Arnold was looking to get back his big action movie following after the lackluster results of The 6th Day and The End of Days with Collateral Damage. Frankly, 1994’s Junior and True Lies were his last really successful movies (and True Lies 2 is his next movie to be released). With some strange luck, Schwarzenegger made this movie about terrorism coming home to America before Sep. 11, which ought to have been a bigger help at the box office than it has been. I guess that’s because the movie basically stinks.
Arnold is his usual self and the scenario seems open to the possibility of a taught, tense movie but director Andrew Davis seems to have blown his creative wad with The Fugitive and, to a lesser degree, Under Siege. He reuses too many elements from those movies, most noticeably the jump from a height through water; in The Fugitive Harrison Ford jumped off a dam and here Schwarzenegger jumps through a nasty waterfall. Elias Koteas is decent as the asshole CIA agent but Davis and first time scriptwriters David and Peter Griffiths made him an idiot in the end. Francesca Neri plays her Selena about as well as one could ask but again the script takes her in a strange, unbelievable turn at the end. Of course, the little deaf terrorist’s son bonds instantly with Arnold, which also is completely believable. Let’s just say that Collateral Damage has enough plot holes to drive a small truck through. Not recommended.
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