Every Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie Ranked Worst To Best

One need only listen to the ridiculous genius that is James Horner's score for Commando to get a sense of just how brilliantly fun the movie is. A bouncy hodgepodge of steel drums, synth, and then out of nowhere a saxophone (because why not?), Horner's theme is the perfect embodiment of Schwarzenegger's most brand-reflective action film, which remains to this day one of the actor's most enduring.

Directed by Mark L. Lester and written by eighties and nineties genre fixture Steven E. de Souza, Commando was in many ways the film that cemented Schwarzenegger's action bonafides. Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator had arrived earlier, yes, but this was the film that established Brand Arnold; boisterous, endlessly quotable, and completely and utterly devoted to centering Schwarzenegger's whirlwind physicality.

Commando isn't as technically accomplished as many of the films Schwarzenegger would star in afterwards, but it rightly remains a touchstone of eighties' action cinema.