Commando: Director's Cut

Arnold Schwarzenegger followed his success in The Terminator with this 1985 Joel Silver-produced smash hit, which cemented his reputation as the screen's top action star. With its quicksilver pacing, flamboyant chases and fights, and quotable one-liners, Commando set a new high-water mark for the genre. Ah-nold, as you may recall, plays a retired special-ops soldier who emerges from seclusion and wages a one-man counterattack on the revenge-seeking villains who've kidnapped his young daughter (Alyssa Milano in her first significant feature-film role) in order to lure him out into the open. Rae Dawn Chong, Dan Hedaya, David Patrick Kelly, and Bill Duke impress in their supporting roles, but Commando is the Governator's film all the way, a shining example of the star at his best, before his big budget vehicles lurched into self-parody. Featuring both the original version and the unrated director's cut (restoring five minutes of previously unseen footage), DVD extras here include an audio commentary by director Mark L. Lester, featurettes, deleted scenes, and stills galleries. Recommended. (E. Hulse)