street that you did not prepare for. There's almost nothing worse than
that. I'd say maybe like a really loud fire alarm, but even then, a lot
of times you're like, false alarm. You're rarely like false garbage truck, but so
basically garbage trucks coming down the street and you see this man kind of struggling
to bring his garbage down. And he's dragging his barrels down and he says to
the garbage man, I. Was afraid you'd miss me. And then one of our favorites,
Bill Duke, steps off the back of the truck, very calmly pulls like a machine
gun out of the back of it, says, don't worry, we won't. And then they
just mow him down. Yeah, a couple things. First of all,
they're Uzis, which is just like, I feel like it's the classic
80s action film Overkill Gun. And there is no point at which an Uzi is
used. And yeah, that's definitely the appropriate tool for the job. You needed the Uzi.
It's always like, We're gonna make a show of it,
kind of thing. And yes, when he popped
on screen, I literally wrote in my notebook, one of my
first notes is, Is that Bill Duke? Yay! Do love a Bill
Duke. I love Bill Duke. So then kind of continuing the cold
up, and basically what we find out later is these are the former members of
John Matrix's team. Team that are all kind of getting killed in very
funny ways by Bill Duke. The next thing he does
is he's at a Cadillac dealership. So these are his lines to
start the movie are, Don't worry, we won't.
And I like Cadillacs. I mean, he is
like putting a Shaquille O'Neal level Shakespearean acting display on
here. Hey Chuck, you know what I like. Best about the Cadillac? Chuck, I like
the price. The price. So, you know, he kills the car dealer guy and then
it shows this other guy getting on a fishing boat and drives away and his
boat blows up. So that's our cold open. And now we kind of start into
the credits. Yeah, we get four minutes into the movie. We've got three bodies.
And the body count in this is ludicrously high. I did not do the math.
I don't know if you did it or not or looked it up, but it
is a lot of bodies. We start fast. We'll talk about
the math a little later, but yeah. So my note, what I noticed right here,
so what do you think? The cold open's great. I love all this stuff.
It is a little, if you don't know, as I did not going in kind
of the storyline, it's a little confusing as what exactly is happening, but it
gets cleared up fairly quick. And when we start into the kind of title
sequence, credit sequence thing, it's just a lot of Arnold biceps carrying a log.
It's a telephone pole-sized log. It's a tree trunk,
really. And I think this might answer our question from the Predator episode about his
ability to hoist that other much smaller tree trunk.
Right up into the
tree. Yes. Are John Matrix and
Dutch the same guy? Similar. They certainly are. The showcase of Arnie, right? The total
bicep close-ups and all this stuff. And then he sees a reflection in his
axe and it looks like, oh. He'S gonna have to turn around and plop it
into somebody's forehead. But then it's just his beautiful daughter and
they're hugging. And then the music changes and there's this hilarious, Scene of like daddy
daughter tenderness over the top cheesy, right? It's like Arnold Schwarzenegger is suddenly playing Snow
White. Like this. And Jenny is one of the dwarfs. These are all his woodland
pals. It is. It is insane. And a couple of things about this scene.
All right. This was one that killed us back in the day. And the scene
of them just like hand feeding the deer. So we
would always say like,
you. Know, oh, Arnie feeding the deer. That was the thing.
Yeah. The first time I ever went
to Vegas. We were at a blackjack table.
One of our roommates from college almost blackout drunk. And the dealer was
named Arnie. And he kept saying, Feed the deer, Arnie.
Feed the deer. Feed the deer, Arnie. And he got
kicked out of the casino for pulling cigarettes out of the ashtray.
It was very bad. But anyway, feed the deer, Arnie was great. Number two,
the playful daddy daughter ice cream date. Yes. Where she smashes the ice cream
into his face. I picture an
alternate version of this. Movie where it's him and Bill Paxton
in True Lies, where it makes him so mad that he just smashes her face
on the table and then snaps back into reality. So that stuff really makes me
laugh. I feel like the middle ground would be even funnier. It's like if he
looks upset with her and just goes, what are you doing? Why would you do
that to my face? Don't you want your ice cream? Yeah, I love it.
So then she makes him a sandwich, and there's kind of like, it's like them
at their house. I mean, in general, it's really cute, right? And it gives us
this understanding of Arnold's character, I don't think we got a name of yet,
but John Matrix and his current living situation, which is clearly, this is his daughter,
he loves her very much, she clearly loves him very much,
and they're just coexisting. It looks like somewhere near Bear Mountain or something, Southern California,
but up in the mountains. And it's like this really wonderful, sweet sort of thing.
She makes him a sandwich though, and this is, I've got two kids who like
to help cook, and they want to do more and more of that, and we're
letting them do as much as they can. They're a little younger than her,
least At Alyssa Milano was
13 when she filmed this, so I'm just assuming the
characters around there and my kids are a little younger. But when she
puts a sandwich down. In front of him and he goes, what's in this?
And she says, you, don't want to know? I was like, Yes, I do.
Now I want to know even more. Now I absolutely must know. Before I'm putting
this thing in my mouth, what the fuck is in this sandwich? Yeah. How can
you just be like, okay, I'll eat this anyway? He bites into it. But I
have food allergies. No, it has shellfish. No tree nuts.
Oh my God. Yeah, really good. And then,
and then this is a great 80s joke here. So he's flipping through
one of her teen, like, magazines and had Boy George on the COVID
and he says, why don't they just call him Girl George? It would cut off
all the confusion. It's like, what a perfect, like, dad joke.
But for a dad in 85, that's a fire joke.
It is, it is, it is, it is funny how few years it takes
for, like, a very innocent sounding dad pun to go like, God, is this,
like, transphobic? What are we like, you know, are we like, this is, do we
really need to do this? You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It doesn't take
that many years to get there. But it's also, I mean, right down the middle
of the plate. The guy's name is Boy George. That's true. Steven D'Souza got better
with his one-liners. I feel like this was the warm-up to Die Hard. Exactly.
His writing got much better in Die Hard. Steven D'Souza's minor league movie here.
That's right. So all this like perfect, you know, oh, Daddy, I love you.
I just want to live here in the mountains peacefully forever. I'm so glad you're
forever retired from the military. Forever. You hear a helicopter coming off
from the distance, right? But it's a friendly helicopter and basically General Kirby,
who is wearing the shittiest looking bit of uniform I've ever seen. It's just
like a black sweater with a name tag and two stars. But then the other
guys have cool ass uniforms on. But he's got those cool shoulder pads sort of
reinforced parts on his sweater. Pretty good. I feel like if
you're with the camouflage guys, you're gonna be in the camouflage
version of your shit. It was a real mission.
Quickly Kirby comes and he's Matrix's former commander and he's like, hey, someone's snuffing out
all the members of your team. So we sent two of our best.
Guys here to protect you. So he's protected forever. Yes, totally protected.
Forever. So Kirby goes to leave after saying, hey, we'll leave these
guys with you and everything will be fine.
And I think before the helicopter has
even crested the hill in the distance, John looks
up and kind of raises his...
His face to the wind like a predator hunting prey, and then,
you know, dives to the ground, I believe, as snipers kill
the two, or at least shoot the two soldiers killing one of them. And,
you know, they're able to, they're under attack now, but, you know, they're able to
sort of kind of get away. He's able to get Jenny momentarily to safety.
But, yeah, they're under attack. And it was like, I love the soldiers.
It says something about, like, you know. He'S like, you know, you're downwind. Use that
to your advantage. And he's like, what is it, downwind? Do you think
I'll smell them? He goes, I did. It's the best. It's so
good. He's all the Predator team in one
guy, kind of. So that's his Billy. He's the Voltron that becomes of all the
Predator guys. That's so cool. Yeah, 'cause he's got the bad
jokes. Of Blaine and Hawkins mixed together. He's got, you know, Max sort of like
threatening one-liners. He's got Billy's tracking, you know, and if we asked him to,
he could probably speak Spanish like Poncho. That's right. And he has Dylan and
Dutch's biceps. One on each arm. One on each arm. he's So basically like,
All right, chill out a minute. I gotta go
get my guns in the shed. And he has like, great armory. Great armory.
Yeah, great armory. I'm, you know, frankly, just spoiler, I guess, but disappointed that doesn't
come back later. We never go back to that. I'm like, that is such a
cool armory that he's got at his mountain house. Definitely,
definitely. Very, very Arnie. You could tell he helped design that. But basically,
this happened incredibly fast. He gets upstairs, the one guard that was wounded and kind
of survived just falls out of the door. Oh,
yeah, yeah. And then one of the bad guys
sitting is there holding this, like, little. Paper heart that
his daughter had put on the fridge. You know, I love Daddy. And he's
just like, hey, man, relax. Everything's cool. And they're driving down the hill
with his daughter. Yeah, she's been kidnapped. So he
basically says, hey, if you want your kid back, you better cooperate, right? And then
Arnie. Wrong. Wrong. Blast him away. Oh, man.
