He Said He'd Be Back And He Is...A Little Late, But He's Back (Collateral Damage (DVD))

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Collateral Damage (DVD)
Date:	05/03/02 (46 review reads)
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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 Red Heat, Raw Deal and such like and would have fitted neatly into place. It is entirely backwards thinking and were it not for the events of recent times, its terrorist plotline wouldn't have received anything more than a cursorary sideways glance. As it stands, not only is Collateral Damage a very dated, rather dull movie, but it is also a movie which pours vinegar over some very fresh wounds in its clumsy handling of a delicate subject area. Its not only exceedingly dumb, but also rather comes across as a little ill-conceived and rather distasteful.

This isn't Arnie's fault however, nor that of the movie makers - its just bad timing. At any other time this would have been just a rather weak movie and its in that spirit which I shall review it. It is little more than a B-Movie revenge flick with a movie collossus thrown in to put bums on seats - without him, it would have been a straight to video, direct to bargain bucket affair. It is a shame, but that it how Arnie's last 3 movies have felt but little wonder when the action hero genre is considered so passe and only Arnie remains stuck in the old ways. Bruce moved on to more serious acting - not a John McClean in sight, Stallone tried new things(kind of), even Van Damne has gone quiet(more to do with drugs problems though)
and there's not a Dolph Lundgren in sight nor anyone to take over their mantle. Arnie is still a huge name in cinema, but he's the last of a dying breed and whilst his fans may love him they seem less and less thrilled about falling over themselves to see his next big blockbuster.

This movie is however different from the standard Arnie fare, but thats not to say that it is any better. Its the standard revenge movie which has littered Hollywood for at least the last 3 decades and probably longer. This time Arnie plays a fireman whose wife and young son are brutally killed in the aftershock of a terrorist car bomb. Its Columbian terrorists here however, not Arabs, or the movie may not have seen the light of day for another couple of months at least, maybe not for much longer. The Columbian terrorists are lead by a man known as "The Wolf", who Arnie just happens to have spoken to a few seconds before the explosion occured - The Wolf triggers the bomb as Arnie is waving to his wife and child...were he not late to meet them they would not be dead. A few contrivances later finds Arnie in Columbia hunting down the terrorists determined to exact revenge, the fireman suddenly turned assassin, expert on guerilla warfare and Mr. Resourceful in the blink of an eye - the standard thing. Will Arnie get his man, taking down the terrorist organisation from the inside which the combined might of the FBI and CIA has been trying to do for months without succeeding???

Hmmm...

Watching Arnie on screen is becoming a bit like watching Jurassic Park 4 these days. Great though he is, and much as we all love him, the tides of time are starting to work their dastardly effects on the guy to the point where watching him do all this action hero stuff is much like watching the geriatric olympics. The movie moves along at much the same pace as the flow of traffic in God's waiting room as well, with much of the first hour being devoted to set-up bef
ore the second half turns up the gas a little. I do mean a little, because whilst we have become spoiled with the frenetic pace of the Honk Kong influence, Matrix stylistics and other such jiggery-pokery, this one carries on in the usual Arnie style - beat your victims senseless time and again until they finally give up the ghost and toss in a few explosions for good measure. These are not the biggest problems though. The big problem is the subject matter which weighs around the neck of the movie like a Titanic sized millstone. Arnie movies are characteristically dumb, almost campy, with their wise-cracks, daft one-liners, sarcasm etc. We have come to love the '"I'll be back", "Hasta la Vista, baby" lines and the cheesy comments like "I think he got the point" when a bad guy gets skewered - you know the kind of thing. Terrorists blowing up women and children, a man out to avenge the death of his own do not lend themselves to such cheesy lines and the movie is thus completely devoid of them or any other kind of humour. Its the most downbeat Arnie movie you'll ever see(hopefully) and it suffers heavily because of it. A movie about a big, burly guy pushing 60 taking on the world and winning does not lend itself to all-out seriousness and it fails miserably by trying to do so.

The second big problem is the villain. Cheesy action flicks should have the most heinous, vile, despicable and generally over-the-top nasty villains in them, so that you the audience can hate them with a vengeance and cheer wildly when they and their henchmen do get pumpelled into a bloody splat on the concrete by our one man army. Collateral Damage has "The Wolf", who comes across more like "The Puppy Dog". Not only do our less than competence production team humanise the guy halfway through by giving him a wife and child thus giving us sympathy for him, or at least for them when he gets his inevitable come-uppance, but they a
lso attempt to give him an excuse, a reason for his attacks on the US. Our big burly hero then is going out of his way to deprive a wife of a husband, a child of a father and to remove a man from the world who is willing to stand up for what he believes in...Go Arnie!...Go Arnie!...Go Arnie!...or ummm not maybe. No one is really going to sympathise with The Puppy Dog's cause, but at the same time is he hateful enough to merit anything more than a shrug when he does get his inevitable come-uppance? Nope, and there is an underlying subtext that Arnie is just as bad as he is, because he has now done exactly the same to his victim's family as his victim did to him. Perfect!

I would have expected better from director Andrew Davies who also directed The Fugitive amongst others, but alas it wasn't to be. The same old action movie cliches are rolled out again here indestructable hero, villain who just won't die(wimpy though he looks), even the outrunning-the-fireball scene yet again, its all here. you'll also be amazed in the first hour how free the FBI, CIA etc are with information, more than happy to just tell big Arnie everything he wants to know about their investigations - saves thinking up a real plot I suppose, and the dialogue is straight from the "straight to video" school of scriptwriting. still, most of those things you EXPECT from an Arnie movie and at the end of the day they usually do not matter because no one comes into the movie theatre expecting there to be anything other than two hours of brain-on-hold action. This time though, there is little action for an hour, none of the cheesy lines all us fans of Arnie love, nothing new to see and several large misjudgements which mean that just though Arnie's cause may be, its difficult to really care whether he gets the job done or not. Collateral Damage is little more than a dated revenge flick. Watch it if you are a fan, wait for a video release if not.

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