53 seconds of movie trailer time might as well be a half-hour when considering the online audience’s attention span, but that’s how long it take for this preview to shift into gear. Then what seems like a snoozy romantic drama about a reformed criminal (Mad Max: Fury Road’s Nicholas Hoult) whose girlfriend (Star Wars: Rogue One’s Felicity Jones) needs a kidney transplant suddenly takes a compelling turn when a gun-wielding, bare-chested Ben Kingsley (Sexy Beast) appears on screen and starts barking out dialogue in an accent of unknown origin. Things go wrong, as they always do, and a bound Hoult finds himself face-to-face with an angry mob boss played by Anthony Hopkins, another elder statesman of British drama who knows a thing or two about commanding a scene. What results is, according to the official synopsis, “an adrenaline-fueled car chase on the German highways,” which makes the saccharine first third of the trailer all the more confounding.
Directed by Eran Creevy (Welcome To The Punch) from a script by Creevy and F. Scott Frazier (xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage), the action thriller was shot back in 2014 but held in limbo until now due to Relativity Media’s bankruptcy issues. Ironically, this might have been a blessing for the film, since Hoult and Jones now have solid action movie credentials. Collide and movie screens will come together with a forceful impact on August 19.