February 4, 2002 (Premiere)
February 8, 2002 (United States)
Collateral Damage is a 2002 American action thriller film directed by Andrew Davis and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elias Koteas, Francesca Neri, Cliff Curtis, John Leguizamo and John Turturro. The film was released in the United States on February 8, 2002.
The film tells the story of Los Angeles firefighter, Gordon Brewer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who seeks to avenge his son and wife's death at the hands of a guerrilla commando, by traveling to Colombia and facing his family's killers. The original script for the film had the same plotline but would have addressed American policy in the Middle East by taking place in Libya; director Davis and his screenwriters chose Colombia as the new location because it had not been used as extensively and touched on a current geopolitical conflict area. Noted anti-war activist Stan Goff was hired as a consultant but later described the film as horrible and stated that taking on the job was the worst mistake he had ever made.
