Commando, Part 30
[00:50:16–00:52:00]
Synopsis
Matrix climbs unseen down to the warehouse floor, moving behind cover of crates and barrels. He crawls under a tracked vehicle and gets an up-close look at men assembling some artillery. He makes his way across the warehouse to an office area, where he rises to his feet and continues moving stealthily. Matrix moves down a hallway toward a door; voices can be heard beyond. He grabs the knob and slowly begins to open the door. Then he suddenly moves away from the door to hide, and men come through the door. From cover, Matrix watches them pass down the hallway. He returns to the door, opens it, and finds one guy still inside. A few punches and a knee to the face later, the guy is out cold; Matrix hoists his limp body and dumps it into a closet in the corner.
Matrix opens an outside window in the office and calls out in a loud whisper, “Cindy!” She’s down below, and he helps her climb into the office. Right away he begins explaining what he’s found. “I’ve seen all the equipment they’ve got,” he says. “But there no airplane.” Cindy asks, “What about your daughter?” Matrix replies, “Arius and Bennett aren’t here. She’s wherever they are.” Both of them begin searching the office for their next lead.
Analysis
In the previous segment a character finally uttered the name of the bad guy, and here, at long last, we learn the name of the flight attendant: Cindy. When watching the film so meticulously, it seems super weird that it took so long to learn her name, although this was never something that stood out to me when watching Commando normally. As before, this is a reminder that there are character interactions happening offscreen—presumably Cindy told Matrix her name at some point, but we never saw it.
There are a few notable things about the way in which Matrix’s sneaky journey across the warehouse is shot. The first shot, in which we see him climbing down to the floor, is put together in a pretty un-stealthy way. For one thing, it’s shot essentially from a person’s-eye view, and in a long single take it closely tracks Matrix’s movements as he climbs down the wall, ducks between crates and barrels, and starts moving through the building. In the earlier motel scene, in which Matrix is hiding behind the door waiting for Cooke, the shots sometimes included foreground objects obscuring part of the frame, as if the camera itself were a hiding spectator. But here, we get a totally clear view of Matrix sneaking around. He even “sneaks” directly through the path of a lamp at one point, making him even more visible. Upon watching this scene now, it almost feels as though the film is intentionally showing how incompetent Arius’s goons are—they can’t detect this intruder, even though the viewer can see him easily.
The next few shots, in which Matrix is crawling under some kind of tank, are shot in a more traditionally sneaky way. The camera is right down on the floor with him, and it’s even tilted somewhat, giving us a feeling of danger and unease. This part feels like it’s shot in something closer to Matrix’s point of view. It also recalls the earlier sequence, way back at the beginning of the film, when Jenny is hiding under the bed and Bennett enters the room. As with that scene, here we see Matrix crawling around from floor level while legs appear just feet away from him.
When Matrix enters the office and beats up its lone occupant, the stunt performer does a great job selling the hits. And the sound effects work well, too, with heavy, crunchy noises for each strike. The music plays a role here, but only to demonstrate how taking out one lone goon isn’t a challenge for Matrix. It’s the same steady, suspenseful music that has been playing throughout the warehouse scene—essentially, the thing that we heard when Matrix was crawling under a tank is the same thing we hear when he beats this guy up. It doesn’t speed up or get more exciting to accentuate the fight, because this guy isn’t a threat to Matrix—this brief brawl is just one more thing he has to do to find the next clue.