Okay, real quick, and then I'll hand it over. So he's gotta go pursue
these guys, and they're going down the hill, and. He runs out
to his car. Yes. And of course, they've disabled his car.
This was one of the things that when we were watching in college killed.
Me, and we still quote to this day. So during the scene,
he reaches in and pulls out the distributor
cap or whatever was just loosened. Right, yeah. And our friend Brian Bush
said, They put wires in my car. any And of the dudes that I went
to school with, like, to this day would know that. So they put wires in
his car and he basically, okay, well, I'm just gonna roll this thing down the
hill and see what happens. He's gonna ghost ride the whip. He's a big hyphy
fan and he's, you know, this is, I know this is before Mac Dre,
you know, by quite a few years, but that's okay. E. Shorty. There you
go, E. Shorty. Oh, yeah. Tell me when to go. Right now.
Go ahead now. So, yeah, he gets in and he's like, well, if I
can't drive, the vehicle. I am on top of a mountain, basically.
Maybe I can just ride it down. This actually reminded me of
there was in high school, I was hanging out with some folks you would know
them as well. We were hanging out at Jay Paturel's house up in Blackhawk or
near there where there's a lot of hills and stuff. And someone decided, Hey,
I bet we could coast out of here all the way to the guardhouse at
the bottom. And it's like, okay, yeah, we probably could, because it's pretty high.
So I'm in the car behind driving, and then one of our friends in
the car in front And
I'm coasting, which includes, of course, utilizing the brakes. Yeah. Just not the gas.
Right. As I watch the car in front of me careen towards, you know,
a turn, slam into the curb, breaking the front axle of the vehicle. Oh my
god. Like, it was the most ridiculous thing. And it was like, so what do
you think coasting means? Was kind of the conversation we had afterwards, which we should
have had before. But that's what 17 year olds do. He gets out, he's like,
which one of y'all put wires in my car? Exactly. But they also,
as it turns out, for Mr. Matrix here, they also cut his brake. Which is
a problem because, you know, I was thinking to myself, well, at least he still
has his brakes. He'll be able to control his descent.
No. He's controlling a little, he's doing some ski type moves a little bit,
but yeah, I mean, he's trying. But luckily, his timing is pretty good.
And he kind of causes an accident with them. His blazer immediately explodes, and then
he climbs up a hill unarmed, and there's like six guys with machine guns pointed
at him, and he just grabs the end of a machine. It's like a kid
where the parents pointing in their face and the kid grabs the fingers. Plus,
I'm pretty sure machine gun barrels get hot. not I'm 100% sure,
because I'm not a gun connoisseur, but I do
think there's heat involved in
the firing of a weapon. Yeah, yeah. So basically they end up
overcoming him and they tranquilize him. That's right. But before he's knocked
out, he sees. The face of this really Freddie Mercury. Looking guy who's wearing a
chainmail vest and he's like his old teammate, Bennett, and we
get the great Bennett, I thought you were dead. You thought wrong,
John. Deed. The great Vernon Wells. I mean, he's been in a lot. Of movies
that we like. Had a hell of a couple Seasons with the
Toronto Blue Jays alongside Jose Bautista. Might be a different Vernon
Wells. Not sure. We'll have to look into that.
We'll have to look into that. Well, here's the thing, though. I. I got.
I gotta say, my first introduction to one of the two big
villains of. The movie, I'm gonna
call myself. Less than impressed. Bennett is not particularly muscular.
He's actually quite soft in the middle. I argue that is not a chainmail vest.
Looking closely at it, it really looks like it's crocheted. Like it's just fabric.
I think it's made of yarn. It's his version of chainmail. I suppose.
So he's got the, you know, psychotic Australian Freddie Mercury mustache,
the fingerless gloves,
the leather pants and
the crocheted pullover vest. This is the least intimidating bad guy
of any movie I've ever seen.
Least intimidating. He is hilarious. It's really funny and all your points are well taken,
especially the not muscular thing. And like, I'm sorry, we saw
Predator. There are plenty of guys you could have casted that. I mean, imagine a
bad Jesse Ventura or a bad Carl Weathers or something. Even Shane Black, who wasn't
particularly buff, still had a more imposing figure than Bennett does. It's a really
funny version. Of the character and
he always, always cracks me up. I love all the choices they made. He looks
like he's in Mad Max Furry Road. Right. Which of course he was in the
Road Warrior, so. Oh, God. So they kidnap John Matrix and basically the point is,
all right, we need you, Dan Hadaiah, who I don't know if we need to
say anything about Dan. I mean, I love Dan Hadaiah,
but he will for me always be Cher's dad in Clueless more than any other
particular role. I'm, I'm sure that is not, you know,
I'm sure if you asked people. Who are real big Dan Hodaiah
fans, that would not be. Yeah. Right. The signature role of his career for them.
But for me, it always will be. That character is so funny to me in
that movie. And, you know, we'll obviously get to, to that High School comedy someday
on the show. But, yeah, Dan Hodaiah is here. And, look, I like him.
He's a good actor. What is going on with this accent?
I swear to God, there was no coaching other than I'll just
do an accent. Yeah. It's wild. It's wild. I wrote down in particular,
after writing a note that Dandadai's accent is kind. Of trash, Velaquez, he keeps pronouncing
this person that they want John to go.
Assassinate in their country of Val Verde, which by
the way, and looking it up, I found out, is actually also
the location of Predator. The fictional central American nation of Val. Verde is where they
have to go across the border in Predator to go. It was used in several
other movies, actually, that I did. I can see that it was, that they made
it up for this, or this was the first appearance, but it's been in other
stuff. Exactly. It was a pretty common, like, generic Central American banana republic. Yeah.
Right. For 80s movies. And so, so, yeah. So they need to go, they want
John to go to Val Verde, where apparently he had operated in the past.
So these guys all know him, you know, whatever, and assassinate the current leader so
that Dan Hidaya's character, Arius or something like that. Yeah. Gets to
become, yeah, gets like take back over.
Maybe he, I think he must be like an exiled despot, basically. Totally.
So this is the thing. And John's like, No, I'm not gonna do that.
That's crazy. Like, whatever. He's like, well, you know, basically you. Don'T, we'll kill
your daughter. And so there's the plan is to get him on an
airplane. Yep. And two guys will go with him to
the airport, and one of them will travel with him all the way to Val
Verde. And so then there's a guy who needs to see him get on the
plane and basically call in to say, yeah,
he got on the plane. We're good. Then 11 hours
later, they say they're gonna land in Val Verde, and the guy getting off the
plane with them has to call in. Yeah, and be like, we're here, he's here,
blah, blah, blah. I'll let you know when the job's done. And the idea is
like, hey, if. Either of those don't happen, your daughter's dead.
We're killing her, like, not playing around.
So it's like, I mean, you know, look, you got to do what you
got to do. You know, they've got her. He can't he can't escape
with her right now. He's got
no way out. So let's go for it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So,
I mean, he's all right. Well, he's he's stuck, at least in the beginning of
this plan. Quickly, it flashes back to his house. Where Kirby and the other army
guys have arrived to see kind of the carnage there. And Kirby just quickly asked
the guy, any sign of Matrix? And the other guy goes,
no, just bodies. And he's like, Are there any, should we look for
any more or whatever? And he's like, if Matrix is involved, you're gonna expect a
lot more. Like, oh, I love it. It's just like Colonel Troutman and Rambo.
So, I mean, this is Schwarzenegger's Rambo, too. There are so many
parallels between this and Rambo, too. Okay, so these couple of guys here that are,
set to take Arnie to the airport. Richards is the
tall black dude in the safari looking outfit. It looks like
that's not for a mean guy. That's for a cool, fun guy
to wear. It's kind of a bummer that he's dressed like that. And then the
other guy, who we've seen in some other movies, I forget. The actor's
name right now, but in the Warriors,
he's the Warriors come out and play guy who's flanking the bottles together with his
fingers. Sully. To me, look, morally, Sully and I
are not on the same page anywhere. As far as a character in a
movie that cracks me the fuck up, Sully has
it for me. That's great. My biggest thing was I was
constantly distracted when all three of these men are on screen together about
how enormous Arnold and the large black man are.
And how tiny Sully is. Yeah.
Guy's gotta be 5'2. At best. He is a shrimp for sure.
