Rae Dawn Chong is at Apex Mountain because this is what she is known for; she should have been bigger.
Alyssa Milano is a no; the debate is whether her apex is Who's the Boss or Charmed, which airs all morning on TNT ('T&T' in the transcript), with Melrose Place also mentioned.
For Vernon Wells, among Mad Max, Weird Science and this movie, this is probably the one people reference.
Creem magazine is a no; mid-80s yellow Porsches are a yes, as this is probably their best use.
Dan Hedaya is definitely not; missile launchers and bazookas are a yes as the first one that comes to mind.
The Harold Lloyd Estate is a no because of Beverly Hills Cop; Val Verde, a fictional country made for this movie, is a yes.
Bennett's chain mail is volunteered for Apex Mountain along with his physique; he lacks muscle for a fistfight with Arnold, possibly wearing slim-fit chain mail, and looks like he needs more steroids.
The wardrobe choice is blamed on 1985 cocaine; his thin arms are distracting in the fight.
Still, Bennett is one of Arnold's toughest movie enemies and blew a 10-point lead by not simply killing him.
The movie starts well: a garbage-truck hit, and Bill Duke is involved in three killings within about the first minute and a half; there is no fat and it moves from the start.
The first rewatchable scene is the daughter's kidnapping, set up by a shirtless wood-chopping montage and a father-daughter montage of ice cream, hiking, feeding a deer and fishing, called the greatest father-daughter day ever seen.
Hiding under the bed is criticized because it is the first place kidnappers look.
The twins are told to run out the window rather than hide, since they can outrun almost anyone. — Shea Serrano
Under the bed and lying in the bathtub (as in Training Day) are standard movie hiding places; Taken uses almost the same under-the-bed shot of approaching boots.
He takes so long to get his guns that the cars are already driving away; the downhill Bronco run without power steering, lasting about a minute and a half, is a favorite part.
Compared with efficient modern kills like John Wick's, the first victims are shot dozens of times, a reminder of how violent the film is.
A visible booger in Arnold's nose appears when he is surrounded after the crash.
The vehicle is probably a Chevy Blazer, not a Ford Bronco; the caravan could simply have stopped, and the plan fails anyway when he goes off the cliff and is captured.
The second most rewatchable scene is the plane escape: he kills the man beside him within seconds, covers him with a blanket, says he is air sick before takeoff, and tells the attendant not to disturb his 'dead tired' friend on the 11-hour flight to Val Verde.
He wanders into the cargo hold, hangs from the wheel as the plane takes off, drops into a marsh and checks his watch; surviving the fall is implausible and the falling dummy is obvious.
As a nit, the escort should have put Matrix in the window seat; the Red Eye rule is to enclose the abductee.
The mall scene is summarized as Arnold fighting about 25 mall cops, throwing a phone booth and swinging from the ceiling, with an implausibly large, all-stuntman security force.
Swinging over the railings at the Houston Galleria at Christmas has always been tempting. — Shea Serrano
Contestants on The Challenge usually fail to hold on in such stunts; the busy mid-80s mall, with a Swensen's ice cream shop, is a pleasure to see.
The Arnold versus Bill Duke hotel-room brawl starts with them inches apart, has lame stage combat and self-mocking dialogue ('I eat Green Berets for breakfast'), and wedges in 10-out-of-10 gratuitous nudity from a couple filming themselves.
As a nine-year-old with a tape, pausing on that nude moment took many tries.
Driving a forklift into the weapons store and loading a cart like Supermarket Sweep includes scuba flippers he never uses, swimwear, and missile launchers from a store with no alarm.
For the finale, the Bennett showdown is bizarre and Arnold goes shirtless under the vest; the garden-shed fight with axes, machetes and saw blades reaches 10-out-of-10 comedic violence, including a man left alive with his arm cut off.
The Equalizer's hardware-store finale may have taken the idea from Commando.
The garden shed is the pick; the 91-minute director's cut spends most of its extra minute there, adding a second saw-blade kill and another shot of the man missing his arm. — Kyle Brandt
Some of Alyssa Milano's lines are saucier in the director's cut.
The opening is the pick, the favorite opening of any Arnold action movie, thanks to the music and the men left to guard him dying immediately, plus the stay-downwind smell line. — Shea Serrano
Another participant picks the plane escape, enjoying the giant man wandering the aisle and the line about the aisle seat.
