Commando, Part 4
[00:05:12–00:06:56]
Synopsis
The Schwarzenegger character is still chopping wood. It becomes apparent that an unseen person is sneaking up behind him. As the person approaches him, he drops the axe, spins around, and picks her up—as it turns out, it’s his daughter (played by a young Alyssa Milano). The opening credits begin; behind them is a montage of shots establishing the father-daughter relationship. They eat ice cream on an outdoor patio, they practice martial-arts stances, they feed a deer together, they go fishing in a stream. They pack up their fishing gear and appear to be headed home.
Analysis
As the Schwarzenegger character is splitting logs, we continue to get indications that he’s ever-alert and aware of threats around him. (The movie hasn’t told us this explicitly yet—but it seems clear that he’s the titular Commando.) We cut to a brief shot of a rabbit jumping through the brush following a loud chop; he pauses as if noticing the sudden movement, then resumes again.
Now, we see the shadow of a person approaching from screen-left, seen on the rocky soil. The shots of the Schwarzenegger character chopping have shown him facing screen-right, so it’s instantly clear that this new person is sneaking up on him. To emphasize the point, we cut to a point-of-view shot of this person. It’s a handheld shot that slowly creeps up on the Schwarzenegger character’s back as he sets up another piece of wood to split. After another shot of the shadow, Schwarzenegger holds up the axe and begins looking at it closely—he sees in it an indistinct reflection of the person approaching behind him. Another shadow shot is followed by another point-of-view shot, taking us right up to Schwarzenegger’s back. We switch to a shot showing the action from the side as Schwarzenegger wheels around, smiles, and lifts a young girl into the air. She immediately calls him “daddy”—it’s his daughter. At the moment of the reveal, the score transitions from pulse-pounding action-suspense music to a sweeping orchestral cue.
This shift in tone also leads into our opening credits (the first—“A Silver Pictures Production”). The credits have a clean, cool design. A thin white line extends across the scene from left to right, and below it the words of the credits wipe in. The text uses a sans-serif font; it has white outlines and a slick semi-translucent blue coloring. Names are shown in all-caps. Naturally, Schwarzenegger gets top billing after the “Silver Pictures” credit.
Behind those credits and the sweeping score is a series of shots that establishes the relationship between father and daughter. They eat ice cream cones together at some sort of mountain-chalet–style outdoor patio. As they share their cones, she pushes hers gently into his face, getting ice cream on his nose. He laughs as she helps wipe him off with a napkin—though he may be an alert, trained commando, he loves his daughter and has a sense of humor. The next scene shows them practicing a sequence of martial arts poses, so it seems some of that commando stuff does transfer over into fatherhood. (Incidentally, here is where we get the movie’s “COMMANDO” title card.) Next they are seen feeding a deer in the woods together, with the Schwarzenegger character even making little kissy faces at the animal, showing him to be a completely wholesome family man (at least when he’s not on commando duty).
After that they begin fishing together in a rocky stream. By this point, a driving beat in the orchestral score is starting to grow more prominent in the mix, and we suddenly transition back to the synth-and-steel-drum action score from before. It seems as though the music is telling us that the commando life will soon be intruding on the Schwarzenegger character’s peaceful, idyllic mountain retreat. (Around here we get the on-screen credit for the musical score—the wonderful James Horner.)