"Louie" needs no introduction, it's Louis C.K.'s relentlessly dark and brilliant sitcom where he addresses every aspect of modern life, love, and fatherhood.
"Collateral Damage" is a generic Schwarzenegger action flick about fighting terrorists that would have been totally forgotten if it weren't for its unfortunate timing.
It was scheduled to come out right after 9/11. Oops.1
Both are about men past their prime seeking redemption and finding ways to get through the day when everything has fallen apart.
The Schwarz is proactive. After losing his wife and son in a terrorist bombing- they're the "collateral damage"- he travels to Colombia to hunt down the people responsible for the bombing. And he wrecks their faces real good.
Louie just loses himself in life. Finding himself divorced and stuck as a part-time father to two girls he loves but doesn't always like, he puts on a stiff upper lip and does his duty. On the side, he shares his insights, vents his outrage, and creates a consensus reality for himself via stand-up comedy. He also makes a lot of very bad decisions regarding love.2
Are They Any Good?
"Collateral Damage" is a braindead shoot 'em up.3 Everything about it is formulaic and predictable. It has a few decent action sequences marred by bad CGI. I didn't hate myself every second that I watched it, but it made me wonder why I ever cared for Schwarzenegger's films.4
This is a late career film for the action star, when he was playing more vulnerable roles. He repeatedly loses fights and gets thrown around in the late 90's and early 00's, including getting beaten up by Satan himself in the well-intentioned but absurd "End of Days."5
Now there's nothing wrong with changing up your persona. Looking back on "Commando," it's not terribly interesting to watch Arnie experience a flawless victory as he mows through army after army of bad guys. Heroes are only as interesting as their limitations, after all. But making his roles more realistic doesn't necessarily improve the movie.6
A decade or so after 9/11, it's still a bit creepy to see the buildings blown up by terrorists, but not as trigger warning-y as it would have been at the time.7 This film just isn't very special and its release date coinciding with a national tragedy amounts to an odd historical footnote.8
And of course "Louie" is good. It's full of brutal truth and he has an engaging and original perspective on almost every social issue. Even when you don't agree with him, he makes a great case for his point of view and helps you understand it. And he's funny. Very sad and very funny, sometimes in the same scene. It deserves all the acclaim it gets.
And it shows a performer late in his career continuing to take risks and push himself, something Arnie failed to do in "Collateral Damage."
There. Compared.
* * *
1. "24" started at the same time, too, but it got a pass, probably because it was amazing.
2. One multi-episode arc has him dating a woman who doesn't speak English and whose language he doesn't speak. I never understood how he ever expected that to work.
3. If it weren't for the mediocre-but-successful "Terminator 3" that came out the next year and gave him the juice and renewed public attention that led to him becoming The Governator, this would probably have been his career killer.
4. That's always a bad sign when a thing makes you wonder why you ever liked that thing.
5. He also wasn't much into catch phrases anymore. Despite the presence of multiple helicopters in this film, he never once advises anyone to get to any choppa.
6. I haven't kept up completely with his recent films, but "The Last Stand" indicates he's still playing human beings and not superhuman killing machines of the human and cyborg varieties. His role in "Expendables 2" was dumb and drove his catch phrases into the ground. Bad move, that one.
7. I would have been much more impressed if they hadn't deleted the scene with Sofia Vergera- the feisty Latina from "Modern Family"- hijacking a plane. That would still be offensive after all these years.
8. A footnote much like this.
-Phony McFakename
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