Commando, Part 10
[00:15:36–00:17:20]
Synopsis
John’s truck misses the bad guys’ cars, flies over an embankment into a ditch, rolls over, and bursts into flames. John escapes the vehicle and runs up to the road as a series of explosions rock the burning truck. On the road he’s surrounded by goons with assault rifles pointed at him. He grabs a guy’s gun, whacks him with it, then smacks a second bad guy and is knocked down by another. He continues fighting, kicking a few more of the goons before finally being subdued and held at gunpoint.
The apparent leader of the bad guys walks into frame. It’s the guy who we saw on the docks way back in the opening sequence of the movie—the one who seemingly had been killed in the boat explosion. Evidently not. John recognizes him. “Bennett! I thought you were . . .” Bennett finishes his sentence: “Dead? You thought wrong. Ever since you had me thrown out of your unit, I’ve waited to pay you back.” Based on Bennett’s outfit, it looks like he was the guy whose boots we saw from underneath Jenny’s bed. “Do you know what today is, Matrix? Payday.” Bennett fires a tranquilizer dart into John’s side, and he’s out like a light.
John wakes up indoors, under a bright light, being stared down upon by Bennett and a group of other antagonists. He’s tied down with chains. John seems to have a history with a guy we haven’t seen before. “You remember me, Colonel?” he asks. John does—“I remember you, scumbag. Especially the people you’ve tortured and killed.” The scumbag responds: “Colonel Matrix, you do not understand a country like Val Verde.”
Analysis
We start with the conclusion of the vehicular action sequence from the previous segment, as the truck catches decent air off the embankment, dives nose-first into a ditch, and then rolls over in a cloud of dust. After the truck catches fire and John scrambles up the hillside back to the road, there’s a nice touch with the set dressing, with the inverted truck’s tires still spinning as it burns. Then we have some great pyrotechnic work as the explosions go off. The first blast even happens with what appears to be Schwarzenegger (rather than a stuntman) in frame at what seems like fairly close proximity—though I’m sure it looks closer than it was in reality.
Next comes the first hand-to-hand combat in the film, as John tries going toe-to-toe with about a half-dozen armed men. The fight scene, while brief, is shot in a clear and comprehensible way. It opens with a wide shot from above showing John, the bad guys around him, and the still-burning truck in the background, effectively establishing the spatial relationships in the scene. Then we come into closer shots as he smacks the guys with their own guns, each hit accompanied by a satisfyingly crunchy sound effect.
After hitting the first guy, he turns to hit a second. Here an interesting editing technique is used to accentuate the hit. We start with a medium shot of John swinging the gun around like a baseball bat, then come into a medium-close shot of the same action from directly in front of him. Next comes a shot from behind John, showing the gun as it swings across the frame and hits the bad guy. But immediately after that quick 5-frame shot, we jump back a fraction of a second in time to see that guy get hit again, this time in a longer 12-frame shot—as if we’re just seeing a different take of the same action. Each hit gets its own sound effect, too. Doubling up the action like this really drives home how devastatingly powerful John is. And the shots are so quick, and this fight scene so frenetic, that a viewer might not even consciously register the fact that we saw the same guy get hit twice. I’ve seen the movie many times, and I don’t know that I’ve really noticed this before.
Swing 1
Hit 1
Swing 2
Hit 2
After John finally gets taken down, Bennett comes in. The first thing that catches the eye about him is his outfit, which has become a subject of fascination for Commando fans the world over. Bennett is sporting a flattop haircut and a handlebar moustache. He wears fingerless gloves. He’s got on some kind of weird textured vest, and over that—or maybe it’s integrated, it’s tough to tell—is what looks at first like a chain-mail vest, but which I think is actually just some kind of woven wool garment or something. I think we’ll get a better look at it later in the movie. He’s got on dog tags, too. We only see the top third of him in this shot, but he’s already made an impression. He’s got a distinctive appearance, particularly for an 1980s action movie villain. One possibility—it was unlikely they’d be able to cast an actor who would look physically imposing next to Schwarzenegger, so they went another direction, with his odd getup conveying a vague air of menace.
Besides perplexing the viewer with his outfit, Bennett’s also here to fill in some gaps with exposition. Things are starting to come together. Bennett apparently faked his death earlier, likely working with the assassins to make it look as though he’d died. We find out that Bennett was once in the same military unit as John, and John threw him out—Bennett wants revenge. Bennett also helpfully gives us John’s last name: Matrix. (Thereby completing perhaps the best action movie protagonist name ever—John Matrix.) Bennett also gets in on the one-liner game with his “Payday” quip.
We get another effective point-of-view shot when Matrix wakes up lying on his back with bad guys looming over him. A bright ceiling light is at the center of the frame, and the goons stare down at him as they walk into frame. Here we meet another key antagonist who Matrix remembers from his past commando life. He’s played by Dan Hedaya. We don’t get a name or any backstory yet, but based on his somewhat vaguely bad Spanish accent, Matrix’s memories of him, and his mention of a fictional country named Val Verde, it seems likely that he was once in a position of power in South or Central America. But he’s taken Matrix alive and largely unhurt, so he may not be after simple revenge. We’ll probably learn more about his aims as he continues his speech in the next segment.
