“Collateral Damage,” Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new film, will remind some of the cold-blooded shoot’em-ups which came to define American cinema during the 1980s.
As the Cold War intensified and anguish over Vietnam subsided during the Reagan-era, Hollywood was quick to exploit the hawkish national mood with rah-rah combat movies like “Top Gun,” the “Rambo” series and Schwarzenegger’s own “Commando.”
Following the re-emergence of guilt-free Americanism in recent months, a film pitting Schwarzenegger’s muscle-bound patriot against a cadre of leftist guerrillas may hit some like deja vu. Are liberals having their worst fears realized? Does the release of “Collateral Damage” confirm that we’re reliving the ’80s?
Not exactly. Schwarzenegger hasn’t had a bona fide blockbuster since 1994’s “True Lies,” and the odds that this film is going to be a smash hit – and thereby stand as a cultural bellwether – are slim.
For one thing, Hollywood seems to want the movie to die a quiet death at the box office. The premise of the film, whereby Schwarzenegger journeys to Columbia to kill a terrorist responsible for the deaths of his wife and child, became an immediate non-starter in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
Originally slated to premiere last year, Warner Brothers pushed back the film’s release date by several months. Now that time has distanced the attacks on New York and Washington somewhat, the studio has finally decided to open the film, but is hardly saturating the airwaves with advertisements.
Not that the picture has much going for it anyway. For an action flick, “Collateral Damage” is really a low-energy affair. The film doesn’t make any use of Schwarzenegger’s comedic gifts and like Harrison Ford, his boredom with appearing in commercial movies is starting to show in his morose, perfunctory delivery.
To compensate, there are a few fine performances and some nice visual touches.
As a CIA operative who exploits Schwarzenegger’s plight to further his interventionist agenda, Elias Koteas makes a great rogue – like DeNiro at his smirkiest – and Cliff Curtis is spot-on as El Lobo, leader of the terror organization opposing U.S. intervention in war-torn Columbia.
John Turturro and John Leguizamo turn up briefly as a journeyman mechanic and a cocaine producer, respectively, who encounter Schwarzenegger on his travels. Their performances aren’t more than cameos, but add color to the movie – as do the Colombian locales captured by Andrew Davis, a director of some merit.
Still, the screenplay comes up very short, very often. The dialogue is tedious and the plot functions mostly as a clothesline on which to hang a few lukewarm suspense sequences and many more dead stretches of exposition.
In its flabby, middle passages, “Collateral Damage” maintains so little action it nearly loses momentum. Consequently, a female character named Selena, played by Francesca Neri, begins popping in and out of the story, used by the screenplay like a stopgap device to spike the picture with human interest – first as a damsel in distress, later in a different capacity which shouldn’t be revealed here.
In between, her identity as the wife of El Lobo is revealed, and in one scene she pleads her husband’s case to Schwarzenegger, equating American intervention in Colombia with the violence exacted on his family.
Reluctantly, he grows sympathetic and later, in what is surely the least convincing scene in the film, dresses down Koteas on behalf of the offended Colombian population. By including this scene, the creators of “Collateral Damage” may believe they’ve distanced themselves from the jingoism of Reagan-era films with which their new release has so many parallels.
They haven’t. If you recall, the combat movies of a decade-or-so ago took similar pains to convince us that their heroes were pacifists at heart – that the uzis on their arms were carried with the heaviest of hearts.
Before long, however, the heartstopping action began again and the enemy got it real good through the temple or the chest. This is exactly how “Collateral Damage” winds down. Escapism is what these films are selling and their theatrical use of violence mocks any half-hearted appeal for peace.
To dismiss hawkish movies on ideological grounds is narrow-minded. They don’t fail on message. It’s their callous approach – a maudlin oversimplification of complex geopolitical issues – which make them so frequently awful.
Ironically, a rare film which manages to be both interventionist and thoughtful has been number one at the box-office for three straight weeks. While “Black Hawk Down” has its flaws, it is infused by director Ridley Scott with an appreciation for the moral and political complexities of the conflict it dramatizes that is overflowing.
In the event “Black Hawk Down” beats the Schwarzenegger picture to win its fourth week, it will be a triumph for the aesthetic sensibility of the moviegoing public.
We’ll see.