He's a shrimp for sure. He does one of my favorite insulting
things where he puts like a $20 bill in Arnie's top shirt pocket and
pats it. It's like, get some beers in Val Verde. It'll let everyone have some
more time with your daughter. This guy's percentage of lines that are like increasingly the
scummiest you've ever heard is really it's really amazing. It's really amazing. I do love
we got it. We get an I'll be back from Arnold here. Yes. As he's
getting out of the car. Which is great because I just
love self-referential shit like that. Like, you know. Um, and then, yeah, like, when Sully
says that, like, first of all, I almost gasped with just how disgustingly forward.
That comment is, knowing that Jenny is, like,
a young teen. Yeah. Uh, and he's like, you,'re funny, guy, Sully. I like you.
That's why I'm going to kill you last. Yeah.
It's like, I thought to myself, nah, man, you should definitely kill him first.
I wonder what'll happen later. Um, okay. So, so Arnie and Richards now
get on the plane. And I love, you know what could be a potential
tag for us is flying without baggage.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. Because I feel like that shows up a lot.
It does, yes. So Arnie and Richards kind of escorts
them on the plane and they down sit first class, not bad of
the. Val Verde future dictatorship to treat them a little bit. And the steward asks,
you know, any carry-on luggage? And he's like, Just Tim. Really good. The guy gets
pissed off. So already asked for a blanket and a pillow. Yeah.
Snaps this guy's neck. Oh, so good. Covers him up. And before he stands up,
he says, you'll have to excuse my friend. He's dead tired.
So bad. Damn. So now he's got to find a way off the plane because
the plane has started moving. Like the door is closed. It's starting to taxi off
to the runway. He's got to figure out how to get off the plane.
Luckily for him, I mean, he couldn't know this, but Sully is kind of watching
the plane taxi off towards the. Runway and he's decided, good,
they're on the plane. It's moving. I can go. But in the meantime, John's trying
to get off that plane. So he goes down into the cargo hold.
It looks like a 747. It's actually got multiple levels. He goes down to the
galley, and then he's able to go towards cargo, where we get the guard dog
of the 80s. The official guard dog of the 80s, the Doberman Pinscher. He gets
barked at by a Doberman, luckily in a cage, not actually a threat to him.
But then he gets down towards the landing gear, and when this happened, my first
thought was, B-bye, pinball! So yet
again, somebody is leaving, or attempting at least, to leave a plane. Through the landing
gear. Which could be a tag, especially if we end up doing Toy
Story 2, because then that'll be another time when that happens.
But yeah, so this happens where
he's now doing the whole thing. He's gotta climb down onto the landing gear.
And I was wondering why he wasn't just letting go. Letting go right away,
because it's like, yeah, that'll hurt, but it probably wouldn't. Well, here's the thing.
It would barely hurt John Matrx. He's an Arnold Schwarzenegger action character, but even a
normal human probably wouldn't get hurt. Get seriously injured. I don't know. Maybe. It depends
how fast you're going at that point. But the wheels were still on the ground,
so it wasn't a super long distance. But he holds on. And pretty quickly it's
obvious why. As the plane actually takes off, it kind of crosses over. And I
don't, I haven't flown in. And out of LAX enough to know for sure,
but like there's marshland or. Something, I guess, right past the run. Yeah, I think
it's. And he drops off. Convenient, convenient swamp for him to
plop into. It would be the kind of thing if you were coming into
or leaving SFO in San Francisco. Yeah, we got a lot of water. To deal
with there, but I don't know. So LAX apparently has He some swampland or marshland
right outside its runways. And he's able to drop off into the marsh. And so
now his buddy is off. And there's an important kind of thing I think
we maybe missed this year where they specifically asked how long till you land in
Valverde. And the wait, the waitress, the stewardess says 11
hours. That's right. So we get it on his watch there. He set his watch
as soon as he fell 750 feet, like directly into a reed that impaled him.
He set his watch very quickly to 11 hours. Also, just for the record,
If you're flying essentially south from LAX for 11 hours, you're getting to
Buenos Aires, not Central America. That is way more time than would ever
be necessary to fly to this fictional country unless it is
nearly Antarctic South America. Then yes, then it would take that long. So just a
little thing, but that's okay.
They need time to sort
of allow. For this ticking clock to happen so
that there's enough time for the, the story to take place, basically, is kind
of where we're at. And this is also one thing I want to mention,
this whole plot device of this 11-hour flight and everybody being out of sync or
out of contact during that time, another piece that just would never work in the
era of cell phones. If anybody in this movie, any of the bad guys had
a cell phone. Jenny's dead in the first act, basically. For sure. So luckily
that's not the case. He can be out of
pocket and also undetected for a certain amount
of time. He's got this clock. Yeah, so it's good. So we're like, all right,
stakes set, we're ready to roll with time here. I enjoy the score of this
movie. The repeating, like, steel drum. Why is it steel drum? Michael Scott playing a
steel drum in his office is great. I literally stopped the movie to point this
out to my wife, who is not actually watching with me.
She's not a fan of this kind of movie. But I paused it while she
was watching her Brit Box crime drama that she watches. And I said, when I
say steel drum, what kind of environment do you think of?
And she was like, we're talking about the Caribbean, Jamaica, the Bahamas, etc. Something like
that. I'm like, yeah, this movie takes place entirely in Los Angeles and a little
bit in, like, Santa Barbara later. Right. But it's like,
that's basically it. And there is steel drum in,
like, every scene. I don't understand why, I think. Yeah.
I mean, the Bob Marley story didn't have as much steel drum. There's like,
yeah, I like it. I like the score.
I enjoy it. It works for me. So, yeah,
so now we're back in the airport and, and Arnie's kind of. He's making his
way across the runway. We see the flight attendant on the phone, on the
pay phone, and Sully, who should just be like,
All right, well, I'm done,
and now I'm going to get on with business. He cannot help himself.
'Cause he's made the call. He's made the call to say, John, he's on the
plane. And he's talking to her while she's having a phone conversation. And if you're
watching this for the first time, you're probably thinking,
Man, this is as rude as it gets.
No, it's 1985. I knew it was going to get worse. She ends her conversation
with okay, well, I like you, too. I like you, too. Killed me. Yeah.
And Sully is like. Yeah, like you said before, he's a five foot two dude.
Yeah. Looks like a total douchebag. He would be like a hanger on of Ellis
from Die Hard. He'd be like, Ellis's, like, third level friend. His Cody.
And he's wearing a suit that looks like it's made out of,
like, the carpet from an airport or a casino or something.
It's one of the worst suits I've ever seen. And also
sized for his father. It really is a David. What's his name? From Talking Heads.
Oh, David Byrne. Yeah, it's a David Byrne suit there.
Yeah. But the stewardess, the character's name is Cindy, I believe, right? Played by
the beautiful Rae Dawn Chong. Great actress, great name. I love Rae Dawn Chong.
I love saying that. Fantastic. And also so far out
of Sully's League, it's not even funny. This is not somebody who would give that
time of day. Yeah, not only is
he not good looking, I'm sure he He smells
bad. He's not charming. He's openly an
asshole. He's like, yeah, there's nothing he's offering here. Speaking of how he smells,
you know for sure it's 100% just completely overdone, like London gentleman, some kind of
crappy 1980s cologne straight out of Macy's. He has the model Rick Martel's
novelty giant cologne thing that he sprays himself with every morning. Yeah, so he
ends up following her all the way to the parking garage. Well, Arnie has an
eye on Sully. He's like, Sully is the key to. Finding out where my
daughter is, right? And as he's like five feet behind her,
and she's still being very nice.
She finally ends it with, Look, he's like, oh, you don't
know what you're missing. And she's like, From here it looks like a nightmare.
Now would you please leave me alone? And then the most earnest
I've ever seen any actor deliver this line. And I know it's not cool now,
but it makes me laugh very hard. It's him looking at her and going,
you, fucking whore. It's just there's so much hate. It's like he accessed every-- I
don't know, man. He flipped a switch there. It flipped to like, flirting with
like. Yeah, it was pretty wild, but it gives us that much more of an
indicator of just who Sully is. Yeah, he's a terrible
guy. So then John basically carjacks Cindy, sort of,
not before ripping the seat out of her car. It's never really makes
another, like, Hey, we haven't shown how strong this guy is in the last few
episodes. Okay, all right. So he rips the seat out of her car and sits
on, I guess, he could sit lower with no seat. I suppose, but he's still,
his head's still He's still above the door, and I mean, he's still visible from
there. And now what is he sitting on? Is he sitting on the track or
whatever that the seat used to move back and forth on? Yeah. I don't
know. Very strange. Couldn't be comfortable. He tells Cindy to follow Sully's car. He's driving
a Porsche. So, you know, easy to follow. But it's like a pretty interesting-- It's
not like a chase, 'cause they're trying to not make it obvious that they're following
him, but they are having to kind of drive a little crazy, 'cause Sully drives
a little crazy. They get to the galleria. They get to a mall. Same mall.
