In the 1985 film "Commando," Arnold Schwarzenegger plays former Special Forces colonel John Matrix. The surname emphasizes the character’s identity as a disciplined military operator, while the film’s story places him in a personal rescue mission after his daughter Jenny is kidnapped.
Matrix is pulled back into violence by Arius, a former dictator who forces him to carry out an assassination in the fictional country of Val Verde. Matrix appears to cooperate, but escapes from the plane and spends the rest of the film tracking the kidnappers, gathering intelligence, and attacking Arius’s island stronghold.
A common mix-up comes from the many famous action characters named John. John Wick belongs to the later assassin franchise, John Rambo is Sylvester Stallone’s Vietnam veteran, and John McClane is Bruce Willis’s Die Hard protagonist. None is Schwarzenegger’s character in Commando.
The film was directed by Mark L. Lester and released on October 4, 1985. It became a defining example of the exaggerated, one-man-against-an-army action style associated with 1980s Hollywood.