Collateral Damage
Directed by Andrew Davis
Collateral Damage is a revenge movie
shows Arnold Schwarzenegger narrow his eyes
as he slugs it out with a bunch of Colombian
drug baron terrorists led by a dude called Wolf
who murdered his family in a terrorist attack.
Collateral Damage predates Sept 11th
(remarkable how such an anonymous date has become
so familiar) and so the terrorist atrocities
portrayed in the movie have been cruelly upstaged
by real history. But the only real purpose of
the terrorism in
Collateral Damage is
to motivate Arnie into seeking bloody revenge.
The plot is basically a chain of spectacular
coincidences about the right people being in
the right places at the right times. But who
gives a monkeys? Lets face it. We watch Arnie
movies for the ACTION. Not just any old action.
We want to see Arnie beat up the bad guys.
Collateral Damage features a lot of explosions,
but the real adrenaline flows when Arnie does
in fact get down to the important business of
getting into fights. There is too much violence
in entertainment, especially on TV, but in an
Arnie Movie violence is justified. Why? Because
that is how the Universe works. And the fights
are great. I am tired of nancy-boy kung-fu,
with skinny dudes flying 30 feet in the air
and roundkicking motionless stooges. They are
just dancers hanging from cables that are removed
using computers in post prod. Movie
kung
fu in Western movies is just silly. Kung
fu doesn't get the juices flowing. Kung fu is
for wimps. Look at
The
Matrix. Look at
Blade
2. The skirmishes in those movies were just
nancy-boy kung-fu bullshit. Now
Collateral
Damage features real men fighting real fights
(sort of). Maybe real is the wrong word, real
brawls are unphotogenic affairs. But here the
fighting is more satisfying to watch. Those
blows
hurt. Real men hit other real men
very hard indeed. We see the kind of crunching
pain that is worth a million silly Jet Li or
Keanu Reeves fights. For me Arnie is still the
best action dude out there, even though he must
be about fifty by now! Lets hope the a younger
gen nutcase can replace Arnie once the gnarled
gym addict retires into presidency or some other
pointless job.
Collateral Damage is not the best Arnie
film out there - those magic actioners of the
eighties and early nineties are a happy but
fading memory. But in its best scenes
Collateral
Damage gave me a taste of some of the magic
of Total Recall. And that was good enough for
me. That's what I want from an actioner. Not
kung-f*cking-fu. Not pretty boys doing silly
bullet time dances. I want real bone crunching
actioners with real men kicking the crap out
of each other.
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spoilers corner
Spoilers!!!!
Warning: this box contains a movie post-mortem analysis that freely gives away important plot twists and details. If you have not yet seen this movie and intend seeing it, avoid this spoilers box until afterwards. Bookmark the page, see the movie, see if you agree with my review then write an arsy comment saying I am talking total b*ll*cks :-)
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The scenes with the terrorist stating
his agenda on TV were good for the object
of forwarding of the plot, but in reality
they were unrealistic. These days terrorists
would never be rewarded with screen time.
Hey, why am I talking about logic here?
Keep on going Arnie. A bad Arnie movie
is worth a dozen good movies these days.
And Collateral Damage, if not brilliant,
was not bad at all.
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There are no more spoilers below this
point, except maybe in any user talkback
comments.
End of spoilers corner
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Arnie, keep on going mate. Stuff the pretty
boys who are ruining modern movies. You are
still the hardest!
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| From: |
Perrin | Subject: | 2002-04-21 14:10:08 |
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| From: |
Mark | Subject: | 2003-07-26 00:14:42 |
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| From: |
soph | Subject: | 2004-11-20 17:00:44 |
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