*** Official "COLLATERAL DAMAGE" Review Thread (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

This thread is now the Official Review Thread for Collateral Damage. Please post all HTF member reviews in this thread.
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If you need to discuss those type of issues, please post your discussion comments in the Official Discussion Thread for this film which can be found at this link.
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Crawdaddy

 

[JackWillson]

i enjoyed this flick and i'm a big arnie fan. I wasn't let down at all and the sound was killer!

 

[Patrick Sun]

The 1st and 2nd act of this film are almost preposterous, but I expect nothing less from an Ahnuld flick! I think the 3rd act redeems most of the film in my eyes. So check it out if you are an Ahnuld fan, but expect nothing too new or spectacular, just plain ol' action movie making fun.

I give it a grade of B- or 2.5 stars.

 

[Rob T]

A truly great Arnold movie with a pretty good plot twist.

 

[todd stone]

Awesome flick!

 

[Alex Spindler]

A fair movie. The comments about the Rotten Tomatoes score are dead on. This is just a mediocre movie, nothing more, so when you add all those not-so-rottens together, it makes the film seem much worse. There is no way that it should be anywhere near the trash that Rollerball is.
The movie itself was just a little less than successful at meeting it's goals. Arnold does an acceptable job with this one, and I wouldn't say that he's made a mistake in choosing this one. I'm sure it looked to be a nice project before our own high profile terrorism experience. I'm sure the fact that they focused on Latin American terrorists as opposed to Middle Eastern gave them a bit more leeway to try some new territory.
Arnold seems to be taking a low body count approach with this one, where he isn't the source of much of the carnage. Instead, its the overzealous CIA or the terrorists themselves.
The movie is directed with as sure a hand as I would expect of Andrew Davis. He's never matched the perfect mating of material and star as he had with the Fugitive. But Arnold is filmed pretty capably, and there are a few moments where some interesting shots leak through (especially during the water-borne escape sequence. However, there is an abundance of really bad special effects enhancements to the combat and explosions that really do not work. It really detracts from the movie as a whole.
All in all, nowhere near as bad as it's been made out to be, and a fairly enjoyable time to be had on an afternoon.
:star: :star:

 

[AaronP]

I liked the movie, however it needed MORE action. Why couldn't Arnie break out some hardware (ie machine guns) and mow down a few dozen columbian extras? is that too much to ask?

It felt too much like events were just happening around Arnold, and he wasn't the one who caused enough stuff.

And another thing, when he's doing all that fancy acid on the rubber band stuff to those grenades and placing them by that machine thing to blow up, WHY OH WHY wouldn't he just take a grenade throw it into the room the guy was in? That would have been too simple.

And the bomb in the dinosaur, saw that one a mile away. They showed it one too many times beforehand. WAY TO OBVIOUS.

 

[Justin Lane]

I really enjoyed this flick because it knew what it was...an Action Movie. It did not try to get overly smart, or dramatic, but just kept the punches rolling throughout. If you are a fan of Action Movies, this is one of the better true genre films in quite some time.

The sound was no slouch either. I saw it in a theater featuring DTS and was impressed throughout. (Too bad it is a Warner film, we will never get to recreate this in our home).

As an Action movie I give this 3 out of 4 stars.

J

 

[Rob Dawn]

I enjoyed this movie quite a bit!

A little less action than I expected, but I never got "antsy" or bored.

(Interesting that an Arnold movie had some political commentary.)

As an Arnie/action movie I'd give it a solid 3 out of 4 stars.

Rob

 

[David Rogers]

This movie is probably the worst one I've actually paid for a ticket to in my entire life.

I went only because my friend wanted to check it out, and I thought it would be good for laughs even if it turned out as bad as the trailers made it to be.

Boy was I wrong. I can honestly say this movie succeeded in nothing in my eyes. It got nothing right. The script was very very bad, with a plot and plot events that surely were scrawled in crayons on the side of a wrinkled cardboard box that was transported to the set each day by a dedicated PA who helped read the sandscrit around the waterstains. Dialog was just as bad, just as wooden and silly. The cinematography wasn't very good, no interesting camera work or angles, no nice filters or clever tricks to bring us closer to the story (I use that word, story, jokingly here only because it usually goes with the rest of the phrase). Effects, bad bad bad. I couldn't BELIEVE they let that crap with the waterfall go out the door, and most of the physical effects (gunplay and explosions) looked equally silly or unnatural. The end fight/exposion was laughable how artifical and CG'ed it looked.

The direction was pathetic. I was not interested in any of the characters at all, and nothing they did endeared them to me. Not even the wife at the beginning was enough to provoke a human response from me, so clearly and obviously was she a plot device. Andrew Davis joins Jan deBont as one of the worst directors still breathing in my book.

*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*

(reading past this is at your own risk)

I never, never ever, watch movies trying to 'figure out' the plot device. People who do such things annoy me, as I'm always enthralled in the film I'm watching and waiting the twists and turns with gleeful anticipation. However, the plot twists with this film were meandering gentle curves at best. I did NOT see the wife-as-mastermind angle, but I did immediately spot the bomb in the kid's dino toy. It was simply far too obvious the way they passed through the security checkpoint.

At the time, when I nudged my friend and speculated to him about the toy, I was thinking the bad guy was still the mastermind and had figured his wife would try to turn him in, and that he had set the bomb so she'd carry it to his enemies and strike deeply against them. That would have had a certain amount of coolness to it, a freedom fighter so devoted to his fight he'd sacrifice those closest to him to strike a devestating blow against his enemies. Alas, it was not to be. They twisted it from possible cool to total joke.

*END SPOILERS*

Please don't see this film, don't buy a dvd copy either. Such pathetic movie making should not be supported or encouraged. It turned US$15mil over the weekend I'm sure on the strength of Arnold, but if it makes as much as US$7mil in week two of release I'd be very surprised.

If Andrew Davis is never allowed near a camera again it might be too soon.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

Going by the trailers, versions before 9-11 and the versions after 9-11, I thought that this was going to be a great Arnold kicking major arse like he did back in the day. But no, it was another "I'm an average, everyday guy that gets put into an extrordanary situation." All of his past box office failers of recent day have had the same story. I realize that Arnold is trying to stretch his acting legs and be more diverse but it isn't working as well as I'm sure he hoped.

Bring back the secret agent Arnold, the Commando Arnold, the Superhuman Arnold, the Cyborg Arnold. These are the Arnold's that the viewing audiences want to see.

Collateral Damage wasn't anything spectacular over all. I would expect to see something of that caliber on USA Network. After the initial bomb the movie was very slow until it came back to the US where there were some interesting plot twists that I didn't see coming and was pleasantly surprised. Other than that this is a renter at most.