Collision Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

Collision Blu-ray Movie Review

Crash and (sun)burn.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 28, 2014

The grande doyenne of British mystery writers, Dame Agatha Christie, tended to utilize one conceit repeatedly in virtually all of her stories and novels: characters with something hidden in their pasts. Frequently, more than one character would have a skeleton in their closet which connected them either to another suspect or even the victim, and part of the fun of getting to the denouement of a Christie piece is finally assembling the shards of clues the iconic writer had offered to form a coherent, fully formed picture. Let’s restate the end of that sentence, with a little emphasis this time: to form a coherent, fully formed picture. Christie remains one of the prime examples (some might say the prime example) of smart mystery writing, a woman with an inerrant eye toward human nature and an almost uncanny knack for being able to craft intricate puzzles that, once they were deciphered, actually made sense. David Marconi, who both wrote and directed Collision, and who is probably best known for having either provided the basic story or having outright written such entries as Live Free or Die Hard and Enemy of the State, perhaps should have spent a little time with either Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot as he cobbled together the seemingly makeshift screenplay for this film. Marconi introduces a gaggle of characters, each with a secret to hide, and then doles out the “reveals” over the next hour and a half or so, but he’s missing at least a couple of important pieces in what makes a mystery ultimately satisfying: comprehensibility and logic. There’s the kernel of an interesting (if awfully derivative) idea at the core of Collision, but the writing is so ham fisted that it’s actually hard not to laugh at several key moments in the film, even while at the same time one might be tempted to wonder why exactly certain things are transpiring.

Scott Dolan (Frank Grillo, Prison Break: Season One) is an international hedge fund manager who’s made of money and has showered lots of that cash on his new bride Taylor (Jaimie Alexander, Thor). As the film opens, the newlyweds are taking a helicopter in to a remote Moroccan hotel to celebrate their honeymoon. That evening, Jaimie becomes perturbed when Scott answers his cell phone after making love and begins to discuss various business maneuvers with some underling. Jaimie storms out of her room, ostensibly to smoke a cigarette.

It’s here that Marconi introduces the first of his supposed twists. A brooding hunk down by the hotel’s pool comes up to Jaimie and begins caressing her, and it becomes clear that the man, who is named Travis (Charlie Bewley, Twilight Forever: The Complete Saga), is having a torrid affair with Jaimie and that the two of them are in fact plotting to murder Scott so that Jaimie can collect all of her new husband’s untold riches. So far, so good, and in fact it appears at this early stage that Marconi may be offering a sort of neo-noir set in the unlikely climes of the Sahara desert. Alas, that initial impression turns out not to be the case.

Jaimie and Travis have planned for Travis to kill Scott out in the desert the following day, since Scott wants to take a Land Rover out into the dunes to look at old abandoned forts. It’s here that Collision begins to become increasingly preposterous (though we’re not quite at confusing yet). Jaimie has planted a GPS tracking device in Scott’s Land Rover, and so even though Scott departs from their preordained itinerary and takes off in an unexpected location, suddenly Travis is there in another Land Rover, chasing them and ultimately, rear ending them in a seemingly desperate attempt to get Scott to pull over. And yet, think about it for a moment: Travis is engaging in all sorts of reckless behavior with his supposed accomplice sitting right there, helpless, in the “victim”’s vehicle. While this is admittedly an adrenaline pumping sequence (very well staged by Marconi), it's also one of the first clues that this film is about to go seriously off the rails, if rails even existed in the Sahara.

The insane hot rodding results in a calamitous accident that leaves several people dead and others seriously injured. Among the survivors are Audrey (Marie-Josée Croze), a French-Arabic woman with a sick baby and Omar (Moussa Maaskri), a vicious character we initially meet in handcuffs, an accoutrement he uses to strangle an injured though still living man one assumes was his captor. Scott, Taylor and Travis all make it out alive, though in various states of disrepair. Soon they’re joined by a mysterious man named Saleh (Roschdy Zem), whom we’ve seen initially taking in the accident scene from a distance, a place where he tucks a revolver into his leg, evidently preparing for some kind of showdown.

The rest of Collision provides a series of denouements about various characters, none of which will be spoiled here. However, it’s safe to say that none of them are especially surprising, and Marconi makes the really odd decision to pretty much eliminate Scott and Taylor at a critical moment in the story, shifting the focus to two other characters, which seriously disrupts the narrative and only makes it obvious that there are more revelations about to occur. The storyline of Audrey is particularly problematic, since we’re given several competing versions of what her back story is, and none of them really make much sense in the long run. There are also other lapses in logic, including a late appearance by Taylor (in a disguise) that absolutely defies logic (how did she know to be on that particular street in a crowded medina, when the people she’s attempting to interact with didn’t even know they’d be there? Even earlier in the film, some may wonder why Omar chooses to kill yet another character. Is he trying to put the wounded man out of his misery? Considering the rest of Omar's behavior, that act of kindness doesn't really make much sense.)

Collision was produced by Luc Besson, and a couple of sequences have that director’s flair and savoir faire in staging viscerally exciting action. But the film, like the wreck it depicts, is an ungainly mess that ironically (considering the film’s alternate title, Intersections) features too many intersecting and highly unlikely stories to ever offer much entertainment value.

Collision Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Collision is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Shot in native HD (with the Arri Alexa system), Collision features a muted color palette which suits its desert setting quite well. The bulk of the film plays out in shades of beige, brown and ochre, with only the finale at Essaouira featuring much in the way of visual pop. Fine detail is excellent, however, and despite typical bugaboos like flurries of sand flying through the air, the image remains stable throughout the presentation. A couple of flashback sequences have been variously color graded in post, but there is no attendant loss of detail.

Collision Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Collision's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix boasts excellent fidelity, if a bit less consistent surround activity than might be hoped for. There are some great moments—the opening helicopter flight, the car chase across the desert and of course the collision itself—but generally speaking the surrounds are used here for relatively subtle ambient environmental effects. There is a nice sense of spaciousness in the long desert sequence. Dialogue (some of which is in various foreign languages with forced English subtitles) is also cleanly presented, though some of the accents are quite heavy at times.

Collision Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview with Writer/Director David Marconi (1080p; 17:51) talks (including with his hands) quite a bit about how he based various characters on situations he's personally encountered through the years. Remind me never to take a trip to the desert with him.


• Interviews with Actors Frank Grillo, Jaimie Alexander, Roschdy Zem, Marie-Josée Croze and Moussa Maaskri (1080p; 4:36) is a brief EPK-fest offering the actors discussing their roles and the film.


• Collision Trailer (480i; 2:21)

Collision Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Collision is one of those films whose basic conceits start to make less and less sense the more you think about them. Unlike the veritable train wreck in the oft-quoted adage, this is indeed one crash you can look away from.