Commando, Part 38
[01:04:08–01:05:52]
Synopsis
Bennett continues: “When Matrix finishes the job, he’ll be back for his daughter. Now whether she’s alive or dead doesn’t matter. Then he’ll be after you. Now the only thing between Matrix and you. . .” He taps his chest. “. . . is me.” Arius responds: “It is you that is afraid, Mr. Bennett. You are afraid of Matrix.” “Of course,” Bennett says. “I’m smart. But I have an edge. I have his daughter.” He smirks.
Meanwhile, the seaplane is flying over the waves. It’s morning. “Is that it?” Cindy asks, looking out toward the horizon. “That’s the one,” Matrix responds. The sun is rising over an island straight ahead. Matrix studies a map and says, “Land here. It’s the most isolated spot we’ll find.” Cindy brings it in for a landing, the seaplane bouncing on the water a few times before slowly coming to a stop near a beach.
Elsewhere, another plane is coming in for a landing—it’s the jetliner that Matrix was aboard, presumably making its scheduled landing in Val Verde. Inside, the hat that Matrix laid over Henriques’ body falls off, revealing that he’s dead.
Back at the island, Matrix is deplaning in a Speedo. “Now, you remember the message?” he asks Cindy as she passes him a machine gun. He sets down the gun in an inflatable boat.
Analysis
Dan Hedaya as Arius doesn’t have a huge amount to do in this movie, but he does a really nice job in this exchange with Bennett. Bennett, a hired gun for the dictator, is effectively threatening his own boss, telling him that Matrix will be coming after him and that only he, Bennett, can do anything about it. Arius is maintaining his composure as the higher-status character, but there are enough small facial tics—movements of the jaw, shifts in his glance, a slight flare of the nostril—to show that he’s straining to do so against a mix of anger at Bennett and fear of Matrix. It’s a subtle piece of acting, even if the character itself is a somewhat goofy stereotype with a bad accent. Vernon Wells is likewise doing good work as Bennett, exhibiting a smirking, chest-tapping confidence. The static, medium-close shots in this exchange make it easy to see the two characters’ differing states of mind.
The interior shots of the seaplane continue to look acceptable-but-janky. However, the point-of-view shots and the exterior shots of the plane landing look fantastic. Today these shots could be carried out more simply with CG; even if a real plane was used, it could be filmed fairly easily with a drone. But here, they actually had to land a seaplane on the water and had to actually coordinate with a second plane (or a chopper) to get a carefully choreographed shot. Even if that’s simply the normal way it was done back then, I still appreciate the effort, and the result looks great.
As the seaplane slows down after landing, there’s a semi–match cut to another plane landing—the airliner that Matrix escaped earlier in the film. (A truer match cut would’ve shown the planes at similar angles when cutting between them, but here the seaplane is turning to screen left and the jet is coming in toward screen right.) It’s close enough to an actual match cut that it makes me wonder if this idea was discovered in editing, when it was too late to go back and redo these logistically complex shots. In any case, it pretty much still serves the purpose of a match cut, drawing a connection between these two different planes landing—the one Matrix is supposed to be on, and the one he’s actually on.
Maybe there’s a good in-universe justification for why Matrix has to be wearing a Speedo when loading up the rubber dinghy with his tactical gear. Perhaps it’s hot outside? Maybe he doesn’t want to get his clothes wet? But in reality it’s pretty clear that the director wants us to see the star’s muscles—and we certainly do.
