Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Felicity Jones, Ben Kingsley, Anthony Hopkins, Marwan Kenzari, Clemens Schick, Erdal Yildiz, Michael Epp, Aleksander Jovanovic, Markus Klauk, Johnny Palmiero, Ben Hacker, Joachim Krol, Christine Hecke, Lara Melina Siebertz, Nadia Hilker.
The question of what we will do for money and love is as old as recorded time, the two go hand in hand, the pair are intrinsically linked to the way we perceive what is important, for without money, what we love cannot be saved, bought or bartered for, at least that is the way writers will always have you believe, that a heart can only be saved if it has some sort of monetary association attached to it.
To Collide with this thought is to be accepted, to veer away, to turn against the oncoming traffic is to perhaps misunderstand human nature, but to also believe that a person could do something altruistic without needing recognition or repayment. Unfortunately, altruism is in short demand, and to be perfectly frank, does not carry the weight of good drama, and so to be entertained, we plough on, we grab the wheel, and we collide into the back of the same premise going in the same direction and both with the blinkers off; and the result is a crash of either epic or intriguing proportions, and both can be enjoyable to watch.
Directed by Eran Creevy and written by Creevy and F. Scott Frazier, 2016’s Collide is a film that captures the consistency of love and money with human quality, but which also reaches and sustains a higher level of viewing persuasion that might have first been thought of when the viewer settles down to endure the bumps in the road and the inevitable ramming of cliched observations that would have been expected with such a film in tow.
Whether it is down to the acting talent on screen who liven the premise on hand to a place of drama that you can care about, or if is the combination of both writer and director being on the same page, or at least willing to take turns driving the cinematic vehicle as it plots out the course from A to B, is up to the audience. However, with subtle performances from Nicholas Hoult, Felicity Jones and Anthony Hopkins and with a perfectly exaggerated implementation of the craft to which only a genius such as Ben Kingsley can provide, Collide becomes not just a run of the mill car chase film to which can thrill only a percentage of the viewer, it is a film of desperation, not of love, but of worship.
Some no doubt will see fit to denigrate the experience of the script and cinematography, however, if you go in expecting little else than the norm, then the surprise of the film will take you to a finer place in which to look at what has been presented with a greater clarity of vision.
Collide makes no claims to be extraordinary, but it does deliver in ways that many in its genre fail to do, not just a thrill but one which is happy to expose the weakness of the human condition and does well.
Ian D. Hall