Why did Agent Thompson jump out the window after Trinity?

In the opening (and one of the closing) scenes of The Matrix Reloaded, Trinity jumps backwards out the window of a skyscraper shooting at Agent Thompson, and he immediately jumps out after her, shooting wildly.

Image of Trinity falling and shooting Agent Thompson

Now, as Agent Thompson first saw her while he was on the elevator, he knows:

They're on a really high floor, and presumably that there's nothing but tarmac below.
Nobody but The One could survive such a fall, and she isn't.
She will die on impact.

With this in mind, apart from being a really cool shot to put in the trailer, why would Agent Thompson bother to try and shoot her to death instead of letting her fall to her death unaided?

the-matrix-reloaded

Best Answer

The Agents are 'immortal', reckless and unyielding.

In a chase scenario, and given the agents inability to die, why would an agent do anything other than to chase the target and confirm the kill? There is no risk on the Agents part, and even if he remained on the upper floor, he would have still needed to confirm the kill by checking the target has expired.

He has three options:

Walk down to the ground floor in his current 'host', wasting valuable time
Adopt another host on the ground floor somewhere, and find his way over to the corpse
Follow the target out of the window, matching velocity, keeping the target in sight at all times and continuing to barrage the quarry with bulletfire.

Which of these sounds more like the actions of an efficient killing machine?