5 Awesome Performances…
5. Commando (1985)
If you enter into Commando looking for realism, looking for plausible cause and effect, then you’re going to leave this one shaking your head in disappointment. But if you go in looking for a ridiculously over-the-top eighties action extravaganza, then you’ve found your promised land.
When an evil Freddie Mercury impersonator kidnaps Arnie’s daughter, you know that what he does next is going to ensure that for Bennett, the show most certainly will not go on. In Commando, Arnie can ‘smell’ enemies coming, he can tear car seats out of their housing in seconds and he can generally dispense one-man-army justice without so much as breaking a sweat.
Schwarzenegger is perfect in a role like this, and it’s a role you’ll have seen him in many times in the past, but Commando is arguably the pinnacle of his genius as an unstoppable army of one.
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9 Comments
this isn’t a list of worst and best performances, its a list of the worst and best films.
the article has nothing to do with the title.
Junior and Twins aren’t among his 5 worst films? Insanity
the two movies he made with Danny DeVito where awfull !!!
“Kindergarten Cop” wasn’t that great of a movie. But there’s one that pushes it off the list: “Junior,” where he portrayed the world’s first pregnant man. It wasn’t funny in “Rabbit Test” (how many of you remember that?); it wasn’t funny here. I’d rather watch “Kindergarten Cop” than “Junior” or even the “Conan” films.
One of his that gets maligned, but I thought was a pretty good sendup of the genre he himself helped create: “Last Action Hero” might rate a spot if you were to expand it. “Terminator 3″ wasn’t too bad, either.
I’m glad you mentioned Last Action Hero, I’ve always thought it was quite good too, and would go as far as saying it was Arnie’s best comic performance.
Written like a true film snob. Even your compliments are back handed insults. You repeatedly say he can’t “act” yet the majority of 80′s and 90′s action films have been admitted to have been written with him in mind for the lead. Arnold’s breadth of emotions may not come off as profound, but I certainly think they pass as versatile acting. Your list shows understanding that rage, retaliation, and stoic machismo is his forte (heck its his gift to the art), but I don’t think you quite appreciate his efforts to commit to conflict, or his later endeavors in comedy. What Colin Ferrel was really missing in his Total Recall was the conflict his character has with his duplicitous past and his true self. In fact it was completely absent in his iteration of the film. Arnold, however, nailed it in his portrayal of a character grappling with his past deeds and seeking redemption, even if it was riddled with silly lines (i.e. “Howdy Stranger”). Arnold manages to embody characters plagued with internal conflict throughout his film career and I believe he does so with great success. These beats in emotions have been historically off putting to audiences because I believe they are in such stark contrast with all of his stoic machismo. For example, the way in which he greets his love interest at the end of Kindergarten Cop, grin from ear to ear, is ridiculous looking in comparison to his shotgun touting self from the beginning. His acting here isn’t bad though, and his transformation not unbelievable, Arnold Schwarzenegger wide eyed with a gap toothed grin is just something we as an audience aren’t accustomed to and reject as “believable”. But I believe that as he makes his return to acting in his elderly state he won’t have his machismo image to cling to and the world will begin to see the versatile acting capability that Arnold has had for years.
Why is The Villain not on the worst list?! That was an absolutely horrible performance, while he pranced around in a skin tight, light blue, cowboy outfit.
Last Action Hero, The Running Man, and Eraser all belong on the good list.
Terminator 3, End of Days, and Junior belong on the bad list.
He never even says ‘Ice to See you’ in Batman and Robin, do some research