Commando, Part 24
[00:39:52–00:41:36]
Synopsis
Matrix pulls up alongside Sully’s yellow Porsche and repeatedly cranks the steering wheel over to slam into the driver-side door. Sully pulls out his pistol and starts firing back. Matrix finally forces Sully off the road onto a hillside, and the Porsche goes up on two wheels, sliding to a stop on its side. Meanwhile, the red convertible screeches off the road and into a utility pole, coming almost instantly to a dead stop. Unfazed, Matrix turns to the flight attendant: “Are you all right?” The flight attendant: “I think I’m dead.” Matrix: “You’re all right.”
Matrix tells her to wait there and exits the car. He heads over to the Porsche and a dazed Sully. He reaches into Sully’s pockets, pulling out a motel key—it’s for the Sunspot motel, room number 5. Then he yanks Sully to his feet: “Where is she, Sully?” Sully responds, “Kiss my ass.” Matrix slams him into the car and says, “I can’t hear you.” Sully: “I’ll say it a little louder, then—get the fuck….”
Matrix says, “Listen, loyalty is very touching.” He continues as he picks Sully up and begins carrying him away: “But it is not the most important thing in your life right now.” He walks just off the road to a cliffside. “But what is important, is gravity.” Matrix grasps Sully by an ankle and dangles him over the edge. Matrix taps his left arm and notes, “I have to remind you, Sully—this is my weak arm.” Sully cries out in distress: “You can’t kill me, Matrix! You need me to find your daughter!” Matrix asks, “Where is she?” Sully: “I don’t know. But Cook knows! I’ll take you where I’m supposed to meet him!” Matrix shoots down this plan: “But you won’t.” He holds out the motel key. “Because I already know.”
Sully hangs by an ankle as Matrix continues. “You remember, Sully, when I promised to kill you last?” Sully does remember. “That’s right, Matrix! You did!” Matrix: “I lied.” He drops Sully off the cliff, watches him fall, and walks back to the flight attendant, who is waiting by the wrecked convertible. “So now you don’t have a car,” she says. He looks at Sully’s car, still sitting on its side in the road, and then begins walking toward it.
Analysis
The sound mixing of the car chase sequence here gets pretty complicated, and it’s well done. There are multiple very loud things happening. The engines of the two cars are revving as they speed down the highway. There are some metal-on-metal crashes as Matrix rams the red convertible into the side of the yellow Porsche. The flight attendant yells out “My car!” after one of these collisions. Once Sully grabs his pistol and starts shooting, gunshots ring out. And underneath it all is the movie’s score, which is pretty loud and bombastic to begin with. There’s the potential for this all to turn into a cacophony, but it works—it’s appropriately chaotic, but the timing and relative volume levels mean that important audio elements don’t get lost in the mix.
The red convertible’s crash into the utility pole is one of the movie’s great “disregarding physics” moments. The car looks like it goes from about 40 miles an hour to a dead stop more or less instantly. The occupants, Matrix and the flight attendant, are not only unhurt but seemingly un-jostled. Matrix wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, as we can see when he gets out of the car. There’s not even a really great reason for the convertible to crash; Sully’s car is already on its side, and it seems like there would’ve been plenty of room to slow down, or at least miss the one large utility pole on this road. But it does cap the chase sequence with one more car crash, and the ease with which the characters brush it off adds a taste of comedy to the action—a Commando trademark. For me, this is another one of those moments that separates Commando from other action films.
Matrix picking up Sully and carrying him to the cliff sets up some of the film’s top one-liners, but it’s also an effectively shot sequence. As Matrix walks to the edge, the camera follows him. Then, as hoists Sully up by his ankles to dangle him over the edge, the camera physically rises and tilts downward, showing us the peril that Sully is in and perhaps creating a little vertigo in the viewer. We also get some close-ups on Sully’s upside-down face as Matrix interrogates him, which helps to sell his fright and discomfort. And we even get some point-of-view shots looking down to the ground far below. One of these shots shows some rocks tumbling down the cliff, so we can see just how far Sully might fall.
Of course, the cliff scene ends with one of the film’s greatest exchanges. Matrix, referring back to their conversation at the airport, asks Sully if he remembers how Matrix said he’d kill Sully last. Sully excitedly recalls this, perhaps thinking he’ll be spared. But then Matrix, having no more use for Sully, utters a cold “I lied” and drops him down the cliff. Then we get a very brief shot of a dummy hurtling downward, accompanied by a scream that trails off—there’s no “thud” at the bottom.
