revenge is one of the highlights of literature and film, "Collateral Damage" is such a movie about revenge injuries, the performance of American-style personal heroism.
The beginning of the film shows the family life of Los Angeles firefighter Gordy Brewer (Arnold Schwarzenegger). The warm colors and scenes make people feel that he is overflowing with happiness and sweetness. The plot retreats. His wife and his son are waiting for him to take him home in a multi-storey building in the city center. The son is playing with a ball. The movement of the pictures and characters makes people feel a crisis in peace. And approaching, faintly worried. Sure enough, they encountered a terrifying explosion, and Brewer watched his wife and children who waved at him died in the fire.
Brewer's world collapsed, and what filled his mind was revenge. He wanted to kill the Colombian terrorist leader, the wolf, who made this terrorist explosion. The following plot is that he was born and died close to the vengeance of the wild wolf looking for murder, and finally fulfilled his wish. Both the wild wolf and his wife were killed.
If the film only shows the revenge behavior of shooting individuals, it looks good, but the only thing left in memory is emptiness when the power is turned off. And the persistent conflicts between people of different beliefs that are faintly revealed in the film make the film bring us more thinking and deepen it.
What happened to Brewer was a big deal for him, his sky collapsed, and the meaning of his life was instantly destroyed. And personal feelings are nothing to the state apparatus. Officials lightly expressed their own views, and lightly said that they are regrettable. This is just a collateral injury. It is true that the casualties of one or several people are insignificant for a country or a war. What caused this kind of damage, Brewer couldn't think deeply. From a personal point of view, he just wanted to kill the wolf and pay the debt.
And what is the position of the wolf? From his perspective, he is just doing the same action as Brewer, revenge. The American army invaded Colombia, his daughter died in the arms of his wife, and the American power penetrated into Colombia, and Colombia was in chaos. He clamored to get America out of Columbia.
The film shows Brewer's pain and the cruelty of wild wolves. This is just the angle of American cinema, exaggerating the pain of its citizens. When the powerful military weapons of the United States passed over Colombia, how many innocent lives fell. So the wolf said that the Americans don't ask why others took up weapons. Brewer, like him, kills people for some reason. They are no different. Therefore, I also respect the faithful behavior of wild wolves, which is not only for personal revenge, but for the whole country and nation.
The film dramatized the wild wolf's wife and son to meet Brewer, and staged a rescue story, which made me feel like it fell into a cliché at first. The wife of the wild wolf took her son to follow Brewer and fled to the United States. In order to stop and testify against an explosion of her husband, I was shocked. I couldn't understand her behavior. From her standpoint, she was betraying. She could be indifferent after escaping from the bombing of the base by the former US Air Force, but she could betray her husband like this. I was very confused. The film went on. It turned out that everything was just a cover. She came to bomb the Intelligence Bureau building and succeeded. Her hatred and persistence even reached the point that she could give up her son's life. I was moved. Her actions before and after were explained. A woman who is more obsessed with faith.
When she both ran for her lives behind the wolf's motorcycle, I knew that they could not escape. The director would let them die, but in the gallop, I felt their tenacity and no regrets, and felt the romance of both sides dying for the common ideal. They both fell down.
At the end of the film, Brewer walked away holding the wolf's son. Perhaps the director hopes that the world can be peaceful, and there can be pure human sympathy and care across national boundaries. But Brewer’s revenge is narrow. The wild wolf is dead and the world is not peaceful. As long as the United States and other countries invade and occupy the existence of anti-occupation, the existence of a wild wolf or bin Laden is just the appearance. Those tens of millions stand up. The successors of the United States will still resist doing things that harm American citizens. This is the fundamental problem, and it cannot be rescued by simple individual heroism.
October 3, 2005
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