Commando, Part 23
[00:38:08–00:39:52]
Synopsis
The flight attendant reaches the road just as Matrix is about to drive by in her red convertible. She yells for him to wait, he stops to let her in, and they drive off in pursuit of Sully. She goes on a tirade: “Who the hell are you, huh? You steal my car, you rip the seat out, you kidnap me, you ask me to help you find your daughter—which I very kindly do—and then you get me involved in a shootout where people are dying and there’s blood spurting out all over the place, and then I watch you rip a phone booth out of the wall, swing from the ceiling like Tarzan, and then, there’s a cop that’s gonna shoot you and I save you, and he starts chasing me! Are you gonna tell me what’s going on or what?” Matrix continues to stare straight ahead at the road: “No.”
Matrix chases Sully along the busy nighttime LA street. Both cars swerve through traffic, their tires squealing. The flight attendant screams with each near miss; as Matrix slides around a corner, the car’s rear end hits a USA Today delivery truck. “This is not my day!” the flight attendant exclaims as they accelerate away.
By this time the cars are beginning to leave the more urban part of LA, reaching a mountainous highway where there are no other cars around. Matrix and the flight attendant are right behind Sully in his yellow Porsche. Matrix hits the gas, and they slam into Sully’s back bumper, jolting both cars. Matrix then moves to pass Sully on the left.
Analysis
At the beginning of this segment, Matrix makes the decision to stop and pick up the flight attendant on the roadside, costing him a few valuable seconds in his chase of Sully. His willingness to stop is a great indication of the trust that’s building between them. The flight attendant will certainly have key roles to play in the later parts of the film, but of course Matrix doesn’t know that now, and it might’ve been in-character for him to keep going after his daughter at all costs and not stop for anything. Picking the flight attendant up signals that he now sees her as a valuable ally.
As soon as the flight attendant gets into the red convertible, this segment of the film is entirely car-based. As with earlier driving sections of Commando, this gives the film an opportunity for both comedy and action. The comedy comes first, with the flight attendant launching into her (fully justified) tirade about all the insane things that have just happened. We’re starting to see one of the great things about her character in the film—she is aware of, and comments on, the over-the-top action that we’ve been seeing. It’s funny to see some light fourth-wall breaking like this, but it also represents the filmmakers giving the audience a slight wink—as if to say that we know this is wild and unrealistic, but we’re not taking things too seriously, so feel free to just sit back and enjoy the ride.
Rae Dawn Chong’s delivery of her long litany is fantastic here—she comes across as exhausted, upset, and astonished by what’s happened to her in the past hour or so, and at the end of it she finally asks Matrix if he’ll tell her what’s going on. Of course, Matrix does not have that fourth-wall perspective on the insanity of this adventure, and, true to his character, he responds to her 26-second speech with a quick, monotone “No.” In a very funny bit of writing and delivery, she maintains the momentum of her speech as she is shocked with his answer: “No?! No?! Oh my god, watch out!” And with this line, we smoothly transition into the action of the segment; the music rises in the mix and we get into the swerving, squealing, high-speed chase.
The diversity of shot types in the chase gives the scene a nicely dynamic feel. Some are shot from moving camera platforms ahead of Matrix and Sully. There are some intercut shots of their faces inside the cars. Occasional first-person perspective shots give us a strong sense of speed. A few shots use a stationary camera at ground level that pans to follow the action; these wide angles help illustrate how the chase cars are interacting with normal traffic. And a couple of shots are shot using a stationary camera from an elevated perspective, providing an even broader view. The cutting between these perspectives is skillful, and though the edits come quickly in spots, it always feels like a plausible, comprehensible car chase, and the geography is clear. (That is, the spatial relationship between the cars is clear—I wouldn’t be surprised if someone more familiar with LA streets noticed that the shots in the sequence come from wildly disparate parts of town.)
