COLLIDE aka AUTOBAHN (US/UK/Germany/China - 2016; US release 2017) Directed by Eran Creevy. Written by F. Scott Frazier and Eran Creevy. Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Felicity Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Marwan Kenzari, Alexander Jovanovic, Christian Rubeck, Erdal Yildiz, Clemens Schick, Joachim Kral. (PG-13, 99 mins) Completed in 2014 and a casualty of Relativity's bankruptcy, COLLIDE, a four-country co-production that counts '80s and '90s action guru Joel Silver (PREDATOR, LETHAL WEAPON, DIE HARD, THE MATRIX) among its 31 credited producers, was eventually acquired by Open Road and saw its release date shuffled around multiple times over 2015 and 2016. After playing in Europe and Asia last summer under its original title AUTOBAHN, it's finally been dumped in American theaters with no publicity at all, where it promptly tanked and currently holds the distinction having the sixth worst US opening ever for a movie on over 2000 screens, nestled comfortably between 2015's ROCK THE KASBAH and 2016's RULES DON'T APPLY. There's no denying COLLIDE is a dumb movie, but it's not any dumber than a dozen other action/car chase movies that don't have two esteemed Oscar winners leaving their dignity at the door and hamming it up with reckless abandon. Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsley might be in the "Fuck it, just pay me" phases of their careers, but they're having a great time here, especially Hopkins, who's been nothing short of comatose in recent VOD clunkers like MISCONDUCT, SOLACE, and BLACKWAY. At this stage in the game, after three years on the shelf, it's surprising that Open Road would even bother opening this thing wide, especially with zero effort put into selling it, but if you're in the mood for some mindless action with a pair of living legends in a fight to finish for the last crumb of scenery to chew on, you can do a lot worse than COLLIDE.
In Cologne, Germany, American expat and former car thief Casey Stein (Nicholas Hoult) works as a low-level drug dealer and collector for gregarious Turkish crime lord Geran (Kingsley). When Casey meets fellow American Juliette Marne (Felicity Jones) at a rave, it's love at first sight but she knows what kind of work he does and wants no part of it. Walking away from Geran and his life of crime and getting a legit job at a scrapyard, Casey proves he's serious and the pair quickly fall in love and move in together. But when Juliette is diagnosed with a rare kidney disease, her status as an American visitor doesn't get her a spot on the transplant list, so Casey is forced to come up with a lot of cash quickly in order to expedite the process. Of course, this means he goes crawling back to Geran for the proverbial One Last Job: stealing a shipment of Chilean cocaine hidden in a massive shipment of golf balls being taken by truck from Rotterdam to Cologne. The coke and the truck belong to Hagen Kahl (Hopkins), a billionaire industrialist and pillar of the German economic community but also the country's leading drug trafficker, and Geran's supplier. Geran wanted his partnership with Kahl to be 50/50 but Kahl refused, prompting a dissed Geran to plot the clandestine hijacking. What follows are mishaps, double-crosses, and one spectacular car chase after another as Kahl's goons figure out Casey and his buddy Matthias (Marwan Kenzari) took the truck, but while Marwan got away, Casey is held captive by Kahl, who informs him they're going after Juliette until he gives them the coke. Naturally, he manages to escape, with Kahl and his guys in pursuit as he tries to get to Juliette before they do.
COLLIDE is dumb. For being such a prominent figure in Germany, Kahl is pretty cavalier about meeting shady subordinates in restaurants and bars and killing people in public. It probably doesn't make much sense that the coke is being transported in a big rig trailer with Kahl's company logo plastered all over it (the name of the company? You guessed it: "Hagen Kahl"). Director Eran Creevy (WELCOME TO THE PUNCH), who co-wrote the script with F. Scott Frazier (XXX: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE), keeps things moving fast and furious (sorry) with some impressively destructive car chases and wild stunt work, and Hoult and Jones are an appealing couple. But none of that is as important as watching Hopkins and Kingsley conduct a master class in doing whatever the hell they want. Kingsley's Geran is a vulgarian who dresses like a geriatric Ali G, lives in a gold-plated trailer, waxes rhapsodic about Burt Reynolds ("The old Burt...from DELIVERANCE...not Burt now...he looks like a mannequin"), dances to Timmy Trumpet's "Freaks," and has terrible taste in movies, lamenting that John Travolta didn't get an Oscar for PERFECT. Hopkins meanwhile, holds his syllables for maximum condescension ("A partnership with you would make no senssssssse"), uses odd vocal inflections and cadences like Christopher Walken, gets randomly shouty for no reason like Whoo-aah!-era Al Pacino, uses his Hannibal Lecter purr to taunt Casey over the phone with "Run run little piggy run run run," calls Casey "bro," asks a guy named Wolfgang if he likes Mozart "because you're about to meet him," and even breaks out a not-bad Sylvester Stallone impression at one point. Hopkins and Kingsley's best days might be behind them, but somebody forgot to tell them they could get away with phoning it in because they're having an absolute blast here, bringing an almost giddy, goofy energy to COLLIDE's otherwise formulaic proceedings. This isn't a great action movie and it's total guilty pleasure material, but COLLIDE could've easily done some modest, mid-range box office if Open Road got behind it. Streaming seems to be its ultimate destination, and it'll have a long, healthy life once it hits Netflix or at least when the "Best of Hopkins and Kingsley in COLLIDE" clips turn up on YouTube. Fans of those two should consider COLLIDE required viewing.
