Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Andrew Davis. Running time: 109 minutes. Rated R (for violence and some language). Opening today at local theaters.
Not a single reviewer fails to compare the plot of Collateral Damage to the events of Sept. 11, with many suggesting that the real terrorist deeds on that day overshadow anything the moviemakers dreamed up. In the words of Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News: Though Warner Bros.' ad campaign hints that we should take CD as a liberating metaphor for the hunt for Osama bin Laden, its parallels to that pursuit merely show how puny and ridiculous Hollywood's imagination can be in the face of real events. Stephen Hunter begins his review in the Washington Post this way: Collateral Damage ... seems like a telegram from a dead world. It hails from the America that no longer exists, a world that ended in fire. Noting that the film was delayed following the Sept. 11 attacks, Joe Morgenstern writes in the Wall Street Journal, While the world would not be a poorer place if it had never been released, the movie's unearned significance makes it hard to ignore, though impossible to enjoy with a whole heart or an unrattled mind. On ABC's Good Morning America, Joel Siegel made the case that the film indeed should not have been taken off the shelf. Watching Arnold's Hollywood heroics demeans and belittles the real life heroics of so many, Siegel said.It wasn't enough to postpone the movie. The studio should have canceled it.