Collateral Damage

Schwarzenegger's recidivist grunt-flick returns him to Amazonian Commando territory, but with fewer firearms and a greater predilection for taking himself seriously. As LA firefighter and contented family man Gordy Brewer, he's an unassumingly heroic Joe, until Colombian terrorist El Lobo (Curtis) parks a bomb beside his wife and child and leaves him a brooding widower. Finding no redress from the US authorities, he plunges deep into the Colombian jungle to administer some damage of his own. The film's less knee-jerk than it could have been. Brewer may think he's stony set on revenge, but an encounter with a wandering mother (Neri) and her son in the danger zone give pause for thought. That said, it's often daft, whether unveiling the fireman's instinctive bomb-improvising skills, or showing a liberation leader's penchant for shoving snakes down flunkies' throats. Yet a populist American movie that acknowledges a troubled world beyond US borders must be worth flagging, even though the roles and responsibilities of Colombia's guerillas, paramilitaries, army and US 'advisers', and the hierarchy of drugs and politics in its civil war, are all firmly fudged.