COLLATERAL DAMAGE review

This Review Is Dedicated to A.B. King!

Last night with great trepidation, I stumbled my way into COLLATERAL DAMAGE starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, a one time asskicker of the silver screen. He’s become something of a joke due to a series of poor decisions in terms of the films he’s chosen to make.

To give you an example of how far his stock has fallen, last night I had 4 passes good for 8 people to attend the early press screening of his latest. I was able to get Quint and Auntie Meat to come. Patch, a rabid action film fan, decided to catch up on some school work… She decided to spend her time doing school work rather than see a free Arnold Schwarzenegger film. In all two seats couldn’t be filled, and another two seats were reluctantly filled by a friend of mine and his wife, both of whom I hadn’t seen a movie with since the midnight screening of THE PHANTOM MENACE.

This was a serious issue.

They had anticipated overflowing crowds, they had scheduled two screens, but one would have been enough. There was zero anticipation. Before the film, the audience could be heard lampooning Arnold with his one liners, "Stick…. Aworond!" "You Lawk Dead Tired" and on and on and on.

If you could hear me before the film, sort of whispering to myself, I was saying, "Don’t Suck!" You see, I am an Arnold Schwarzenegger fan. I love that series of action actors that came about in the late seventies/early eighties. Stallone, Arnold, Ford, Russell. They’re like the patron saints of the action genre, and they suck way too often these days. Admitting that sucks too. Watching Ford bored beyond words during the Golden Globes the other day, was just agony. Kurt Russell has smartly begun doing character work to bide his time finding a good starring vehicle. Harrison Ford just doesn’t do much anymore. Arnold acts for whoever can afford him and Sly… Sly has no ability to discern a good script whatsoever. His agent must play with Lincoln Logs still.

There’s good material out there. Hell Arnold is still attached to 4 really great scripts, but instead he goes for the pay day. God willing, maybe the pay day might possibly be good, but really… it seems that more often than not… the script always comes up lacking.

I did not like the script to COLLATERAL DAMAGE, it just didn’t do anything for me. It felt lifeless, but I was hoping that Andrew Davis would come into the project as the director of THE FUGITIVE not as the director of CHAIN REACTION. I was hoping that he might be able to somehow pull it off.

When the film was delayed due to September 11th, I was afraid they might be softening the film, but secretly I was wanting them to amp it up a notch or two, truth be told, there were no reshoots that I heard of. No extra footage. They moved it because the film dealt with a fireman exacting revenge upon terrorists that killed his wife and son.

As the lights dimmed and the movie began, I was just hoping for something fun. Something that would make me smile and flinch a few times. Make me say, "Oh shit," a few times… ya know?

COLLATERAL DAMAGE was fun. It was fun without feeling sacrilegious. The first 30 minutes seem a little too… creepy weird. Arnold taking a shower with his tiny son was a bit, weird. The blast that kills his wife and son wasn’t over-fetishized and felt brutal without calling attention to itself. But the moment in the film where Arnold hears, "The bomb was apparently placed inside a Traffic Cops motorcycle" the film begins. Arnie’s eyes narrow. The other gigantic firemen in the room all look like they are saying, "Let’s kick some ass!" or "We’ve got your back Sparky!" but they don’t say that! Which is good. Because that’s really bad dialogue.

The great success of COLLATERAL DAMAGE is the casting of the film.

Like I mentioned with Arnie’s fellow Firemen, these guys look right. They look like firemen that would be in Arnold’s brigade of firemen. These don’t look like the pussies in Chris Klein’s ROLLERBALL, these look like real men. The type of men that will walk through fire and rip out the windpipe of the mutherfucker that started the damn thing. Now, I have never seen a single one of these guys, and they don’t really do anything, but you know that if this movie wanted to be Johnny To’s LIFELINE and headed into that direction, you’d love to see them kick fire’s ass with Arnie. BUT that’s not this movie.

Then you have the CIA/FBI guys. Casting Elias Koteas as the obsessed badass CIA guy, who may be just a bit too committed to wiping out terrorism… Well, ever since Casey Jones, Elias Koteas has done it for me. He just looks a bit like the maskless Dr Phibes and he seems moments away from licking a wet scab wound at all times. It isn’t that he’s great here, he just brings more to his role. He’s good. He doesn’t look like a cardboard cut out, he looks right. Acts right. He isn’t overacting, he’s just… creepy and off, and that is what I want from him here. All the other CIA/FBI guys are faces you recognize in a strange sort of "where do I know that guy from" sort of way… Just like when you see FBI or CIA guys on TV at press conferences they always kinda look familiar in that… "Hey has that guy been tailing me" kinda way.

Then you have EL LOBO the terrorist. Beside the terrorist being named after my brother-in-law, the father of Kublakhan and the husband of Sister Satan, casting Pablo Escobar as the terrorist was great. Never mind the fact that Cliff Curtis is actually a Kiwi Maori guy and that he battled Bruce Campbell as the evil but handsome Prince Khalid in THE MAJESTIC! Here he is EL LOBO, and EL LOBO is a wonderful evil terrorist badass with emotion. He isn’t some cartoon character. He doesn’t go around doing THE EVIL LAUGH! Cliff is a good actor. He’s been in THE PIANO, ONCE WERE WARRIORS, THREE KINGS, BRINGING OUT THE DEAD, THE INSIDER, BLOW and TRAINING DAY. He’s been good in all of those, and he brings an understated menace to the role that keeps him from being ludicrous in that BAD ARNIE VILLAIN manner.

