‘Collision Course’ Review: A Bank Job That Keeps Crashing Into Itself

‘Collision Course’ arrives on Netflix as the latest Spanish crime thriller to bet that viewers never tire of a robbery gone sideways. Originally titled ‘Colisión’, it comes from Daniel Sánchez Arévalo, the director of ‘Seventeen’ and ‘Cousinhood’, and it is a sharp swerve into genre territory for him. It premiered on October 30, so the conversation around it is only just starting.

The story is set in Madrid in the aftermath of Spain’s financial crash, when repossessed homes and bailed out banks left plenty of people carrying a grudge. A crew walks into a fictional bank, helped along by a diversion involving an old man clutching a fake €5 million lottery ticket. The job turns messy almost immediately, and a car crash cracks the whole plan open.

That crash is the best idea in the film. Rather than treating it as a single event, Sánchez Arévalo keeps returning to it from different angles, tying each of the five central figures to the wreckage and cutting between the thieves and the investigators as though he were reshuffling a deck mid hand. When the structure clicks, it is genuinely hard to look away.

The trouble is that the people at the center are treated like moving parts. Carla and Tomás, played by Laia Costa and Tamar Novas, are a couple on the ropes, and Karra Elejalde brings gruff authority to Pedro, a retired cop. Yet we mostly learn what drives them through the fallout rather than before it, so I never felt much for any of them. The economic crisis promises personal fury, but it stays closer to wallpaper than to wound.

The script also leans hard on its reveals, with a betrayal or reversal arriving every few minutes. After a while it feels like the story is sprinting just to stay ahead of its own audience, and a twist only thrills when you have been given something to lose. Visually the film is competent without being memorable, and I kept wishing the images were as inventive as the timeline. The closing stretch left me more puzzled than satisfied, and its attempt at a warmer note rings a little false.

Still, there is plenty to enjoy if you go in ready to play along. The pace is brisk, and the ensemble is deep, with Álvaro Cervantes, Luis Zahera and Lluís Homar rounding out the cast. Federico Jusid and Lorenzo Perelmuter supply a score that keeps the nerves humming even when the writing coasts.

My verdict is that ‘Collision Course’ is a clever machine with a thin heart, the kind of movie I enjoyed while it was spinning and forgot a little too quickly once it stopped. It earns its entertainment value through structure and momentum, but it never gives its characters enough room to hurt me. I give it 6.5 out of 10.

Did the twists work for you or did they wear you down, and do you agree with my verdict on ‘Collision Course’, so tell me in the comments?