The first shot of the film is an over-the-shoulder shot of a man driving down a road at night with terrential rain outside. This stormy weather connotes there is a purpose to this trip. The shots are slowed down and blurred to give the impression that these events take in a time before the events of the film, as if it is a memory someone is struggling to remember fully. As audiences have seen the preceding installment they know the main character suffers from amnesia and that these are more than likely flashbacks from that character. A voice-over begins that says "this is not a drill soldier," intercut with more fast paced shots of the road, the windows of the car and a hotel room door number. This voiceover tells us the character remembering these events is someone who is following orders from an authorative figure. The short fast paced shots of different locations give the audience a small glimpse of what is happening but nothing that can explain these events.
As the short shots begin to speed up and build pace the low, ominous tones that have accompanied the opening up until then begin to take a higher and higher pitch, showing the escalating darkness and violence of the shots. We see a silhoutte of a man lurking in what looks like a hotel room. This tells the audience that the man we see lurking is the same one who is remembering these evnts as we had the point of view shot of the hotel room door. We can also piece together that this man is in this hotel room to carry out orders from the voiceover. The audience then hears non-digetic sound of a woman pleading and crying and getting louder and louder until a gunshot is heard and we cut instantly to a close-up of the main protagonist laying in bed.
This opening montage works to make the audience piece together the different non-chronological events into their own sort of narrative, which takes the form of a man being given orders from someone that he needs to carry out in a hotel room, that involves a woman pleading before getting shot. After the audience pieces together this information they then wait throughout the remainder of the film to have their suspicions of what happened either confirmed or denied. This builds intrigue and tension as the audience do not know the big picture of what happened. The shot of the main character lying in bed is focused and a longer shot than the rest, showing that this is back in the present of the film and what we just saw was a dream the main character was having. The main character, Jason, is never shown in full light for these shots, always in darkness like he was in the montage. This connotes spy work as the characters are sticking to the shadows as if they're hiding, which also suggests what they are doing is underhand or deceptive.
Jason gets out of bed in the middle of the night and goes to the bathroom. Text appears at the bottom of the screen revealing the location as Goa, India. The text it self is all-capitals and very official looking, and each letter appears in succession as if being typed. This also works the idea of governmental presence in the film. The audience is then introudced to a female character through multiple medium shots. She watches Jason in the bathroom with a concerned look on her face to which he says "it's ok, I'm fine, it's just a headache" This suggests that the nightmare we just saw him having and him waking up in cold sweats is a recurring event as the female character would not be as concerned if this had never happened before. The audience knows this woman is a romantic interest to the lead, as she slept in the same bed as him and throughout the scene shows great care over Jason, noting that he is burning up and attempting to cool him down. This also works to make the audience sympathise for her character. The characters connection is also shown by the amount of two-shots with both characters in.
The opening of the film works to make the audience sympathise for the lead and his romantic interest and highlights the mystery surrounding the characters past which can then be explored further throughout the film.
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