Review of Collide (2016) by Patrick L — 20 Oct 2017

"Despite the hammy charades from both Kingsley and Hopkins, "Collide" has to contend with poor camera work, cheap-looking action scenes and bland characters".

DVD Movie Review: Collide.

Date Viewed: June 8 2017.

Directed By Eran Creevy (Welcome to the Punch).

Screenplay By F. Scott Frazier and Eran Creevy, Story By F. Scott Frazier.

Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Felicity Jones, Ben Kingsley, Anthony Hopkins, Marwan Kenzari, Clemens Schick, Michael Epp, Erdal Yildiz, Aleksandar Jovanovic and Markus Klauk.

No multi-car pile up on the highway could possibly explain the absurdity of "Collide". It's an action-thriller that has two bland performances and two highly over-the-top performances. It's supposed to be an action movie about an American living in Germany who has to save the love of his life by doing one last job for his drug kingpin boss but "Collide" seems more interested in car-crashing than telling a lively story.

Nicholas Hoult stars as Casey Stein, an American who's now living in Germany so that he can evade from the law back home. Casey did some bad things at home and now he's trying to start a new life in Germany. After telling his employer and drug smuggler, Geran (Ben Kingsley) he wants out, Casey starts to take control of his life until he meets another American at a nightclub. Her name is Juliette Marne (Felicity Jones) and they immediately fall for each other. Suddenly, Juliette faints to the ground and when she and Casey arrive at the hospital, the doctors inform Juliette that one of her kidneys has failed.

Juliette needs a transplant immediately but she's not qualified to get one because she's not a citizen of Germany. This sad and terrible situation leaves Casey with no choice. He must return to his employer and ask for a job in order to secure the $250,000 he needs to go back to America and get Juliette the transplant she needs despite the fact that Casey is still a wanted man.

Geran wants Casey to steal a precious cargo of cocaine-filled golf balls from another big drug kingpin but this one is more ruthless than him. This drug dealer and mob boss happens to be Hagen Kahl (Anthony Hopkins), Geran wanted to be partners with Hagen but he turned him down which left Geran angry and furious and now he seeks payback time. When the heist goes terribly wrong, Casey gets kidnapped by Hagen but he miraculously escapes and the movie turns into a low-rent "Fast & Furious" rip-off. Casey's actions get repeated over and over again throughout, Casey steals a car, Casey crashes the car, Casey miraculously escapes from either Hagen's henchmen or the German authorities, he steals another car, he crashes another car, he miraculously escapes from the bad guys, he steals another car and yeah, you get the idea. Casey's dumb actions seem to the formula for this movie and it's annoying as F$&@!

While he crashed Hagen's car, Casey manages to find $5 million in the automobile and he takes all of it and Hagen not only plans on getting the money back, he also desires in finding Casey's girlfriend. Fearing for Juliette's safety, Casey calls Geran to protect her from Hagen and his thugs before they can get to her. Nicholas Hoult is really bad here as Casey because he just makes one dumb decision after another and Felicity Jones is totally miscast as Casey's girlfriend who desperately needs a kidney transplant.

As for Kingsley and Hopkins, their performances reach tremendous levels of awkward and hilarity. Kingsley's character not only has a bad Turkish accent, he really loves the 1985 John Travolta/Jamie Lee Curtis film "Perfect" which was deemed so horribly bad by many film critics and he even thinks that Travolta should've won an Oscar for it and he also has a strange obsession for Burt Reynolds. Oh wait! there's more, Hopkins even does an impression of Sylvester Stallone. It's hard to fathom or believe that a knighted Oscar-winner would do an impression of him. I'll admit that it is fascinating to watch and I had a good laugh but this is the kind of zany impressions Hopkins can do on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon".

The screenplay by director Eran Creevy (Welcome to the Punch) and F. Scott Frazier (XXX: Return of Xander Cage) is filled with plot holes, not so colorful dialogue and the action is just an exhausting cycle of wham and bam. Despite the hammy charades from both Kingsley and Hopkins, "Collide" has to contend with poor camera work, cheap-looking action scenes and bland characters.