Collateral Damage (DVD)

Gordon Brewer is a New York fire fighter and used to being able to save people's lives. This makes it even harder for him to cope when his wife and son are killed in a bombing just a few metres from where he stood (they are the collateral damage of the title). The bombing is credited to Claudio Perrini, a Colombian terrorist, known as 'The Wolf'. Unfortunately, the US government don't seem inclined to do anything to hunt The Wolf down and so Brewer decides to seek his own revenge for the death of his family. This leads him to Colombia, where he inadvertently saves the life of a young woman and her son and becomes attached to them. But then he discovers she is linked to ...  Read the complete review

Sad though it may sound, there comes a time in an actor’s career when he really should give it a rest. Arnold Schwarzenegger has made a lot of films over the last two decades, with some veritable classics such as Predator and The Terminator that will leave his fans with fond memories. Nonetheless, like many before him, Arnie seems intent on squeezing every last dime out of his name and each film release now pours more scorn on his status as an accomplished actor. It’s also worth noting that film audiences change. What was acceptable (and indeed demanded) in the 1980s, may not be required in the 1990s – and will almost certainly be rejected in the year ...  Read the complete review

I watched a movie last night called Red Scorpion, a 1980s movie about one big muscly guy(Dolph Lundgren) fighting against indeterminable odds to see justice served against a bunch of bad guys. In that case they were Russians, Rambo had the same idea, in fact the 80s was littered with this kind of thing, Arnold Schwarzennegar was also amongst that mix. I was reminded by watching that movie what exactly was wrong with Collateral Damage, something just wouldn't quite click at the time but watching Red Scorpion it all dropped into place. Arnie's latest movie Collateral Damage could just as easily have been made 20 years ago in the times he was producing movies like ...  Read the complete review

Having anticipated the mighty return of the even mightier Arnold for quite some time, the day Collateral Damage was released I was down at my local UGC with money in hand. The premise was your average Arnold plotline, sounding like a mixture of several of his previous outings rolled into one. Heroic firefighter, husband, father of a baby boy goes about his everyday business. Wife and son get blown up by terrorists. All chaos ensues. What follows is Arnold's one man war on the terrorists who killed his family. One of the most widely known things about the film is that it was put off after the September 11th attacks in America due to terrorist ...  Read the complete review

Arnold Schwarzenegger has never been my favourite actor, in fact I can safely say he has been good in only one role, Terminator, and in that he played a robot. With his wooden acting, lack of personality and basic grasp of English and accents, he was typecast as the psychotic robot but when it comes to playing a human being with emotions he fails utterly miserably, I don't fault him for his effort but he should realise that he cannot do it. I cite such terrible atrocities of film history as Total Recall and End of Days as evidence. As well as this he has been placed in a film that has an appallingly artificial plot and even the action for which Arnie is renowned is ...  Read the complete review