MITHUN

Commando
By Keith – December 19, 2006
Posted in: Movies

Release Year: 1988
Country: India
Starring: Mithun Chakraborty, Mandakini, Hemant Birje, Kim, Danny Denzongpa, Shakti Kapoor, Amrish Puri, Asrani, Satish Shah, Om Shivpuri, Dalip Tahil, Sarla Yeolekar
Script: Babbar Subhash
Director: Babbar Subhash
Cinematography: Radhu Karmakar
Music: Bappi Lahiri
Producer: Mushir Alam, Mohammad Riaz

I was having a conversation with our good friend Beth of Beth Loves Bollywood (which you should also be reading — I mean, what else do you have to do all day at work?) that resulted in me positing that there was no way Bollywood got out of the 1980s without making at least one ninja movie. It’s inconceivable that Bollywood, a film industry just as giddy about exploiting trends as any other country’s film industry, didn’t latch on to the explosion of ninja popularity that made the 1980s such a glorious time to be a bad film fan. Despite the Japanese origins of the ninja (for a brief summary, you should see our review of Enter the Ninja), most of the ninja movies that came out in the 1980s were made in Hong Kong or the United States, with many of the Hong Kong productions being piecemeal Frankenstein monsters created from the bits and pieces of other movies spliced with newly shot footage (usually from Italy or The Philippines) of white guys in red and yellow ninja uniforms with headbands that say “Ninja” on them, courtesy of the holy trinity of cut-rate ninja exploitation production: Thomas Tang, Godfrey Ho, and Joseph Lai.

But it’s not like other countries didn’t get in on the good ninja action. Japan threw a few movies into the mix, usually featuring Hiroyuki Sanada, as did plenty of other countries. There was no way, I declared with a thump of my fist on the stained surface of my large oaken desk, that India didn’t make a ninja movie. No sooner did I post this declaration than Beth fired back with an almost immediate — and most welcome — link she’d turned up to a review on (another highly recommended website) Cinema Strikes Back of a film called Commando.

Now, not only is Commando (not to be confused with Commando) a Bollywood ninja film, it’s a Bollywood ninja film from the same cast and crew who brought you Disco Dancer. I nearly fell out of my seat with joy as I looked at a series of screencaps in which our hero Jimmy (he’s got a different name in this movie, but he’ll always be Jimmy to me) faces down legions of black-clad ninjas, including the leader of the Ninja clan, who is actually named Ninja. Executing the fastest and most accurate typing job I’ve ever pulled off, I was on the IndaWeekly website, handing over my credit card number, then immediately walking over to my mailbox and wondering with anger and frustration why the DVD of Commando I order two minutes prior wasn’t yet in my trembling, impatient hands. Beth, apparently, did the same.