"Collide" is an action movie about Casey, a really, really bad driver who keeps on getting into car chases that end with his ride totaled, him knocked out and waking up to find himself captured by bad guys.
Played with determined resilience by Nicholas Hoult, Casey quickly breaks out of captivity, only to find himself in yet another ill-fated car chase that ends up with him unconscious and trapped once again.
It's tough to root for a guy who continues to make the same dumb mistakes that result in him getting into the same trouble. In addition to the car chase/wreck thing, he also keeps getting chased down by drug lords who track him via cell phone GPS.
Dude, ever heard of airplane mode?
The filmmakers presume Casey has earned the audience's rooting interests because even though he is acting like an idiot, he is doing so in the name of love. His main squeeze is Juliette -- played by Felicity Jones, finding herself in yet another moronic action escapade after the wretched "Inferno" -- who suffers seizures that can only be cured by a $200,000 operation. So yeah, that's why it sucks Obamacare is going away.
Juliette asks just one thing of Casey, who may as well have been named Romeo based on the strength of his death wish: Whatever you do, do not earn the money by getting involved with drug lords.
Casey, being a dingus, just fixates on to that "getting involved with drug lords" part and throws out the rest. Never mind starting a GoFundMe like anyone else would. It's all ok, he figures, because he just wants Juliette's safety. Never mind that the act of crossing drug lords tends to vastly decrease the safety of loved ones.
And these drug lords he's messing with are doozies. You've got two decorated actors slumming it hardcore here, in the form of Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsley, who both need to take a moment, look around and wonder what it was that got them here.
Kingsley's character is particularly weird: A shirtless club-hopper who wears shiny pants and pays hookers to writhe around him. Hopkins, his boss, is a legitimate businessman who supplements his meager millionaire income by shipping drug-filled golf balls to Chile for no good reason. One hobby these mismatched goofs have in common is an overwhelming yearning to try to kill Casey and kidnap Juliette. While they are the villains, it's easy to understand their problem with Casey, who is trying to steal from both.
The Kingsley character's thing is to express his long-lasting crush on circa-1970s Burt Reynolds, and to awkwardly hit on Casey during moments of capture/torture by referring to him as "Burt Reynolds."
Nothing against Hoult, but Burt Reynolds this guy is not. Burt Reynolds could drive. Hoult and his movie do nothing but crash.