Then you have the damsel in distress, Francesca Neri. I kept expecting Arnold to say, "I must confess to you, I’m giving very serious thought… to eating your wife." That’s right, the lovely Allegra Pazzi… An Italian goddess sprung from the lovely loins of Rosalba Neri… one of the most beautiful Italian B actresses in history. I’m a huge Rosalba Neri fan, I can’t recommend enough the joy of watching Francesca’s mother in ARIZONA COLT, LONG RIDE FROM HELL, HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD, THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF FU MANCHU and LADY FRANKENSTEIN. Francesca is only two films into her American film career, and this is the first one shot outside of Italy. Those eyes of hers are echoes of her mothers and wowzers she floats the boat. Possibly the best eye candy to be opposite Arnold ever.

All of these characters are enough to consider that this movie was exceeding expectations. However, the second that John Turturro steps on screen playing a riff on his Bernie Bernbaum in a Columbian prison… HEAVEN! Right here in the middle of an Schwarzenegger flick I taste a morsel of a Coen Brother film. Add to that the fact that Turturro seems to be improving the most delightful little riffs on his dialogue. Raising his material way way way up there. I know this character was dead on paper, but here… Turturro infuses it with that life that only a great actor can give a meaningless part. Casting Turturro in this tiny part added an entire star to this film. He is the champagne added to these scrambled eggs… making them just dissolve in your mouth the way only great scrambled eggs taste.

Then we’re introduced to a character played by John Leguizamo. AGAIN a role cast with someone far exceeding the necessity for casting someone of his ability. John is riffing on Arnold as if saying, "All my life I’ve wanted to be in an Arnold movie and call this big lummox a sauerkraut and here’s my chance and I’m gonna do it!" Leguizamo is merciless in roasting Arnold’s character, his accent and Arnie just simmers there taking it. FANTASTIC! I was delighted beyond words to see these pair of Johns roasting the Oak.

The great thing about both these cameo characters is that they are just the right amount of both. Not too much to overpower the films like Joe Pesci in the last LETHAL WEAPON flick. But just enough to flavor the whole film.

Then there is Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is very interesting how Andrew Davis uses him here. They’ve eliminated a great deal of his character’s dialogue. Given other character’s off-screen narration to scenes of Arnie doing things. He is never used as a monster of death. Davis uses Arnold’s reputation and his previous characters as a cocked left jab, what I mean is… as an audience member, you are sitting there looking at Conan, The Terminator, Col. John Matrix, Douglas Quaid, Harry Tasker, Major Dutch Schaefer and you know that at any moment he is going to whip out a 16" knife, hurl it across the room lifting the victim off his feet pinning him to the wall 3 feet behind him with the sound of a chicken leg being popped off the chicken. Followed by, "STICK AROUND!"

Arnold is used like Hitchcock’s MacGuffin. You know he’s going to explode. You know that EL LOBO killing his kid and wife was a "BEEEEEEG MISTAAAAAKE!" but Arnie never tells us that. We know it.

There is really only one real ONE LINER in the film, and it feels so good when he says it. Arnie’s fights in this thing are brutal. The one in the hut against three Colombian guerillas was classic down and dirty style fighting. Enough fucking wire-fu, let’s use our teeth. Let’s bludgeon someone to death, choke them to death… But ya know what… Arnie is really a very ineffective killer in this flick. People just don’t die easy with him. He’s not a killer here. It isn’t what his character does. He is ‘THE FIREMAN’, technically his character is called Gordon Brewer, but nearly every other character in the film refers to him as ‘THE FIREMAN’ and that is very integral to his character. He wants revenge on one person in particular. He doesn’t want lots of death. This is a new drive for him, all he has known has been saving lives, not extinguishing them. As a result… there is a wonderful clumsiness to his character. A hesitation that he has never really had before.

His ‘superhuman’ status comes only from the amount of personal abuse he can withstand. I’m sure that the average human would take 2 full blows from a rifle butt before letting someone go. Arnie takes maybe 20 of those, and innumerable kicks. There is just no quit in the sonuvabitch. He’s just as determined as he’s ever been, but less deadly.

Everything in Colombia just did it for me. Technically it was all shot on the east coast of Mexico, I know the area quite well, where this was all shot, but I love how all the establishing of the area is done. I like how big the film feels down there. I was reminded of the first ROMANCING THE STONE film. That sort of unveiling of the locale. Really sweet. Really good.

This is the first movie that Andrew Davis has made since the FUGITIVE that I really had a lot of fun with. It isn’t THE FUGITIVE good, but not much is. This is a good Arnold flick. One that actually got audience applause afterwards.

Now, if that big bastard can be in another great TERMINATOR movie, followed by getting CRUSADE off the fucking ground, we might see the bastard doing good again!