Commando, Part 17
[00:27:44–00:29:28]
Synopsis
The flight attendant rebuffs Sully: “Listen, you’re really bugging me.” She walks away from him. Nearby, Matrix is watching. He begins to move in. Sully follows the flight attendant out of the terminal, and Matrix pursues him.
Inside the parking structure, Sully remains right behind the flight attendant. He calls out to her: “Hey! Hey, slow down!” She doesn’t break stride and continues to her car. She stops to open the door, and he walks right up to her. “You know, I’ve got something I’d really like to give you.” She responds: “I’m not interested.” Sully: “Aw, you don’t know what you’re missing.” The flight attendant: “From here it looks like a nightmare. Would you please leave me alone?” Sully insults her and walks away.
Stressed from the encounter, the flight attendant puts her convertible into top-down mode, but she’s interrupted by a hand on her shoulder from behind—it’s Matrix. He tells her not to move, and that he won’t hurt her. He instructs her to step aside. “You said don’t move!” she retorts. “Do it,” Matrix says. He opens the passenger-side door and tells her to get in the car. She slides over to the driver’s seat. Then Matrix rips out the passenger’s seat with his bare hands
Analysis
A POV shift in the first portion of this segment helps put us in Matrix’s head as he pursues Sully. At first, we can see and hear the interaction between the flight attendant and Sully in close-ups. Then we cut to a shot of Matrix watching from a distance. When we next see the confrontation, it’s from afar, with out-of-focus people walking in the foreground. We no longer hear the flight attendant and Sully talking; instead the audio is just the ambient noise of the airport crowds, along with PA-system boarding announcements. But we still see the interaction playing out, and we see that Matrix—who by this point in the film is firmly established as a master of observation—can figure out what’s going on without the close-up shots the audience gets.
What Matrix sees is this: the flight attendant is clearly annoyed at Sully. He tries talking to her, and she turns away and keeps walking. Clearly rebuffed, Sully slows his walk and looks at her as she leaves. At this moment we cut back to the shot of Matrix watching them. With Sully and the flight attendant separated, this is his time to strike. The music kicks in, and he begins moving toward Sully.
We now return to the more omniscient camera. The flight attendant is walking out of the terminal. Sully, having continued to follow her, is several strides behind. And behind him, unbeknownst to either Sully or the flight attendant, Matrix is trailing them, too. Matrix continues following them outside as they head toward the parking structure; once they’re outdoors, he hangs back a bit, hiding behind some signage to increase his following distance. At this point there’s a simple but effective editing choice. We return to Matrix’s point of view, looking across the street as Sully and the flight attendant move into the parking garage. A bus drives in from frame left, filling the entire screen. At this moment we cut to inside the parking garage as the flight attendant is walking in, allowing the bus’s movement to camouflage the edit a bit. This also coincides with a shift in the music—the more bombastic “chase” music from the airport pursuit is replaced by a more low-key, ominous tone that fades out as Sully begins to call out to the flight attendant. The airport was crowded, but the parking garage is almost devoid of people—the audiovisual aspects of that transition help highlight the contrast.
Sully’s treatment of the flight attendant leaves her shaken, so it’s not surprising that Matrix grabbing her shoulder from behind is frightening. While the audience knows that Matrix is a “good guy,” and just trying to get his daughter back, she has no idea about this backstory. All she knows is that she’s encountered a second creepy guy in the parking garage. And this one is ripping the passenger seat out of her convertible. We can assume she’ll be brought up to speed soon enough, but for now this mismatch between what the audience knows and what a character knows is likely to heighten the dramatic tension. (As a side note, Matrix easily ripping out the seat definitely counts as another example of his superhuman strength—even though we don’t know, as of the end of this segment, why he did it, it’s still impressive.)