Director Marc Lester is no James Cameron(True Lies), but he's at least better than Ivan Reitman(Kindergarten Cop), so "COMMANDO," while still only average fare for action fans of Schwarzenegger, is far better than some of his other ventures.  "COMMANDO" is over 25 years old, and as young as Arnold looks, Alyssa Milano, playing his daughter, looks even younger!!! While she's grown to be a beauty, it's evident here that her attractiveness and genuine amiability foreshadowed success that was to follow.  The plot has Arnold playing a Special Forces commander, out to rescue his kidnapped daughter from the clutches of the some really bad guys, also responsible for the fellow members of his unit that have recently been killed.

The script, in spite of some poor dialogue, actually offers some creative scenes, especially early on, and their overall success is hampered only by the film's modest budget.  As the film moves along, there are some worthwhile moments, and the plot is surprisingly more involving than many films with similar structure that came after, but, all of these moments, again, are still hampered by the film's budget limitations. So, "big" action scenes come across with much less power and satisfaction. When the film's finally over, "COMMANDO" isn't a great "Arnold" film, but it's not bad, either.

FOX has provided the correct 1.85:1 aspect ratio for this 1080p blu-ray release.  The MPEG-2 encoding is decent, but it can only do so much in presenting the original source material.  Colors are notably less rich and vivid when compared to more recent films of the past two decades.  And, while detail is generally impressive, and notably so over the standard dvd, it lacks the level of depth of many superior FOX blu-ray releases.

FOX has provided a DTS-HD Lossless Master Audio 5.1 mix.  Most surprising about this mix, is how much less dated it appears than the film source! While not consistently aggressive, whenever action scenes unfold, surrounds and bass effects are well balanced and presented with greater dynamic range than one expects. Dialogue is always intelligible and balanced.

For some reason, FOX didn't elect to included the slightly "extended" director's cut, recently released on dvd.