Collide

Young American Casey (Nicholas Hoult) is desperate: his girlfriend Juliette (Felicity Jones) urgently needs a kidney transplant. But to do so, she would have to return from Cologne to the USA, where Casey is wanted for car theft. And the treatment costs an enormous amount of money, which he simply doesn't have. And so he has only one way out: he has to get involved in a deal with the crook Geran (Ben Kingsley), for whom he is supposed to steal a load of drugs from the powerful Hagen Kahl (Anthony Hopkins). But the heist doesn't go as planned and suddenly Casey is on the run from Hagen's brutal henchmen. A merciless chase across the highway begins.

With Collide, British director Eran Creevy (Enemies - Welcome to the Punch) delivers a solid action thriller that doesn't exactly break new ground dramaturgically and in some scenes feels like the movie version of Alarm for Cobra 11. But even if ambition and originality quickly fall by the wayside, the film still offers decent entertainment overall. The film was shot in Cologne and other locations in North Rhine-Westphalia, with some German actors such as Clemens Schick or Joachim Król appearing in supporting roles. At the center, however, are a rather charismatic Nicholas Hoult (X-Men), a criminally underused Felicity Jones (Rogue One), a delightfully over-the-top Ben Kingsley and an Anthony Hopkins who has quite obviously gone on autopilot here. The actors, who are good in their own right, are able to get the best possible out of the thin script, which can't always make up for the countless clichés and shallow dialogue.

However, at least there are a few really good action sequences that briefly make you forget the script's all-too-obvious weaknesses. In these moments the movie is really fun - at least if you like fast-paced car chases and gritty duels. However, it must also be said here that you should not expect big-budget quality in the style of the Fast & Furious films. Collide was staged with a fairly manageable budget and also from the locations in Germany was not quite great cinema, but just TV quality out. This is solid, but nothing more.

Logic, multi-layered characters and a sophisticated story should not be expected. But if you've always wanted to see Ben Kingsley as a Turkish dealer and if you don't expect more from an action movie than good entertainment where you can almost completely shut down your brain activity, you'll get enough good moments here to justify buying a movie ticket. Worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp