Collide (2017) Review!!

Synopsis – An American backpacker gets involved with a ring of drug smugglers as their driver, though he winds up on the run from his employers across Cologne high-speed Autobahn.

My Take – Among the mix of action films released for the past few months, also comes this much delayed action flick with a bunch of known actors in a typical love story set in the underbelly of a crime syndicate. Released in Germany back in 2014, director Eran Creevy‘s uninspired but bullet-riddled crime thriller went by the title ‘Autobahn’ since segments of this saga careened around on those high-speed highways. Yes! As expected, the most exciting scenes in the film take place on the highway, when our resilient but reckless hero smashes and crashes several cars and of course, the film also offers an opportunity to watch legendary actors (not so much considering their recent filmography), Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsley go toe to toe in a scene seemingly modeled on the famous diner scene from Michael Mann‘s Heat. The problem with the film lies in its predictability, in the sense, you know what’s going to happen, you know who is going to get hurt, and you can ultimately guess the outcome, plus the acting ranges from passable to laughable and its tendency to tease pretension feels beyond silly. Here, writer F. Scott Frazier (xXx: Return of Xander Cage) and director Eran Creevy (Welcome to the Punch) have assembled all the usual clichés in a story reminiscent of the 1993 film True Romance by interweaving a love story with nothing but vehicular mayhem. The story follows Casey Stein (Nicholas Hoult), a twenty-something car thief and ex-drug dealer who fled from America due to his criminal record and now works as a henchman for Geran (Ben Kingsley), a local gangster who operates a racetrack as well as a bordello. Meantime, when Casey isn’t running Geran’s errands, he samples the night life in Cologne, Germany. One evening he encounters an attractive barkeep, Juliette Marne (Felicity Jones), and they discuss the metaphysics of fate governing their lives. Predictably, the two hit it off and shack up together, but not before Casey renounces all ties to Geran at Juliette’s insistence.

They experience a momentary setback when Casey discovers that Juliette hasn’t been entirely honest about herself. She winds up at the local hospital, must undergo dialysis, and learns that she needs a $200-thousand-dollar kidney transplant. Frustrated with his grueling, junk yard job and unable to pay for Juliette’s transplant, Casey goes back to Geran for help. Geran, Casey, and Geran’s other henchman Matthias (Marwan Kenzari) concoct an outrageous plan to steal a tractor-trailer load of drugs that belong to a legitimate but larcenous businessman, Hagen Kahl (Anthony Hopkins), who traffics in thousands of golf balls filled with cocaine. Naturally, Juliette knows nothing about Casey’s recidivism. Once he has decided to go back into business with Geran, Casey refuses to back out, but he discovers that Kahl and his henchman play for keeps. Such is Casey’s love for Juliette that he refuses to give up despite the overwhelming odds against him. Meantime, Kahl and Geran have worked together in the past, but the ambitious Geran wants to be a partner more than just an accomplice. He wants more than Kahl is willing to concede, and Kahl’s reluctance prompts Geran to rob him, with Casey and Matthias performing the heavy lifting. It’s a good general rule that any action film that includes a scene at a rave is bound to be terrible, so it’s not any comfort when the film actually begins with one such scene as Casey and Juliette meet at a German nightclub where she’s bartending. This is followed by a quick montage showing their first months of dating; maybe hoping to convince viewers of their true love to create the much-needed connection so that one might care about the characters, which only works half heartedly. The biggest flaw in this film is the tone. I can forgive a bad film if it has enough foresight to be self-aware and play into the joke instead of unintentionally becoming it. One example that also came out this year was screenwriter F. Scott Frazier’s recently released film, xXx: Return of Xander Cage, as at no point does the Vin Diesel film takes itself seriously, which gives the actors the freedom to play up each of their performances. Its complete irreverence and absurdity are openly acknowledged, which makes the entire experience less like a losing battle and more like the joke equivalent of a pun. If only Frazier applied the same humorous scope to the screenplay here, the entire film would have been raised from derivative schlock to self-aware bad film. The only fun to be had with these types of films is everything that happens in between, like the car chases and fight choreography. Much of the film’s action takes place in fast, expensive and soon-to-be-crumpled cars. Casey is involved in a particularly jarring high-speed crash along Germany’s famed Autobahn, where he flips and rolls seemingly several dozen times and crawls out, unscathed. (Oddly, he enters a dreamlike state during the crash in which he imagines Juliette in the car with him, allowing them to romantically crash together?) Other cars crash too—into poles, barricades, buildings and each other—sometimes exploding. Vehicles also flip high into the air. One apparently lands on a gun-toting evildoer. Innocent travelers get caught in the mayhem, too, leading (presumably) to a ton of collateral injuries. (And in what surely would be a scandal for quality-conscious German auto manufacturers, not a single airbag is deployed during the entire film.) Sure, the film’s pacing is fast, and it speeds on from one scene to the next, to the next and gives the film a rushed feeling (for its 99 minutes run time), which isn’t uncommon in action films with a focus on car chases, but this film does it even more deliberately than that.

Unfortunately, the film takes far too long to set up its rehearsed batch of completely competent action set pieces. And once it does start sputtering towards the finish line, we’re constantly reminded of all the vacuous bits the film insists are important. So much time is taken to setup Casey and Juliette’s storybook romance but it’s done using the laziest of clichés. It’s a litany of prosaic, self-serious and boring treacle that looks and sounds like its even painful for the actors involved. Directed by Eran Creevy, who helmed the British indie crime flick Welcome to the Punch, this film often comes across like he’s out of his depth, especially in terms of shooting the action, using so many close-ups and fast edits, it’s hard to watch at times. The camera even captures their airless, personality-less scenes with the same polished artificiality of a magazine photo shoot. Then, as the chase unfolds, logical questions start to crop up and become increasingly unanswerable. How are the bad guys always able to catch up to the good guy? Why does he choose to use the “card up his sleeve” so late in the game? By the climax of the film, nothing makes any sense. Like a distracted driver constantly missing his highway exit, the film keeps passing on opportunities for action in favor of patience-straining exposition. The fact that the presumptive climax is explained by one character to another from across a table almost makes it feel like the film ran out of cash somewhere along the way. But while Creevy struggles with the basics of suspense—often indulging in the same hacky, buzz-killing slow motion shots as he did in the passable Welcome To The Punch—his direction of the film’s modestly conceived action sequences is serviceable. Being provided such as lackluster script, at least Hoult and Jones do seem game for the challenge. Nicholas Hoult plays the reluctant hero who shows us that his greatest strength might not be in shoot-outs and fist fights, but in driving away. Hoult plays the role of tormented lover perfectly. Anthony Hopkins did feel out of place in his role though, maybe I just see him as that awesome grandpa. But he didn’t quite feel the part although his performance was solid as expected. It was odd, but his dialogue almost felt like it was in a separate film in regards to the quality level. Ben Kingsley’s over-the-top performance as Geron doesn’t help matters, either. He gives his all to create the most ridiculous character with an equally horrendous accent and is constantly surrounded by half-nude hookers for no reason. Felicity Jones just had two strong performances a couple of months ago in A Monster Calls and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, so seeing her treated as a shallowly defined damsel in distress seemed just so wrong. Jones deserves much better, but then again so does all the other talent involved in this film. On the whole, ‘Collide’ aka ‘Autobahn’ is a poorly conceived and executed action film that seems more like a highlight reel of Nicholas Hoult’s attempt to be a solo action star.