The Collector... a horror movie that not many people saw in theaters (it had a fairly limited release and came out smack in the middle of summer 2009, right inbetween Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe). I watched it last night... it might be the most singular improbable, unbelievable movie plotwise I've seen.
Now I'm not counting fantasy/science fiction, but movies set in the "real world"... And yes, to think 55 year old Bruce Willis could have survived all the stunts of Live Free or Die Hard with nary a broken bone would be fairly improbable, but the actual plot of Live Free or Die Hard about cyber terrorism seemed somewhat plausible. I'm getting off topic though...
Basically the Collector involves a fairly clever thief named Arkin who masquerades as a handyman so he can get intel on the houses he steals from. (To me, this would be an easy pattern for police to pick up on... but not the police in this universe.) Arkin breaks into a house to steal a giant ruby from a jewelry broker only the very same house also has been taken over by the titular Collector. The hour and twenty five minute run time consists of Arkin trying to escape the Collector and get away with the jewel in order to fulfill a midnight deadline imposed by some loan sharks that Arkin's wife is indebted to.
(Those plot points by the way are all in the preview, so if anyone wants to watch the movie unspoiled, I'll only discuss the setup and things that are in the preview.)
The improbability of the movie comes from the timeline... Arkin gets off work, goes to meet his wife, then meets his job contact, then goes back to the house. His wife even complains that he's really late meeting her (so at the earliest, he's there at roughly 8-9 PM). The family he's burglarizing is supposed to be vacationing, but their very mature teenage daughter (this actress has to be at the very least 21) throws a vague fit... Anyhow, if you assume where he meets his wife is around an hour or so away from the family's house (remember, from 9 PM, he has to get to the house, steal the ruby, get back, and pay off the loansharks before midnight), that means he leaves the family's house between 6-7 PM.
So between 6-7 and 8-9 PM, the Collector comes to the house, incapacitates the husband and wife, boards up the windows, and proceeds to set up a simply massive array of booby traps all around the house. Some of these traps involve fairly complex 'mousetrap' style tripwires and pulleys, basically, its completely ludicrous to think that one guy can do what he does in the span of AT MOST three hours. There is no possible way for the Collector to know Arkin is coming back THAT NIGHT for the jewel. Assuming Arkin isn't there, the Collector wastes a ton of time for no good reason (Now, I realize that the daughter isn't home, so maybe the traps might be for her, but the killer is fairly adept with sharp objects... I don't think she'd be much of a problem).
A lot of reviewers compared this concept to the Saw franchise, and with a lot of color correction, a masked killer and booby trapped rooms, I can see some parallels. The difference is that Jigsaw from the Saw movies sets up all his traps well in advance of ever using them. Jigsaw also doesn't wear a Mexican style luchadore mask
like the one at left painted black and actually chase people around like Jason Vorhees (the Collector's signature weapon is throwing knives, which is sort of cool but less practical then a machete). So for being such an expert criminal, the Collector has the most impractical logic bending method of committing his crimes as anyone I've ever seen in a movie (he's also a total idiot, as is Arkin).The one thing about this movie I like is the actor playing Arkin, Josh Stewart (who resembles Sean Penn and Edward Norton a little), puts on a pretty good performance as the criminal hero Arkin. The guy behind the Collector mask is suitably creepy and is pretty intimidating despite being a fairly average to small sized guy (even more reason to wonder how he can set up his death traps). The directing overall accomplishes what it needs to, without the goofy rapid fire sped up Saw cutting (I like a lot of the overhead shots in the house). But for the amazingly silly, absolutely ridiculous script and concept... I can't say I recommend this as any sort of a good movie...
Collector gets... 3/10...
and that's all I have to say about that
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