Arnold Schwarzenegger has made plenty of bad movies, especially in
recent years ("End of Days," "The Sixth Day"), but usually they
aren't offensive. Harmless, brainless and instantly forgettable are
more like it.
But his latest, "Collateral Damage," is brainless and instantly forgettable, and also incredibly offensive and insensitive. It's a sadistic and insulting action drama that fancies itself a serious movie dealing with serious issues.
In an opening that is remarkably similar to his last effort, "The Sixth Day," we meet family man Arnold -- as heroic fireman Gordy Brewer -- playing with his wife and young son. From this brief introduction, the viewer is expected to care about each of these people and what happens to them. But terrible acting and clumsy and cliched dialogue undermines that.
Gordy's wife and son aren't around for long. They just happen to be sitting outside a building where some Colombian officials are visiting. Gordy is on his way to pick them up, but before he can get to them, there's a huge explosion and his family is gone.
{INSERT_RELATED}A man calling himself "el lobo" ("the wolf" for non Spanish speakers) is responsible for the terrorist act. He wants America to stop meddling in Colombian affairs.
Before long, Gordy learns that he talked to the wolf. When he was parking his truck to pick up his family, he spoke with a police officer that was actually the bomber. Unfortunately, this proves to be useless information.
The government believes that the wolf made it back safely to Colombia. And to avoid more incidents on American soil, they are going to try and reach a peace agreement. This means that no one is going after the wolf, and Gordy's family becomes collateral damage. So Gordy takes matters into his own hands.
This is where "Collateral Damage" becomes a ridiculously implausible action flick as well as detestable and cruel. Gordy decides to go to Colombia and find the wolf himself to administer his own vigilante justice. He studies Colombia for about a day on the Internet, and then gets a crash course in the area from a friend of a friend who's been there. And that's it, he's ready.
The CIA and other government agencies' trained men and women have been in Colombia for years, unable to find the wolf and his cronies, but this guy with no training or experience is going there after briefly searching the Web! He apparently didn't learn that the hostile and dense jungles of Colombia would, in reality, result in his death or capture in minutes.
While in Colombia, Gordy receives help in his mission from two men, Armstrong (John Turturro) and Felix (John Leguizamo). He also comes into contact with a woman and her young son, who will play a vital role in his quest later on.
It all leads to a laughably bad conclusion in Washington D.C., where Gordy gets to face off with the wolf. In a scene that typifies the movie, an explosion that melts an ax and nearly kills Gordy leaves two others who were at the center of it completely untouched.
"Collateral Damage" is a bottom-of-the-barrel action movie with plenty of gratuitous violence, including a scene where Gordy bites off a man's ear and spits it out, and another where the wolf forces a soldier to swallow an entire snake.
For director Andrew Davis, who directed the commercially and critically successful "The Fugitive," this is hitting bottom. He seems content with broad overacting, weak special effects (including some laugh-out-loud CGI shots) and a terrible pace.
And what are these great actors doing here? In addition to Turturro and Leguizamo, there's Elias Koteas, Francesca Neri, Cliff Curtis, Harry Lennix and Miguel Sandoval. It's a downer to see them all mired in this malarkey.
Even by Schwarzenegger standards, this is an awful, worthless movie. Everyone involved should be ashamed.
"Collateral Damage" opens everywhere Fri., Feb. 8. Click here for showtimes.
