I have not seen every movie Arnie's ever done, but of the ones I have seen, this is unquestionably the worst. It's also the least interesting, a distinction that must be made when talking about trashy action films.

To the scores:

Collateral Damage
Script/Story: 3
Acting/Casting: 4
Action: 4
Eye Candy: 3
Fun Factor: 2
Replayability: 3
Overall: 2.5

Malaya and I yawned and groaned through most of this transparent effort, and mostly talked about why it was so suck, when so many of his other films, especially the early ones, were equally cheesy, but quite enjoyable.

I'm not an encyclopedic expert on Arnie, since I've skipped several of his recent efforts, and I definitely avoided his "comedies" after deriving some mild enjoyment from a single viewing of Twins, but this one is just boring and silly. He gets a chance to try and act in this one, after his wife and young son die early on, and he sits around trying to look shellshocked and grief-stricken, but it's just painful to watch.  He's simply not an actor, and doesn't have a face to express those types of emotions. I think this could have been a decent film with a real actor in the role.  It wouldn't have been any good no matter who they cast, since the story is so silly, the politics so naive, and the characters so one dimensional, but it wouldn't have been actively bad, as it is with Arnie unsuccessfully trying to act his way out of a paper bag for the first 30 minutes.

Fortunately for the film, unfortunately for the realism of it, Arnie gets completely over the pain of his dead family after about 30 minutes, once he heads down to Central America to seek revenge on the terrorist who killed them. From then on he's all action, but he's so painfully inept at it that you can't help wincing. He's the only white person for 500 miles, every other person he talks to says that the only two occupations in that part of the world are drug running and kidnapping gringos, and yet he walks along in his long sleeve American clothing, making no effort to fit in or be inconspicuous. Not even wearing a hat or buying some local clothing. His lack of caution has predictable results.

He's got no plan at all to kill the terrorist, never picks up a gun even when he has the chance, and only by blind luck ends up anywhere near him, and only survives through dumb luck. I suppose if you were really rooting for him you would enjoy it and think it was great, but I had the same sort of plot-problem with this that I did with The Elfstones of Shannara, a popular fantasy novel I finished the same evening I watched Collateral Damage.  Both of them are just too silly to believe. Arnie gets a pass "up the river" into the guerilla territory by ending up in jail next to the only other white person in Columbia, who just happens to have the pass Arnie needs. Arnie shows zero ability at stealth and yet is never seen by dozens of armed guards. He runs into one woman in all of Columbia, and she turns out to be the terrorist's wife (walking around a street fair without guards or an escort?) who helps him later on.

It's just one improbable twist and lucky break after another, and if you can swallow them all without choking you must be able to unhinge your jaw like a python.

The politics and plot of the movie were painful as well.  I figured they'd make the terrorist a total bad guy psychopath, like most movies do, so we couldn't help but root against him. And they made him bad, but threw in enough reality of the situation in Columbia (US trained military advisors leading the corrupt government troops on murderous missions against any peasants they can catch.) that there was some moral relativism; but not enough that you could really see the whole picture and wonder about who you were rooting for, as a movie of more intelligence and quality would have done.

And of course, through one ridiculous plot twist after another, they ended up back in the USA for the ending, where Arnie did get his one on one battle to the death with the bad guy. A battle in which Arnie, heroic fireman, somehow had one big fireman's axe, and then another one, just in time to kill the terrorist who magically survived an explosion that would have incinerated him, as all movie bad guys must.  Ahh, 2x4 symbolism, my old friend.

I suppose the concept was to have Arnie be more of an everyman, one we could sort of identify with, rather than just another super soldier.  However that would have probably made for a much better movie, even though it would have just been Commando all over again. Actors need to play to their strengths, and while Arnie can do some comedy, mostly in the form of clever one-liners while he's killing people, or in jokes that play against his physical brute-ness, he can't do sorry or remorse or regret. He just can't.  He's great at being a tough guy, good or bad, and killing people and shooting guns. As a musclebound MacGyver, he's just awkward.

There's not even enough action to just enjoy that and zone out during the attempted emotional segments, as is often the best option during bad action movies, since the action in Collateral Damage is grudging and halfhearted. A booby trap here, a grenade there. Some shooting soldiers who don't hit anything but trees here, a short and unsatisfying military battle that Arnie spends cowering behind a tropical tree there. Bleh.

I can't recommend this film at all, I'm afraid.

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