criterionforum.org

Arnie is a tough ex-commando. Arnie has a daughter. Some bad guys kidnap the daughter, hoping to compel Arnie to assassinate a Latin American politician. Clearly, they don't know Arnie!

Why does the commando bigshot have to visit Arnie in a helicopter? Don't they have phones at Commando HQ? And why does he order his men to 'secure the area'? Why do the bad guys allow Arnie to run to the shed and get his gun?

Why does Arnie resort to his car, even after the engine has been disabled? How come the baddies, on a zigzag path down the hillside, keep getting ahead of Arnie, who is plummeting straight down? Why are all Latin Americans treacherous slimeballs?

How come Arnie can get into the hold of a commercial airliner just by walking through a door? Why doesn't anybody notice when he depressurises the plane? How come he is unhurt after hitting the marsh at 100mph? How did he know there would be a marsh?

How does Arnie get back into the passenger terminal? How did he obtain that car key? Did I miss something? When did it become night? Why isn't anyone hurt in the head-on collision with a telephone pole? Why doesn't Cindy mind when the stranger trashes her sports car? Why does she decide to throw in her lot with this violent, monosyllabic gorilla?

Why do the bad guys plot out their journey on a huge map, then leave it behind, open on the table, for Arnie to find? Why do they have a photo of their getaway plane hanging on the wall? How does Cindy know that the getaway plane is exactly this model?

How does Arnie get that bulldozer started? How does he survive the inadvertently-fired rocket? How come the cops neither search the car nor arrest Cindy? How come the plane is left fuelled-up and unlocked? How come not one of the thousands of machine-gun rounds fired at the plane manages to hit it? How come the bad guys on their hide-away island fail to notice the arrival of an unexpected seaplane?

Why is the dead body carried off the airliner without any police interest, along with the crowd of disembarking passengers? Why are total strangers permitted to inspect the corpse?

Why does Arnie blow up the entire township? What if his daughter was being held in one of these huts? How does he know which building to head for? Along with the string of murders he committed back on the mainland, how is he able to massacre 200-odd soldiers here, without any of them harming him? When his daughter starts yelling 'Daddy', how does she know it's him? How did Cindy become so proficient at flying the seaplane?

Apart from the one or two quibbles outlined above, I thought the film was almost satisfactory.