T2 Galleria. T2 Galleria. That's right. All the sequences And
so when we. Get the T800 and 1000 first meeting each other, same mall.
And basically, they follow Sully into the mall, basically, right? And then so now he's
got something with him, is that right? Yeah, so Sully goes into the mall.
When Matrix and Cindy
are driving there, it's very funny that she's kind of.
Trying to get information from him or whatever. He's like, this guy wants me dead.
She's like, well, I understand. I've known you for 10 minutes, and I want you
dead too. She's firing off a few lines. I think she's great in this.
But there's something that-- hadn't
I caught before that really cracked me up is he's like, I'm retired army or
whatever. She's like, oh, so my taxes pay your pension? Or she's like, I'm paying
for you to fucking carjack me right
now. Yeah. So we're at the mall and Sully goes in. Sully has a briefcase
and it looks like he's got some other business that he's doing there. Right.
So he's on his way to meet some dude in there.
And Arnie's, you know, telling Cindy, like, look, you have
to follow this guy and, Get me in there somehow. Yeah, that's the only
chance I have. Cindy very nicely, I mean, I'm sure she's terrified,
but she's going along with this
very initially, except that she then immediately alerts security.
Yeah, I guess she's good at like playing along until she
can get safe. It's classic stewardess, basically, right? You know, you tell the
customer whatever they want to hear because you're locked on a plane with them.
By the time you go talk to the captain, it's like, so we're going to
need police at the landing airport to get this guy as soon as we land,
whatever. So she does alert the mall cops and there's a lot of
them like there are so many, you know, we hung out in a lot of
malls in the 90s I know I did I'm sure you did as
well and I don't ever remember at any given moment seeing more than like two
security guards at a time. Yeah, imagine the biggest emergency there'd be four or five
guys that are there cops and then the rest would have to be coming in
but yeah, this. Place was like it's like every store. Was a zale yeah,
they just like had guards their own cards except they're
all wearing the same yeah, but I do love one guy gets on the on
the radio to kind of get the attention because they basically, she points out
John, you know, he's kind of half hiding behind a pillar.
Yeah. And she goes, that guy's, you know. He kidnapped
me and he's like trying to hurt me or whatever. And so the guy gets
like, we. Need all units, you know, to like this spot, whatever.
This is one gigantic motherfucker. Yeah. So, so that guy. And then he had been
like hitting on some girls before he got this call. And when he gets it,
he goes. To them, he's like, you want to see me kick some ass?
And he's kind of like a Michael Winslow looking guy. He looked a lot like
Michael Winslow. Skinny, like yeah. So another Sully line here,
'cause now he's in
there and he's meeting with the most cartel-looking guy in
one of those shitty mall bar restaurant things. And he says, Saloon. The thing
he says about the mall is, It's a great place for hunting slash. Oh,
God. Just the grossest way to put it, dude. I cringe the second I heard
it. It's so gross. So in the meantime, yeah, we've got basically,
There's a commotion now because all these guys are coming after Arnie.
Sully knows something's up. Oh, he sees Cindy in there. Oh,
that's right. And he's like about to be like, oh, hey, I just saw him.
And then he sees what's going on. And he's like, I gotta make a phone
call. And again, cell phones. That was just a quarter.
I need a quarter. That was the first time that I was kind of
like, why didn't he just grab his cell phone? I went, oh, right. 1985.
Like, not even there wasn't even. You would think that guy might have a cell
phone in 85. 85. I feel like there really weren't even. Car phones outside of
like limousines. Satellite phone
thing. If you were like super rich, maybe, but like
generally, I mean, by '89, that guy's got us a little early. '85 was early.
So yeah, so he's got a rush to pay phone.
And as Matrix is having to fight. Off all
these security guards and like,
you know,
he's doing a good job. Generally trying not to kill
them, but, you know, we'll see what happens. But he goes and he chases
Sully down. He gets into
a phone booth, which Matrix just picks up. I love this sequence. As if it
weighs nothing at all, rips it kind of off of its bearings or whatever.
Pretty wild. Yeah, and just like, you know, tumbles it over and everything. Yeah.
And then, like, right after that, this sequence is maybe my favorite in the movie.
So he picks the phone booth, flips it over, and then some of the
75 cops that are there, the security guards, who are
all mall security, who have guns, and stuff, which I don't remember that, yeah.
I don't know if that's gonna happen. So they jump on
him, and he. Jumps up and pushes his arms out. And they go flying.
He just busted out of a pile of dead leaves. It's so funny that they
just scatter everywhere. It's very, very comic book. This is
MCU before the MCU, right? The shady dude that Sully was meeting, he runs out
of the restaurant. No one's even going after him, but he's just like, oh,
there's something happening. And he starts shooting, immediately gets shot, and his briefcase full of
cash just sprinkles down on the money. Mall below. Love it. Just like, love it.
Here we go, Mark L. Lester. Let's make this thing as
over the top as possible. There's also, I think,
you know, another thing we've seen, at least in a. Couple movies, I know for
sure, T2, and I know it'll come in some others we have
scheduled to do later. Chaos in a mall. Yeah. Very common kind of thing,
it feels like, in this era. But, yeah, so we get, we get just like
with Terminator 2, we get massive chaos in the mall here. Oh, man. So,
yeah, so now Sully leaves. He's gotten to his car and basically. Cindy and John
have to chase him down in Cindy's car.
Now John is driving. And he looks like he's the same height as he was
sitting where there was no seat and now she's sitting. Where there's no
seat and looks normal. And she even mentions, you ripped the seat
out of my car. So it's not like they're trying to make us forget that
happened. It just doesn't make any sense, like who's sitting where and why, but I
still don't know why he ripped that seat. I'll never understand why he rips the
seat. It looks cool. Yeah, so they're
on this car chase. They're going up the hills after
Sully. I think they're on the mountain road that leads to the trailer park from
the last Starfighter. Very similar. Because I was just like, dude, this looks familiar here.
Good old Southern California brown hills, you know? Oh my God.
And then this is really what it's all about here. So Sully manages to kind
of roll his car onto the side and Arnie crashes so hard and
killed them both instantly. Especially no
seats. So that would indicate no seatbelt. No seatbelt. Neither of them
wearing a seatbelt. She's not in a seat at all.
The car is a convertible with the top open, everything. They both should have been
flung from that vehicle. Crazy. Many, many feet, probably off a cliff. Like really that
movie over, cue the end, like they're dead. Yeah, yeah. So he pulls Sully out
of the car. And basically he finds like a motel key in his pocket.
That's right. So he's like, Where is she? Like, what's happening?
And he grabs him by his ankle and he's dangling him over
the cliff. Maybe with a little bit of a help of, you know, somebody put
wires on his ankle or something. But it's so funny. He's like, Remember, Sully,
this is my weak arm. And he's dangling him, trying to get.
Info, and finds out that, okay, the. Motel key is the thing that I need
to know. And we get the classic line. You're better at the Arnie. You want
to fire this one off? Hey, you said you'd kill me last, John. I lied.
Remember, Sully, when I said I'd kill you last? Oh, that's when he Remember when
I. Told you I'd kill you last? I lied. So good. So there goes Sully.
And then he just casually walks back. And I don't know what Cindy had been
doing that whole time, 'cause she's just like, what happened to Sully? And he
goes, I let him go. That's right, I let him go.
Yeah, where was she if she wasn't paying
attention to what was happening? Like, what else was going on around her? Was she
comatose briefly from the crash? I mean, that's believable, I guess. Otherwise she was like,
Ooh, I've never seen a Porsche before. On its side or whatever, right? Because then
he has to, like, flip the
car over, and then it's fine. She's like, you don't have
a car. And he goes, no, I do. So bad. Oh, God. Okay,
so now I think we cut to. To a compound. Jenny is arriving, right?
We get a scene of her with Bennett and, uh, Arius, like, showing up.
At this compound, which we're not really told much about where it is.
Like, we don't know how far they've gone, whatever, but it's clearly. Guards and
with machine guns, like, the whole deal. So this is where she's going to
be held for now. And. Yeah. So, so there's that. We just get a sense.
She's, like, put in this room basically with nothing in
it. And so now she's, she's a prisoner. We know where she
is. Yeah. And while Cindy and Matrix are now, you know, driving to try
to get to the next place, he's explaining a little bit more about her daughter.
And this is, like, one of the. Only serious things in movie
the where he's talking about. About, you know, I've been in Army Special Forces.
