Collateral Damage

Released 2002
Stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elias Koteas, Francesca Neri, Cliff Curtis, John Leguizamo, John Turturro
Directed by Andrew Davis
Reviewed September 15, 2002

Arnold plays Gordon Brewer, an L.A. firefighter whose wife and young son are killed by a terrorist bomb. The bomb is planted by a Colombian terrorist known as El Lobo (Cliff Curtis), who wants to make America pay for the CIA meddling in Colombian politics. Due to 9/11, which occurred shortly after this movie was completed, I believe this will be the last movie for a long time where the American intelligence community is played as the heavy. It's always been a pet peeve of mine how the CIA or FBI or NSA, etc. is shown as an evil force wreaking havoc upon the world. While they have certainly done bad things in the past, it's not all they've done. It's a cynical view of the American government, and I think Hollywood will now swing to the other extreme for several years to come.

For some reason, this movie is in a frenzied rush to get to the end. It opens with establishing shots of Brewer and his family and moves quickly to the bombing. Within a week, Brewer is in Colombia searching for El Lobo. The CIA has been involved in Colombia for eight years and hasn't been able to find him, but Brewer works his way into El Lobo's guerilla camp within a couple of days. Then a couple of days later, they work their way back to Washington D. C. for the finale. The strange thing about this frenzy is Brewer doesn't kick any ass until the end. He uses a grenade to blow up a fuel tank that may possibly have killed some guerillas, but I'm not sure about that. He does end up killing one of the Colombian policemen but none of the terrorists he went down there to get. I agreed to watch this movie because I wanted to watch Arnold blow up terrorists, but that doesn't happen. It's like the movie wants to strike a balance between a silly action flick and a serious drama, but it doesn't find that balance. On one hand I want to commend Arnold for trying to do something more than usual, but on the other hand I'm not sure how many people want to see him do anything more. If he wants to take that step, he's going to have to get better scripts, because this one's a mess.

One of the very worst moments in the movie comes near the beginning when a Congressional Committee orders all operations in Colombia to be terminated immediately due to the bombing. This is exactly what Bin Dipshit and his Al Qaida psychos have counted on throughout the years. They saw how the United States would fold after suffering casualties and how we would offer an anemic response at best, but this only happened when terrorists attacked our interests abroad. The very thought that we would immediately capitulate to terrorist demands after an attack on our own soil is extremely offensive. We've been soft on terrorism for 30+ years, but we would never accept such an attack. The filmmakers may as well have issued an open invitation to terrorists around the world: "Come blow up American buildings and people, and you'll get whatever you want." That's a horrible message, and I was terribly offended by it.

Another thing I disliked was how it tried to humanize El Lobo. The movie shows both the government and the guerrillas brutalizing peasants, and it tries to make El Lobo sympathetic by explaining his reasons for becoming a terrorist. It then tries to draw a parallel between him and Brewer as grief-stricken fathers out to kill, but that's ridiculous. It reminded me of how so many people sympathize with Palestinian suicide bombers. I'm not going to get into that debate, but I will say there's a simple line that needs to be drawn. The saying goes "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," and the line that needs to be drawn is whether you intentionally target civilians. Once you do, you're a terrorist--pure and simple, and I think that should be one of our criteria when judging the plethora of "revolutionary" groups in the world. As evidenced in this movie, killing terrorists and guerrillas is a messy business, because they don't wear uniforms. They intentionally (and necessarily) blend in with civilians, so there will always be collateral damage on the government's part. Israel is an example of that, but the government's soldiers always wear uniforms. There's no excuse for mistaking college kids dancing at a disco with soldiers on a base. This movie makes the mistake of taking a potentially legitimate guerilla force and having them blow up buildings in the United States. At that point they're terrorists, so why are we asked to sympathize with poor El Lobo? It's good to not make the two opposing sides in a movie purely good and evil, but this movie is confused about what it really wants to say. It would have been a more realistic and interesting story if Brewer had moved to Central America and spent a year or two searching for El Lobo. You could then humanize the guerillas by differentiating between the rebels and El Lobo the terrorist.

Unfortunately, the move blows whatever small amount of credibility it has with a completely ridiculous ending. On the plus side, it doesn't go for some of the trite twists I was expecting, like Brandt (Elias Koteas) being a double-agent. Instead he's the evil U. S. government agent with good intentions. That was a small step up. I was also afraid Brewer and Selena (Francesca Neri) would become soul mates and form a new family, but thankfully the movie wasn't that stupid. It was extraordinarily stupid, however, with the final confrontation between the three principles. Suddenly it switches between the movie it was trying to be and becomes the silly action flick it didn't want to be. The ending is so ludicrous, I don't mind giving it away. Brewer is a fireman, but he doesn't seem concerned about hacking holes into a natural gas line with an axe. Is there a reason this wouldn't cause a spark and blow up the entire building? What about when the impossibly well-timed explosion blows him out of the corridor but doesn't leave a scratch on the bad guys? Selena is in the corridor with the massive fireball, but her gorgeous hair doesn't even get singed. Then we have the bad guys who should be dead fighting the lone good guy, and the whole thing is just very, very, very stupid.

Reviewed by Bill Alward
September 15, 2002
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