Collateral Damage
*
Cinema Releases - April 5, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 18. 109
minutes. Directed by Andrew Davis. Written by David Griffiths, Peter Griffiths;
from a story by David Griffiths, Peter Griffiths, Ronald Roose. Starring
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elias Koteas, Francesca Neri, Cliff Curtis, John
Leguizamo, John Turturro, Lindsay Frost.
The American release of "Collateral
Damage" was delayed after the September 11 attacks, for fear that
the movie's use of terrorism as background for stunts might cause offence.
And now there are critics claiming that there's nothing to fuss over -- sure,
they argue, the movie's treatment of terrorism is careless, but the filmmakers
were not to know that terrorism would be such a hot topic when the movie
hit screens.
I disagree. Now that terrorism is the subject
of wide debate in the Western world, it is the perfect time to condemn movies
like this. I had a bee in my bonnet about this kind of stuff before Sept.
11 (see my review of "Swordfish"), and now I see even less reason to change
my mind.
It's not the carelessness I find troublesome.
It's the fact that these movies portray terrorists as one-dimensional
dark-skinned loonies who blow people up without cause while reciting commie
clichés. The real problem with terrorists is not that they are fighting
for the wrong things, but that they are fighting in the wrong way -- there
is no excuse for killing innocent people, even in retaliation for the same.
But when the villain of this movie says, "You Americans are so naïve...
you see a peasant with a gun, and you change the channel, instead of asking
why a peasant needs a gun," -- he's absolutely right.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, an actor not famous for
open-minded views, plays the hero. At one point the villain asks him, "What's
the difference between you and me?" Arnie's response: "The difference is
that I'm just gonna kill you." It's a cheap bit of humour, and it's also
supposed to represent how we westerners are never guilty of killing except
in self-defence. But that's not true -- the U.S. operations in Afghanistan
over the past five months have killed over five thousand civilians. Three
thousand bodies have been found in the rubble of the World Trade
Centre.
Schwarzenegger plays a Los Angeles fireman whose
wife and child become accidental victims of a bomb intended for the Colombian
consulate. Arnie gets mad at the impotent response of the authorities and
decides to take matters into his own hands. He hires a military advisor to
teach him how to sneak into Colombia and take revenge on the perpetrators;
the advisor speaks for a long time, peppering the speech with plenty of
technical-sounding lingo, but his advice boils down to, "Take the bus and
don't get shot." Uh, huh.
Arnie looks amazingly dumb as a grieving father
-- he's a human special effect, and expressive pathos is not his strong suit.
The movie is dumber in thinking that Arnie would manage to inconspicuously
sneak through the jungles of Colombia without being noticed, considering
that he's bigger than most of the trees. And let us not ignore the racism
of how the movie portrays the Colombian government and guerrillas as equally
suspicious -- none of those darkies can be trusted, doncha
know.
Oh, and what does Arnie do once he gets his chance
for revenge? Why, he plants a bomb in the centre of a small town while a
woman and her child walk down the next street. Real fair.
"Collateral Damage" is an offensive movie, yes,
but it's also a plain bad one. It was directed by Andrew Davis, whose "The
Fugitive" is one of the best action thrillers of the last ten years, but
here the action scenes are curiously flat. There are several chases, a prison
break and the obligatory waterfall jump... but throughout it all, the camera
holds back, causing not a bit of involvement or excitement.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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