Like, I do the stuff that's so secret, I can't even talk about it.
And, you know, when my daughter was. Doing this, I was here when this was
happening. So he's, like, making up for lost time.
And he's like,
you know, this is. My fault that she got kidnapped.
Yeah. And I'm kind of like, I don't need this in this kind
of movie. We don't need emotions, right? No, but, you know, that's the explanation of
it. So at least it's not, like, all the stuff I've done in the Army.
He says something about, like, I wish I wasn't there
for some of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So. So now, now we find the motel. Right. So we to get the motel.
There's, they've got a key. So they go to the room that the key is
for, and they're starting to kind of look around and search. While they're
searching for, they don't really even know what. I don't think they're
just looking for any kind of indication of where Jenny might be. Cook, the Bill
Duke character, he shows up in his car to the motel and kind of catches
them mid search and a fight begins, right? And there's a gun initially, but Matrix
is able to knock the gun out of his hand, I think. And then do
they both have knives or they're just fighting? I can't remember exactly. There's a lot
going on. Yeah, there's a lot happening here. And there's those sick decorative glass blocks
that are just getting housed every time they're throwing each other into the wall.
So classic 80s, those things. It's really good. So there's kind of like a T2
style Terminator fight, right? And of course, you have to go through a wall.
And you never go through a wall into an empty motel room. That's boring
as shit. It has to be a naked couple who are fucking and filming themselves.
There's a camera on a tripod there. I thought this was interesting, 'cause at first
I didn't notice that. And it was like, as the scene
with them ended and they went in. Back into the room, I caught it kind
of out of the corner of my eye while watching the fight. And I go,
oh wait, they were like making a porno or something? Like what? How weird.
What a strange detail to include. Seriously. Like, I'm not against it or anything,
but it's just an odd detail. It was funny. Maybe they planned on, like,
there was a deleted scene where after all this melee, Arnie walks in and pops
the VHS tape out of the camcorder, like puts it in his jacket pocket and
leaves. So yeah, basically in this fight
with Cook, they're going back and forth, throwing each other around, and Cook ends up
just getting impaled on some bars that. Were sticking up out of the ground from
shit they'd broken earlier. Very Pacific Heights, not really sure
where the thing the guy
falls on came from necessarily. Right, right.
So they get to search
Cook's car now. They're looking for clues. And I think they basically found
location of something. They find, like,
receipt, a like, basically, like, for jet fuel or plane fuel, basically. And it's,
and she, we find out here that Cindy, not just as a stewardess, but has
been training to be a pilot and has been learning how to fly. So she
knows, like, a fair amount about some of this stuff. And she mentions, like,
the kind of plane fuel, like, we can go, like,
let's go to that place because, but. That'S what it is. Like, they make chemicals
and they make fuel or something like that. So they go
to this place called patria, I think, is the name of the place.
One thing I noticed is they drive up to it. It's like an industrial facility
of some kind. There was like a really green mist of coming out of the
building that I thought for sure was going to mean something at some point.
Think, more so since we started this. Project, like trying to watch for things.
That, like a checkoff situation that might come up later where it's like, oh,
that looks important. I should remember that we have that. This movie keeps tricking me.
We don't see his armory in the mountain house again. We don't, this green mist
doesn't mean anything. Like so many things that look They
should be deliberate choices that have some. Effect on the
plot or the characters end up not. But there is this
green mist coming off of a fairly large section of this building. I don't understand
why. Hey, it looks cool. It does. It looks very cool. Chemicals. Yeah. Part of
them coming in is this chain link fence that of course is locked together with
a chain and a padlock. Arnie just grabs the chain
and rips it open like it's a cheap zip tie. Yes. Oh my God.
That's crazy. Yeah, so they they get inside here and you know he's crawling through
the where this warehouse and they're trying to find
this plane this is kind of the clue they're looking for right and it's all
full of all this weaponry and there's all these soldiers around and shit But he's
able to sneak around until he gets into this map room or whatever He
kills one of my favorite random henchmen Branscombe Richmond who's been in a lot of
shit. He was on the TV show renegade. Okay, if you've seen him in
the last recent years He has a lot of accessories on so basically yeah,
he conveniently ends up in this room which basically had has a map
with a circle of exactly where they're going to go and a
receipt stapled to it with, like, it's the most convenient set of documents. I really
love it. But he let Cindy in through the window. That's right. Now she's able
to tell him this. Two things I love about this is she. He had told
her, go around the. Corner, like, before he goes to
sneak in. Yeah. He has no idea where he's going. But apparently he led her
directly to the window, to the room he needed to get to, because when he
goes and, like, looks out, she's right there. Right. He helps.
In. Second, the island that they need to go to is already circled on
the map. And then he draws with
the T-square or whatever, latitude and
longitude markers, and an X. But the X is in the middle of
a circle already drawn on the map. It's like crocodile Dundee looking
at his watch and then looking at his son to tell somebody
what time it is. Oh my God.
Yeah, there's a photograph of the plane. And then a receipt for
the fuel. And of course Cindy's like, oh, that many gallons is probably exactly how
much it would take to get to this island. And back. And she said
the type of fuel is for a seaplane. She knows all this stuff, which is
very convenient. I love that. I love it. But she does know all that stuff.
So I think this is when they then go, they go to leave, but he's
like, we gotta get some equipment. Right before he says, Are we going
to the plane? He's like, no, where are we going? Shopping. Shopping, that's right.
So they go to an army surplus store. Yeah. And basically, this is the,
they couldn't get him back to his own armory because it's too far away.
So this is sort of the replacement armory. Exactly. And it's like, I really wish
there'd been a way to make it his instead. But they go through, and it
also, very similar to T2, the underground armory that Sarah Connor sets up, that they
go through in T2, where they're picking stuff off the walls. Lots of movies do
this, right? The Matrix does this. So many great movies do this,
where it's like you're just picking stuff off the walls. Love it. And it was
like a secret button. So it's just normally like an army surplus store that sells
cargo pants and shitty compasses. But then there's always a
secret button that opens up the machine gun and bazooka room.
And you can go in there and there's grenades and everything's laid
out so nicely. It's just like a little boy's dream there. As, as a first
time watcher of this movie, there was a great moment for
me here, which is they're going through. He's grabbing shotguns and rifles and machine guns.
He gets a rocket launcher. She even asks, what's this? He goes, the rocket launcher,
you know, missile launcher, whatever. She says,
so she's putting stuff in this cart, and then
he picks up a minigun,
and I'm like, Yes, we have another minigun situation. Oh, because that's when the cops
show up and arrest him, and he doesn't get the minigun. Luckily,
Cindy has already packed up car, the I
guess, and it's not. It seems like most of this stuff or some is
already in the car. Apparently, it's a convertible full of now weaponry right in front
of the place. Being robbed, but she's not a person of interest at all.
The cops don't even look her way. So they arrest Maytrix, And actually, I was
kind of surprised by this. I thought to myself, I was like, damn, he's actually
like been arrested. Like that, what are they gonna, how are they gonna fix this?
Yeah, you know, they arrest him and they just lead him handcuffed into the back
of the police car. Oh, I didn't notice that. He's not handcuffed at all.
He hasn't been searched or anything because he still has his watch on. Oh my
God. And he's telling the cops, he's like, call General Franklin Kirby.
He will explain everything. And the guy's like, oh yeah, Kirby.
Yeah, I think we picked him up last night. Like, good dismissive,
Kirby. Cop. And, you know, if I'm the cop, I'm saying the
same shit there. It's like, dude, you were just robbing a surplus store.
I don't think there's an army directive for this. Tell it to the judge.
Yeah, sort of. But yeah, so they're driving off ostensibly.
To take him to jail. And so Cindy follows in the car.
And this I love, she pulls up alongside the
cops. I think they're stopped at a stoplight. Yeah. Pulls up alongside, and the cop
looks over and goes, Hey. And, like, says to his buddy that it's a hooker.
When is the hooker ever the one in the car? Seriously? Isn't the hooker on
the street and the car drives up to her? How does this supposed to work?
Ann, aren't you a cop? This is such a weird reaction. No, it is crazy.