Written and directed by Eran Creevy. Cast: James McAvoy, Mark Strong, Andrea Riseborough, David Morrissey, Peter Mullan, Johnny Harris, Jason Flemyng, Ruth Sheen, Daniel Mays, Natasha Little, Daniel Kaluuya, Elyes Gabel. (Unrated, 96 mins)
It won't win any points for originality, but the lean, mean WELCOME TO THE PUNCH is a highly entertaining British cop thriller produced by Ridley Scott and directed by the promising Eran Creevy, who achieved some acclaim for his 2008 debut SHIFTY. Creevy, a music video vet who cut his teeth as a production assistant on films by Matthew Vaughn (LAYER CAKE) and Danny Boyle (MILLIONS), is unquestionably a style-over-substance guy, as his script is pretty by-the-numbers with plot turns that barely twist, let alone surprise. But while his script may lack the punch promised by the title, it's obvious that Creevy worships at the altar of Michael Mann--not just in the big HEAT influence on PUNCH, but also in its look and feel, with everything drenched in a cold, blue sheen that brings scenes from vintage Mann classics like THIEF and MANHUNTER to mind. Like THE SWEENEY from a few weeks back, WELCOME TO THE PUNCH doesn't exactly forge a new path in the British crime genre, but it's diverting, well-acted, looks terrific, and doesn't try to be anything more than what it is.
Plays-by-his-own rules London detective Max Lewinsky (James McAvoy) is obsessed with bringing down criminal kingpin Jacob Sternwood (the always-excellent Mark Strong). The two come face to face in an underground tunnel, but Sternwood gets away after shooting Lewinsky in the knee. Three years later, and a hobbling Lewinsky is now the kind of cop who wakes up with a hangover and has to drain the fluid from his knee several times a day, with a wiseass partner in fiery Sarah Hayes (Andrea Riseborough). Meanwhile, a young man (Elyes Gabel) with a gunshot wound to the stomach causes a disturbance on an airport runway and it turns out he's Sternwood's son Ruan, who's been involved in a botched heist. Sternwood has been in hiding in Iceland for three years, and with Ruan in the hospital, Lewinsky is convinced he'll try to come back to London to see him. With the reluctant approval of police commissioner Geiger (David Morrissey), Lewinsky and Hayes stake out the hospital, and sure enough, Sternwood returns, but it turns out that Ruan was a pawn in a complicated chain of events that involve rampant corruption and backroom dealing and may (wait for it) lead all the way to the top of the department. Once realizing they share a common enemy who's employed sociopathic ex-military man-turned-hired killer Warns (Johnny Harris), Lewinsky and Sternwood put aside their Sworn Enemy status, forming an uneasy alliance to work together to blow the lid off a secret that may extend all the way to the government...
...if they don't kill each other first!
Creevy stages a number of impressive sequences, starting with the exciting chase that opens the film. There's also a memorable shootout in an empty nightclub, illuminated only by a bunch of rotating, spinning spotlights (don't look for a reason why...it just looks cool), and, in one of the few scenes that exhibit some creative writing, a tense encounter between a now-allied Lewinsky and Sternwood, accompanied by his gangland cohort Roy (Peter Mullan), and Warns, when Warns walks into the home of his sweet but dodderingly oblivious nan (Ruth Sheen) to find the other three already there waiting for him, his nan completely unaware that she's got a gun pointed to the back of her head. Of course, all roads lead to a showdown at a shipping yard (the abandoned warehouse must've been locked up), and you'll see the big reveals coming long before they happen, but WELCOME TO THE PUNCH gets a lot from its lead actors, both of whom are excellent, and it's ultimately undemanding, check-your-brain-at-the-door fun that doesn't have any pretentious aspirations about being anything more than mainstream entertainment (plus it features one of the more crowd-pleasing shotgun-blasts-to-the-head you'll ever see). Being distributed by IFC Films and featuring a cast of Brits automatically relegates it to a limited release arthouse run, but this is the kind of escapist flick that should be opening nationwide.
