My Cultural Diet

Once upon a time, there was a movie called Space Mutiny that starred one Reb Brown as a yoked fighter pilot named Blast Hardcheese. (Or was it Big McLargeHuge?) But before he saved the Southern Sun, Brown took on the Viet Cong as Sergeant Michael Ransom, an elite commando working behind enemy lines. Or at least he was before his team’s last mission went horribly awry. After being rescued by some villagers — who basically worship him simply because he’s an American — Ransom swears to avenge his buddies and strike back at the Viet Cong. However, they might not be his only enemy out there in the jungle. Strike Commando is an obvious and very awkward Rambo ripoff, but it rides that awkwardness so hard that it becomes something entirely its own. Which, to be perfectly clear, does not mean it’s good. Everything about Strike Commando is hilariously bad, be it Ransom’s endless supply of grenades regardless of his state of (un)dress, Luigi Ceccarelli’s synth-heavy soundtrack (which sounds better-suited for an ’80s “magical girl” anime), the gratuitous amounts of stock footage, or the countless bad guys who exist simply as cannon fodder. (I find no fault, however, with the film’s copious pyrotechnics.) Brown throws himself into his role with considerable gusto, which basically means lots and lots — and lots — of yelling. He also tries really hard to be dramatic as needed. But the film’s dialog is so corny that “dramatic” is an impossibility. At one point, Ransom comforts a dying child who’s been shot by the VC by telling him about all of the popcorn and cotton candy in Disneyland — and it’s the film’s funniest scene.

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