They believe she's a hooker or whatever. So as they start driving away, I think
she gets something. She stands up in the car. So basically, the light turns
green and they drive away, and then they're kind of looking
at her in the rear view, like, what is she doing there? She's standing up
in the car, and then all of a sudden, she puts the rocket launcher over
her shoulder. Shoulder hits the button. It goes back. It goes backwards, destroying, like,
a bus stop or something. Just. Just demolishing this poor bus stop. Like, but luckily,
she had a second. Shot, and she turns it around, and it's the most perfect
shot of all time. Like, right. No injury shot to
anybody in the vehicle. Yep. Right under the tire,
flips it perfectly. Perfect. And she comes up and
she picks up when she. She fired the
missile the wrong direction. I thought, okay, that's pretty funny. What's she
gonna try now instead of that? Then she turns the thing around. I go,
oh, no, no, no, no. Dear, you don't
know how to use it. Clearly you don't know how to
use this. So then she does it, and I'm. Thinking, I'm literally thinking
to myself as I'm watching this, she's gonna kill him. What is she doing?
Sure enough, though, that, yeah, she skips the rocket under the truck, and it all
works out fine. And then I love he asks, How did you know how to
do that? She goes, I read the instructions. Love it. Love it.
Totally good answer, Cindy. Nice work. Oh, man. So, yeah, so now they're cruising there.
They're trying to get to this plane and they're heading towards the plane and they've
got their bags of stuff. And they haven't quite been discovered yet. But these guys
kind of see them as they're getting in. Getting in the plane. Yeah. So we
got to shoot out here and Cindy's trying to get the thing flying. And of
course, you know, I've never seen a plane. You're only ever flying a type of
plane that you've never seen in your life. Right. It's never like, oh, sick.
This is the same plane I tried on. It's always like,
what? Where are, what is this? This thing has like too many
engines. She's used to a Cessna. Yeah, it's too big It's not a it's
she says to me it's not a plane. It's a canoe with wings. Yeah,
it's this old like seaplane and then she complains that there's no LED readout I'm
like yeah, I don't want to touch that LED. I thought LED was a newer
technology, but I don't know I guess it only is in televisions and and so
Arnie's like shooting at these guys and like going back in like come on and
then I don't love this line, but I think it's funny When he. Hits it,
he's like, Come on, you piece of
shit. And then he hits it, he goes, Fly or die! And Fonzie's it.
And then the plane just fires up and starts rolling. We'll start rolling.
Yeah. But we did get a cut, I. Don'T know, it's like right before they.
Arrive there, we just get a quick cut that Jenny is still in the room
that she's being held in, but has started kind of looking. She opens up these
windows and sees they've been boarded up, this French door sort of thing right
near her, has been boarded up. But she starts kind of trying to. Figure out
out if she can get out. I don't know if this is when she,
I think this is when she discovers the boarded up room. Later she'll like get
a tool to come. Yeah. And I think like a piece. Yeah. Yeah. So I
think it's a little later figuring out like her outside. And then we get a
quick General Kirby, I think, where they're talking about. Cuz now he's had
word. He's at the site of the surplus
store stuff. Y. And somebody did call him, apparently. Yeah. And then one of the
guys says to him, he's like, what are you expecting? And he goes He World
War Three. So again, just good Colonel Troupman type shit. Yes. As they're flying,
you've probably picked this up. They're flying towards the island in the
plane and it cuts
to a Coast. Guard radar guy saying, Hey, you're not allowed to fly here.
No, you're down. Bill Paxton. That's right. It was Bill Paxton for sure. He's the
guy. So good to see. So good to see Bill Paxton. Very early role.
Obviously, I didn't look to see just how early in his career this
was, but obviously an earlier role. I think this must have been before Weird Science,
right? Yeah, 86 or 87. So, yeah, that's always when I think
Bill Paxton early role, Weird Science is the first one that comes to mind.
Not having seen this before. But, yeah, he's there and he's basically telling them.
And then, so they have to try to-- He says something like, Can you fly
under the radar? And she's like, well, not marine radar, which makes sense. It's a
different kind of thing. But she's still able to sort of--. She says something or
something? What is it? Listen, if we have any pilots or any Coast
Guard people listening, the show@twodads1movie.com because she says, if I fly it
low enough, the waves will mask our location, which seems like,
well, that sounds a lot like crashing into the water. Sure,
that solves your radar problem, but regardless, they are able to approach the
island, which I think they said earlier. Was off the coast of
Santa Barbara. So a little further north of LA. But still Southern California,
they're able to land on the water far enough away from the island, apparently,
that they're going to avoid sort of detection from on the shore or something like
that. They find a place to chill. So he basically gathers up all
his equipment and- well, first he puts a speedo on. For some reason, he strips
down to a speedo to row like half a mile to shore instead of his
clothes that he already had on. The big lifeboat sort of raft that he's in.
But this is now when he arrives on shore, this is like sort of.
The very famous brief montage of like suiting up.
I love it.
Right. He's coloring on himself and
he's putting eye black under his man boobs or whatever he's
doing. It's bizarre. But he's doing all this stuff and
sort of camouflaging himself and putting
on the vest. And so it's now he's in the class.
He's in sort of the outfit from the movie poster. Yes. That's what he's looking
like. He's holding every possible weapon right now. He's holding hundreds of pounds of
machine guns and everything. Yeah, so he's ready to roll. Back at where Jenny's at,
we get a quick Little scene of the most intimidating bad guy of all time.
Bennett. Yes. One of these soldiers says to him, he's like cutting a little girl's
throat. Is like cutting warm butter. And then Bennett's like, I love listening
to your little pissant soldiers trying to talk tough.
It makes me laugh. If Matrix was here,
he would laugh too. And like he's big up in Matrix. Like every time he's
talking about him, it's like, oh, he's in love. Oh,
he's in love with Matrix. Yes, and that's the
point of this whole thing. He can't have him, so no one can have him.
Exactly. That's Bennett's deal. So yeah, Arnie ready to roll, and now I think we
see Jenny kind of starting to chip away at what she's done. She's somehow,
I can't remember exactly what the tool is. She figured some way to take the
door handle off the inside of the door. No, she's not,
she's smart enough not to just try to walk out,
'cause there are guards and stuff, but she's able to
use it to sort of start to pry away the boards on the
boarded up French doors, right? So first of all, why they
would put her in a ground floor room, don't ask me, that's mistake
number one. It seemed like there were 56 different rooms in that
big building. It was a house. It was a big
building. But yeah, so she has started working on an escape plan, basically, and getting
her way out. I also believe in this one we get a quick cut over
to the country of Val Verde, where the plane has landed. So we are now
at the point where I can't remember what you said. His name, Richards, or is
that the. Name of the-- yeah, I think that's what it
was. The guy, basically, the dead guy sitting next to John Matrix's old seat,
he's. Gonna be discovered, and the people there expecting the two of them to
get off the plane are about to figure out that they're not
going to. So time is of the essence. Right, and as soon as they make
the call, that's it, right? So we see this starting to unfold here. Matrix starts,
you know, taking guys out at the camp. And it appears that he
has walked upon a fake mustache convention. It's really there. Okay,
throughout this scene, this is what. Makes me laugh so hard when you. Were talking
about, like, what? How do we figure the number of people that were
killed? He kills many guys multiple times each. Yes. Like,
it's just, okay, now try it with this hat and this mustache.
It's like they went to a Central American guerrilla. Military themed photo
booth and they just had to dig through the trunk of accessories and there's only
seven different guys and they had to like switch
up looks. Which makes it even funnier that there are 50 57 stunt actors
listed in the credits and there are 40 characters listed in the
cast. So there are more stunt actors than actors
in the movie and yet
we still get duplicates, basically. I'm not sure exactly how that
works. It's great. And there's certain. There's certain inconsistencies here,
like, between the sound and what you see and things that really crack me up.
He sets this building to explode, and when he detonates it,
it shows, like, a model of the building exploding several times,
and then the tiny action figure guys, like, they have, like, the stands underneath.
Oh, yeah. They didn't even put
sand over that shit. They're like literally the army guys. They just painted them black
to make them look a little less obvious. But yeah, that's so fucking funny.
Here's why they got the Saturn Award for best special effects. This is why it's
a $10 million movie. If it had been a $15 million movie, that would have
been better. That would have been much better.
But you know how I love movies where there's models inside,
like in Die Hard, they have the models of the building. So I like to
think that he detonated it, and first inside that building, there was a little model
of the building that blew up, and then it zapped. Zoomed out to show us
the actual building. Sure, sure. But God damn, this is so funny.
And he goes through, he is really killing
everyone. Yes. And he is not taking any damage. And he's not really hiding behind
stuff. He's just kind of like, oh, as long as I keep shooting, my bullets
are also hitting your bullets and you. Right, it's wild. Yeah,
the number of times that he is not taking cover, that he is. Not in
any way protected, just standing. Kind of waving his machine gun back and forth.
Forth and all they're shooting at
him. Yeah. And not a single. He doesn't get, like, skinned by a ball.
