I Am Ahnult - Hear Me Roar! (Collateral Damage (DVD))

Member Name: sngroover

Product:	Collateral Damage (DVD)
Date:	23/04/02 (75 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Arnold!, Cheeselicious!

Disadvantages: None

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 links in the film. This was a huge mistake I think. Well, not this in particular but the editing of the film resulting from this is a bit of a downer. No longer do we have Arnold's comedy genius lines but, instead present is a distinct lack of dialogue on his part. There is one deliberately funny line from Arnold, which came as a slight disappointment, I must admit.

The acting in the film is pretty much what you'd expect. Arnold does his thing and everyone else just tries hard not to get in his way or upstage him too much. The strange thing about it though, is that it tries to convey an actual message, that if Arnie goes and kills the terrorists he will just be becoming one of them. At one point it even seems like there may be a moral in sight at the end of the film. The only problem is, that about half way through they just pretend they never mentioned that and just have Arnold go and do what he does best: blow big things up. However, this is by no means a bad thing!

If you've paid into this film, chance are you know what you're in for. Arnold saying little, blowing much stuff up, killing the masses along the way. What does it matter that the film's as predictable as another Jamie Oliver Sainsbury's advert? Again, its part of the joy of Arnol
d! (Honestly, its sounding more and more like i'm starting a new religion here!)

I'll be the first to admit that Collateral Damage isn't a patch on the likes of Commando and Predator (both must-see movies, I urge you to if you haven't already). In fact, you'll probably see a fair amount of reviews giving it one, or on the worst occasions, no stars. This is an outrage! It may not be pushing the genre exactly, but it provides an hour and a half of good solid entertainment with everyone's favourite action hero - Arnold Schwarzeneggar. I won't go into the fact that hes supposedly of scottish descent in the film, just suffice to say, it was great. Just don't take it too seriously, ok?

Summary: