Commando, Part 33
[00:55:28–00:57:12]
Synopsis
Cindy wheels the shopping cart out of the store while Matrix grabs more stuff—guns, ammo, grenades. Cindy empties the cart into the Cadillac. Matrix picks up a few last guns and is interrupted by cops shouting “freeze” and racking a shotgun. “Don’t even think about it,” one of the officers says.
Matrix is led away from the store; there are multiple cop cars here. One officer says, “Stick him in the truck,” and he’s led into the back of a big police vehicle. Cindy is watching from somewhere nearby; the police haven’t picked her up. The police truck drives away with Matrix in it, and he looks at his watch—5:02:53 and counting. Back at the store, Cindy pulls out of the parking lot, apparently unbothered by law enforcement. The police truck speeds down the empty late-night road, and the Cadillac follows.
Inside the truck, Matrix is trying to talk to the cops: “If you call General Franklin Kirby, he will explain everything to you.” The driver responds, “Kirby, huh? Yeah, I think we ran him in last week, right?” The other cop laughs. Soon the police truck stops at a red light, and the Cadillac pulls up alongside it. Matrix sees Cindy through the truck’s grated window. The cops see her, too. The one on the passenger side says, “Hey…” The driver: “Hooker.” Passenger-side cop: “Not bad.” The truck drives off, but the Cadillac stays put. The cops notice in the rear view mirror that she’s stopped: “What do you thinks she’s doin’?” one asks. The other says, “I think she’s got somethin’ for us.” First cop: “I bet she does.”
Analysis
As Matrix is gearing up in the store, we see him grab several items in a succession of four quick, close-up shots—a pistol, shotgun shells, grenades, a stack of automatic rifle magazines. In each shot, Matrix reaches in with his hand and pulls the object out of frame. The first three shots include a little bit of camera movement, loosely following the movement of Matrix’s hand. The final shot of the magazines remains static, and then we cut back to Cindy loading up the car. This montage style is an effective way to quickly establish just how much firepower Matrix is bringing to bear on this mission—so much stuff that it’s almost hard to keep up.
A single relatively complex shot transitions us to the next obstacle that Matrix will face. He’s slinging a few last rifles over his shoulders when he spots a bazooka across the room. It appears out of focus in the extreme foreground at first. When Matrix notices it, he freezes and then walks toward it, and the focus smoothly adjusts until both he and the bazooka are in focus. At the same time, the camera lifts upward while also panning to the left. The focus quickly changes again, revealing two police officers that have Matrix cornered.
The music during this shot is a nice fake-out. Throughout the scene up to this point, there’s been steady, tense music—nothing too exciting, but good music to accompany a gearing-up montage. As Matrix sees the bazooka, there’s a shift in the music, and horns rise to a crescendo as he approaches it. The audience might just assume that the soundtrack is coming to a climax because Matrix is grabbing an especially powerful weapon. But as the camera pans over to the cops, a shout of “Freeze!” brings the music to an abrupt halt, with just a low, ominous tone remaining audible. In retrospect, it becomes clear that the crescendo was actually leading up to Matrix’s capture.
(Something of a logic gap here—it does seem pretty weird that Cindy was able to just drive away from Surplus City without being noticed by the several police cars’ worth of cops that are present, especially with stacks of tactical gear, including a four-barreled rocket launcher, filling the back seat of her Cadillac. But in any case, she escapes apparently unseen before beginning to follow the police van.)