I mean, it's nothing. Yeah. This is not
even like, you know. Oh, I hit my ear. Nope. Didn't happen. Nothing. Not a
thing. Just ridiculous. But fun. Yeah. But it's now
he's approached the Mansion, which means I've got to take a moment to mention.
I don't know if you're aware of this or not. Yeah. I recognized this Mansion
immediately. This is the same Mansion that is Victor Maitland's Mansion at the end of
Beverly Hills. Cop. So the final sequence of Beverly Hills Cop
in 1984 and Commando in 1985 take place in the same place. It's a mansion
in Beverly Hills that they used to shoot
scenes. But yeah, I recognized it right away because Eddie Murphy and Judge Reinhold
run around outside the exact same house in Beverly Hills Cop. So yeah, so it
is the Beverly Hills Cop mansion. I can't remember the name of the actual mansion,
but it's got like a famous name because it's been used in many, many movies.
Oh, that's funny. So yeah, so that's a fun little-- I wonder how high up,
if you go to visit it, how high up high up Commando is on the
list when they're talking about the movies that have been filmed there. Below Beverly Hills
Cop, for sure. So Arnie ends up, he takes refuge briefly in the tool shed.
Right. The gardening shed. Which I love, because it's just like,
look at all these improvised weapons surrounding you. Pitchforks and saw blades and- Boy,
does he go fucking crazy. Throwing axes at people. Pitchfork to the chest.
He throws a saw blade like a ninja star,
and it just It's like when it hits somebody's skull, it does not lose
any speed. It just continues to like saw all the way through
a guy's head. He takes a machete, and of course, we get
a guy's arm chopped off. For those of you playing at home,
missing or artificial limb, that is a Two Dads, One Movie classic.
That is becoming the most common sort of connection between our movies, as a.
Missing or artificial limb. And I feel like the guy who.
Got his arm chopped off had already been killed once and then gets killed still
two more times. Oh my God, that's awesome. So he gets into the building
now and oh, and by the way, the phone calls come from
Valverde and Aryas has told Bennett to go kill Jenny, but Jenny has been able
to escape. She was able to get out of the room through the boarded
up part and run off to like, it looks like kind of like
some kind of entrance to like a facility's something. It's a little hard to tell.
It's like an electrical shed and she's able to go underground, right? But she had
to go outside first. And then she goes back inside. But now Bennett's following her
and basically with, with a knife. And I'll mention in Bennett's chase of Jenny,
there are several times where he's not wearing his fingerless gloves and
then later is wearing his fingerless gloves. They keep going on and off. Not,
not great continuity there from, from the director,
but that's okay. So now, uh, Matrix has gotten into the mansion.
He's still killing guys left and right. I mean, it's just
a ridiculous body. Count, but Arius, Dan, Dan hadaya has got to start defending himself.
Himself. And I noticed that he has a very recognizable weapon.
He is using a stare AUG, just like Carl in Die Hard. Okay. Exact same
crazy large rifle that, that is used by Carl in that movie. Now, do you
think the writer, since it's the same writer, wrote that specific gun into the movie?
It could be. It absolutely could be. It's, it's, you know, the, the director is
different in the two movies. And John McTiernan was a big fan of MP5s,
and that was something that he put, gave to all of, all of the bad
guys in his and then she goes back inside but now Bennett's following her and
basically with, with a knife. And I'll mention in Bennett's chase of Jenny there are
several times where he's not wearing his fingerless gloves and then later is wearing
his fingerless gloves. They keep going on and off. Not, not great continuity there
from, from the director, but that's okay. So now
Matrix has gotten into the mansion. He's still killing guys left and right. I mean
it's just a ridiculous body count. But Arias, Dan Hadiah has got to
start defending himself. It's really funny, dude. That might have been because I read that
Dan Hadaiah was so uncomfortable even with the like prop weaponry.
Like he just wasn't comfortable firing the gun and everything
that he just, he just, it took them a long time. To get good takes
of him shooting. Really? That he often was cringing and flinching as he fired the
weaponry. And so it was like apparently took them many, many takes to get it
right. So I think they ended up in a point
where they had to use not necessarily the takes that lined up. Up, but just
the ones where he didn't look bad. Holy shit, that is very funny. So that's
why they never made a Dan Hadaei hard. Yeah, no, no. That's funny. I've never
heard of an actor like. Being-- Dan Hadaei would die easily, it sounds like.
But yeah, he apparently was not into it. You know, I'm not sure about the
details there, but yeah. Um, well, now we have a kind of a final showdown
about to happen and where else to have this. Wait,
we have to mention real quick, Ares is killed by
the fact that-- so now John Matrix has, you know, ran through several other
weapons and has a shotgun. Yes. And fires and hits Arius, but he.
Doesn'T fly out the window. He gets shot six times in a row by the
shotgun and then flies out the window. Like, good Lord. Like, how the force
is either enough to push you out the window or it's not. I'm not quite
sure what the sixth volley really did other than make sure he's dead. Yeah,
but did, you know, got him. Like, he's gone. Yeah, he's done. He's done.
And, you know, even though he's the main bad guy, this, it didn't show him
doing other than he masterminded the kidnapping, but he wasn't. Depicted doing,
like, despicable shit, really. So it wasn't quite as
satisfying of, like, as a Cyrus the Virus type killing.
He's the hands off villain, sort of. You know, he's the CEO of.
Yes, exactly. Right. So. So now we have to go to. A very Cinema friendly
place for a final Showdown where.
here. Where Bennett has chased Jenny now into
this, like, electrical room and then. Then a boiler room.
I mean, it's just the classic pipes, electric wires, all kinds of stuff.
And they end up going down there. Matrix is shot pretty quickly.
Yeah. By Bennett. It's the first time he's, like, really kind
of wounded. Yeah. It seemed like the way he reacted to it just went all
the way through, which is not a big deal. Anyone out there, if you get
shot. As long as it goes all the way through, you're fine.
Don't even go to the hospital if you can
avoid. Avoid it. Like Lewis Gossett Jr. in Toy Soldiers, man,
he's all good. But then this is where Bennett or Matrix realizes, like, all right,
I can beat this guy psychologically. He's obviously, like, obsessed with me in this crazy
way. So he tries to appeal to that. He's like, you know, I only have
one arm. Come on, you could beat me.
And you don't need that gun. You know, he gets him to throw his gun
down. It's crazy, dude. He's like Jedi mind tricking it. And this is a point
I didn't write down or remember exactly what Bennett says in this,
but he is trying so hard to look intimidating and be scary. And it
comes off to me like an absolutely unhinged
lover who is just pissed at his ex. That is
what it comes off as. That he's just resentful of Matrix and. The life he's
built for him post his love affair with Bennett. And it's just like, it's not
intimidating at all. Again, Bennett is so unbelievable as a
villain. And with Arnold being such a superhuman, Yeah,
hero in this, there isn't a
counterbalance. There isn't a villain big enough in the
movie for him. Yeah, there needs to be some kind of piece of
machinery or like a predator type thing. Like the T-1000, the Predator, whatever. Anytime you've
got Arnold with a really great action movie on
all levels, part of it is the villain's intimidating and big and kind of scary,
you know? Yeah, and you get Bennett looking like Freddie Mercury saying, Come on,
John. Fat bottom girls make the world go round, John.
Bicycle. Bicycle. I wanna ride my bicycle. So we finally, you know, Matrix is able
to kind of negotiate this down to a knife fight, which is very impressive,
right? You know, so he's like, Come on, throw down the gun and let Jenny
go. He gave in quicker than I give in, like, halfway through dry January,
when one of my friends, like, slightly gives me a disapproving look for not having
a beer. I'm like, Fine, I'll have one
fucking beer. Here. So then we
get a kind of, you know, a fight, a hand-to-hand fight that is, is pretty
even. Although, like you said, it not believable is even. But at least Matrix has
the, he has the one arm. So there's that part of it. He's trying to
fight with the knife. And doesn't have the other arm to really, like, help him.
Right. So because there's a point where I kind of forgot for a moment his
arm was busted. And so he, like, blocks a knife attack.
But then Bennett's able to, like, grab him with a free hand.
And I'm thinking myself, where the hell is Matrix's free hand?
Oh, right, he can't use it. So it is,
in that sense, it is a more level
playing field. 'Cause, like, I'm making fun of Bennett, but it's not like he's not
burly at all. Like, he's still, like, a dude who looks like he can beat
some ass. Like, yeah, you're wrong. He would kill both of us. So Vernon Wells,
we apologize, you're the toughest guy that's ever lived. Even Vernon Wells now.
Yeah, I'm sure he's, like, 85 or something. Like, I'm still not fighting that guy.
