Commando, Part 12
[00:19:04–00:20:48]
Synopsis
Choppers whirring in the background, Kirby asks a soldier nearby if there’s any sign of Matrix. The soldier responds: “No sir, just those bodies. You think there’s more, sir?” Kirby: “If he’s still alive, I’d expect a lot more.” Behind them several black body bags are being zipped shut.
We cut to a black car pulling up to an airport departure zone. Bennett gets out (wearing a long coat over his odd outfit), along with one of the yet-unnamed goons from the industrial warehouse scene where we just saw them. Another of the goons is already here. Also getting out of the car is one of the assassins from earlier, who we last saw driving away from Matrix’s house. Bennett gives us their names as he explains what’ll happen next. Sully (the shorter guy with the dark suit, played by David Patrick Kelly) will stay with Matrix until he boards the plane. Henriques (the taller guy with the hat wearing an aloha shirt under a white sportcoat, played by Charles Meshack) will join Matrix on the plane and make sure he disembarks in Val Verde. Bennett pledges to kill Jenny if he loses contact with either Sully or Henriques.
Matrix asks how much they’re paying him. Bennett: “They offered me a hundred grand. You want to know something? When I found out I’d get my hands on you, I said I’d do it for nothing.” Bennett and the assassin get back in the car, leaving Matrix, Sully, and Henriques to enter the airport. But before the car leaves, Matrix offers some parting words: “I’ll be back, Bennett.”
Inside the airport, the smarmy Sully makes small talk as they walk through the concourse, explaining that he and Henriquez were “in the service too. There’s nothin’ like old war buddies.” They stop at the gate. Sully slips a few bucks into Matrix’s coat pocket, telling him to have some beers in Val Verde: “It’ll give everyone a little more time with your daughter.” Matrix responds: “You’re a funny guy, Sully. I like you. That’s why I’m going to kill you last.” Matrix and Henriques turn around and head toward the plane.
Analysis
The first two settings here, the exteriors of the cabin and the airport, are notable in that they were almost certainly very noisy sets—the cabin with a helicopter flying in the background, and the airport (the actual Los Angeles International Airport) with normal airport bustle. In this common filmmaking scenario, the dialogue and sound effects have to be added in post-production, a process known as automated dialogue replacement. The actors recorded their lines in a studio afterward, working to match their lip movement onscreen. And the sound crew had to add sound effects here, too. In other words, the filmmakers needed to create an entire soundscape from scratch—they couldn’t rely on the actual ambient sound of these locations.
They do a great job. In the brief scene at the cabin, the dialogue of General Kirby and the soldier is of course added. There are also Kirby’s footsteps. Naturally the whir of multiple helicopters is in the background. A little bit of military radio chatter is audible in the background, along with some quiet talking from the other soldiers present. The filmmakers can be selective in these situations, though. We see a jeep drive up during the scene, and soldiers in the background are zipping up body bags—these sounds are unheard. The focused sound design keeps the audience’s attention on what is most important. (And it helps that the helicopters could plausibly drown out those sounds that aren’t included.)
The exchange between Matrix and Bennett reveals more about Bennett’s motivations, and it demonstrates that Matrix is working against two separate forces in the film. To Bennett, this is a mission of revenge against his old commander. To the would-be dictator, Matrix is a means to achieving power. Matrix will have to navigate both of those motivations to succeed.
Of course, this scene ends with an iconic Schwarzenegger line: “I’ll be back.” The line originated in 1984’s The Terminator, and Schwarzenegger has said it or some variation of it in around a dozen movies since then. The Terminator came out in October 1984. Commando was shot in the spring of 1985 and came out in October of that year. Clearly, it took just a few months for that line to become a Schwarzenegger signature.
The airport interior scene is a fun slice of the ’80s. Lots of regular people around them are wearing ’80s fashions—and not the on-the-nose, hand-picked nostalgic ’80s fashions of something like Stranger Things, but just the actual clothes that people wore back then. The three men casually walk through a simple metal detector on their way to the gate. There’s an interesting moment here—as they move through security, Matrix pointedly (but silently) turns to look at the policeman manning the checkpoint, then stops in his tracks for a moment, maintaining his gaze. Just a moment later Sully taps him on the chest with the boarding pass and says they’re running late, and they move along. It feels in this scene like Matrix is considering his options—would it be worthwhile to seek help from the cop here? He decides not to, and moves on. Perhaps he feels the cop wouldn’t believe the outlandish story. Or, he may worry that if he tried to escape now, the goons would alert Bennett, putting his daughter in danger. In any event, it’s a subtle indicator that Matrix is constantly on the alert for new angles to play.
As the segment winds up, Schwarzenegger threateningly praises Sully, saying that he likes him so much that he’ll kill him last. Considering the movie’s quip quotient, this could just be a one-off line. But it seems more likely that we’ll be revisiting the pledge later in the movie.