The Collective
Audiences will let out a "Collective" sigh of relief when this concludes.
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I watch a lot of and have a fairly high tolerance for crap. “The Collective” (available in select theaters and on VOD beginning Friday, Aug. 4) is undeniably an unredeemable piece of crap. To “The Collective” I say this, “Go to jail. Go directly to (movie) jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200,” because it has a “Monopoly” on sucking.
Lucas Till stars as Sam Alexander, a rookie agent with a shadowy group of assassins known as The Collective. Liam (Don Johnson) oversees The Collective. Hugo (Tyrese Gibson) is a more seasoned agent with the organization.
Sam has been tasked with taking down/taking out human trafficker Miro Lindell (veteran character actor Paul Ben-Victor, whom I often enjoy but is way too over the top here) who has intentions of selling a whistleblower for a king’s ransom. In order to get his mitts on Miro, Sam will have to work his way through henchwomen Daisy (Ruby Rose) and Nikita (Mercedes Varnado AKA WWE wrestler Sasha Banks).
“The Collective” is helmed by actor-turned-director Tom DeNucci (this is the third movie he’s made this year after “My Father Muhammad Ali” and “Johnny & Clyde”) and scripted by rookie scribe Jason James and relative newcomer Matthew Rogers (he previously penned the crummy Jonathan Rhys Myers/John Malkovich actioneer “The Survivalist”).
“The Collective” plays out like “Sound of Freedom” by way of the “Mission: Impossible” movies only made for a song and entirely without inspiration. The acting, action, direction and scripting are all abhorrent.
I feel bad for Till, who recently played MacGyver on the CBS reboot and was Cyclops’ brother Havok in “X-Men: First Class” and “X-Men: Apocalypse.” He’s not an untalented actor nor is he a bad-looking dude. He’s also in decent enough shape to be convincing in action were it not for the uninspired work of stunt coordinator Anthony Hoang and fight coordinator David Lavallee Jr. Seriously, this shit looks like The Max Fischer Players from “Rushmore” doing their spin 87North Productions’ badassery.
Johnson mostly just sits behind a desk doing exposition dumps. Gibson plays totally against his signature role of Roman Pearce from “The Fast and Furious” flicks and that’s pretty much the only part in which I dig him … get this morose mofo outta my dojo! Rose, an action veteran having appeared in stuff like “xXx: Return of Xander Cage” and “John Wick: Chapter 2,” sadly just walks around holding a clipboard and doing little else. Similarly, Varnado isn’t used to her fullest potential (she has so-so skirmishes with both Gibson and Till), but she mostly just barks orders at Miro’s minions.
I went into this hoping it’d be good, but I can assure you audiences will let out a “Collective” sigh of relief upon its conclusion. It deals with a serious subject in an entirely cavalier and morally reprehensible manner. In the immortal words of Jon Lovitz’s Jay Sherman from “The Critic”: “It stinks!”