Movie Review: Collide

One of the things I admired about the new movie "Collide" is the risk the director and producers and stuntmen took in making some of the most dangerous high-speed highway car crashes and stunts I have seen in a long while. What I didn't admire was the extremely average, run of the mill, something we have seen many times before story. Given the extremely average script, the big question is how the producers of this film were able to get Felicity Jones, Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsly to star in this movie. For me, the Hollywood deal-making business, favors, payoffs and leverage that must have been required to get these 3 top actors to be in a movie this average would be a far more interesting documentary than this action movie was. Felicity Jones is an Oscar-nominated actress and both Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsley have won best actor Oscars and have been nominated several times each. Given all of this, I was more interested in how this film was cast, more than the story or even the action scenes.

This movie stars newcomer Nicholas Hoult, who does an OK job as a drifter who moves to Germany due to problems he was having in the United States and runs into Felicity Jones who has also moved to Germany to escape her drug abusing family. What follows is a love story, involvement with a criminal drug gang lead by Ben Kingsley and Anthony Hopkins and then a far fetched reason to need a great deal of money quickly which leads to chase scenes that wind up on the highway during the last half of the film.

The problems with this film are obvious, due to the fact that there is nothing new here, and the acting from 3 very good actors and the chase scenes are not enough to rescue this movie from its extreme averageness. For these reasons, I cannot recommend Collide.