No, but, but, so, yeah, so the fight happens. And you know what? I'll be
honest, like, pretty good hand-to-hand fight. I like the choreography of it. I like the
improvised weaponry. Yeah, like, I thought this was, like, pretty interesting. I didn't love
how it ended personally. Oh, well, before we get there. Yeah. Because there are a
couple cool things. Ripping a pipe off the wall and. Then beating,
you know, that was cool. Matrix is getting beaten with it. And then this always
cracked me up is he throws Bennett into like this wall of like loose electrical
shit and he gets electrocuted for a few seconds. It's like, oh, oh, oh,
oh. And then he bounces back like that just charged
him up. Like became I more powerful. Oh, you didn't know I'm powered? I'm Electro
Spider-Man. And Arnie had a sequence, you know, so we were kind of
back and forth, hit, hit, hit. And then it was like a whole
bunch of punches all in sequence right. Before you finally threw him against the
wall. And yeah, how does Bennett, how does he
go out? If I remember correctly, Matrix pulls a pipe off the wall
or off of some piece with a pipe. Throws it
like a javelin or spear. And then it somehow goes straight through the man's chest.
And into whatever pipe or whatever he's.
Like is behind him because then all the steam from that comes
out the pipe. Yes. Okay. But look, it's a little unbelievable, but look,
they landed a perfect line here because when that happens,
we get Arnie saying, let off some steam,
Bennett. It's a good line. It's a good line. And I love that the
only reason it was a pipe and the only. Reason that it went
into another pipe. Was so that the steam could come out. Because,
you know, that line was written before the writer figured out, how am I going
to fit this in? I really wanted to say, what can I do? It is
really going to work. You, you, you pigeon hold it in there. It's like you
can tell. Yeah, you can tell when something is. Written around a certain thing.
And, and I really love whoever really believed in that line.
Like they believed in the let off some steam. That's true.
Of course, at the end, Matrix is walking
out. He's carrying Jenny. He's one good arm. Yeah. He's taking everyone out. The army
arrives and General Kirby goes up and he goes, Leave anything
for us? And we get a just bodies. Just bodies. And then Cindy gets out
of the seaplane and it's like, oh, here's your new mom. And then they just,
they let him fly away again. No questioning, no like, no debriefs. No weaknesses after
the fact. None of that stuff. Yeah, it is interesting. Yeah, so that's Commando.
That is, that is the whole of Commando. And we do get kind of like
a whip ass 80 song at the end of this movie. Yeah, I actually
dug that song. There's not really any throughout, but then we get We Fight for
Love by Power Station, which actually is a pretty good song. I mean, for the
time and for the style, I actually enjoyed it. I thought that was, you know,
all right, that's not bad. I can dig it. Yes. So that is Commando,
man. All right, well, this was your picnic. I think you
should give us your breakdown first, dude. This movie, it just makes me so
happy. Like I said, if you know me and you know the things that I
like, you know that this is chock full all of them. And this is my
favorite Schwarzenegger movie. I don't think it's the best film of the Schwarzenegger movies,
but this has the most of the that I like and the least of the
that I don't like. And it's a crisp 90 man. It is.
Yeah. Mark L. Lester. I do like some of his other movies. I love Showdown
in Little Tokyo of, like, some other stuff that he's done. This is a five
for me. If you love Arnie for the reasons.
I love Arnie and you love that kind of,
like, auxiliary cheesy, the sub. Boss characters and the lines
and I think this one makes me very happy and I don't think we'll agree
on this, but for me, from my perspective, this is a five. That's great.
I love that. Look, here's the thing. It's not a five for me, but I
still really enjoyed this movie. It was the first time I've ever seen it,
so no nostalgia for it. Nothing that harkens back to like, you know, drunken nights
in like high school. Or college watching it, nothing like that. But, you know,
like you said, it is chock full of cheesy one-liners, which are great. You know,
I love those. I really wish the villain was more intimidating, but that's
okay. You know, the action's fantastic. The body counts were crazy high. The weaponry is
fun to watch, you know, All those things, a lot of the things that we
just talked a couple weeks ago about being what makes Predator
so good. Right. Because those two movies really do line up, right? Like we watched
Predator, we watched Total Recall, True Lies, Now this for January. And I feel like
of those movies, the two that are most closely tied to each other are Predator
and Commando. They're very similar styles. And I have all the nostalgia in the world
for Predator. I first saw that when I was like 12. And then I don't
have any for this, but it was still a ton of fun.
So I am a three out of five on Commando.
I really enjoyed it. But it's like too many things where I was like,
okay, that was too unrealistic. Or again, Bennett, like, really a full. Point came off
this movie because Bennett was just not intimidating to me. But it's still
a three out of five. I think it was fun. Yeah. And, you know,
it definitely, you know, I think anybody, if you haven't seen,
this is what I would say. If you saw this movie when you were younger
and you haven't in a while, go, go dig it up, because I am sure
that if I had even an ounce of Nostalgia for it, I would have enjoyed
it even more. But that makes us an eight out of ten on Commando,
which is pretty solid, definitely. Of the other sort of ratings and
stuff. So that wraps up January for us.
This is the final what a month Wednesday in January. Yeah. Fantastic way to kick
off 2026. And, you know, I don't know if you realize this, Nick, but do
you know what next week is? Next week. Next week. February. February 4th will be
the next Wednesday. That sounds like anniversary
an of sorts. Is the one-year anniversary of the start of this
very podcast. Wow. February 4th, 2025, we released our
episode on Groundhog Day. And on February 4th, 2026, we are going to start a
new, it's not a theme, but it's like a new sequence. And I think it's
something we're going to kick off and really enjoy doing to start off our second
full year of working on the podcast. So it's not a theme month. We're not
calling it that. We're not tying movies together by any kind of
like actor or style or anything,
but we are going to work on we're gonna walk through what we're calling
two dads, two decades. We're gonna start with 1980 and we're gonna watch a movie
from 1980 and the week after that, 81 and then 82, so forth, all the
way up to 1999 in, I think it'll be sometime in June. We'll get to
that. It's gonna take us a while to do it. Yeah, but that's fantastic.
This gives us a little structure. I think for our choices, we'll still go
back and forth like we always have. And I'm gonna be the one
that. Kicks it off and starts off with 1980. And when I looked at the
movies of 1980, 80. I had a lot of choices that I felt like I
could make. Yeah. There's so many good
movies from that year. One I didn't choose for me, but a
particular favorite I hope we watch together at some point is the Caddy Shack would
have been one of my, you know, potential choices. But I've decided to.
To kind of go back to a group of filmmakers. We've actually already seen once.
Okay, so the Kentucky Fried Theater boys gave us naked gun from the files of
police squad. And before they did that, they gave us airplane from. 1980. Oh,
baby. Zucker, Abraham Zucker's airplane. This is fantastic. This is the first comedic
role for several very dramatic, serious actors, which is so much fun. We'll get into
all that next week. But there's something else we're doing next week, too, Nick,
that I think I should mention. Yeah. Next week, we're going on a field trip.
I can't wait. I love field trips. We're going on
a field trip to the cinema
nine podcast, where our buddies, Mike Mike and Eric and Travis have invited us to
come on and chat about a movie that we haven't done on this show yet
and they haven't done on their show and their show has been around for
like five years. Wow. We're gonna watch Executive Decision starring Kurt Russell and Steven Seagal
with the Cinema 9 boys next week. I think it'll come out before our episode
on airplane does. So if you're listening, keep an eye out for Cinema 9.
Nick and I will be on that next week and you don't want to miss
that. Yeah, and that's a great podcast. I've listened to a bunch of Cinema
9 I think they do a really good job and they're slightly different than
us. So even an episode on the same film, I think you get a lot
listening to both. But yeah, I can't wait
to chat with those guys and chat some executive decisions. It'll be my second time
on their podcast. I actually was, they're on like episode 260 some odd, but I
was on episode 57 back in 2021 and we talked about Get Shorty at that
time. So that was a lot of fun. So yeah, so keep an eye out
for that. Watch for us on Cinema 9 podcast. Podcast, but here on Two Dads,
One Movie, we will be talking about airplane next week, and I'm super excited about
that. So that's a wrap. If you like what you hear and we hope you
do, please consider heading over to Apple or Spotify and leaving us
a five-star review. It really helps new folks find the show. Be sure to check
out our website at twodads1movie.com. that's the number two and the number one.
There you can explore the movies we've covered, sign up for our newsletter, the.
Rewind, and even get sneak previews of upcoming episodes. We'd also love it if you
followed us on
Instagram at two dads,
one movie. Once again,
this has been Commando, another episode two
of dads, one movie. I'm Steve.
And I'm Nick. Thank you so much for listening. We'll catch you next week.