Plot: A Japanese investigator (Morita) and a Detroit cop (Leno) team up to track down a stolen prototype turbocharger.
Collision Course stars Jay Leno and Pat Morita as cops from different cultures forced to work together to save a prototype turbocharger from getting into the wrong hands. It’s your typical buddy action comedy with every cliché in the book including the shouty police captain and semi-abusive banter between our two leads.
I don’t recall seeing Jay Leno in too many other action pictures, but I enjoyed him in this mostly because he looks like he’s trying not to laugh for most of the runtime. He has the best lines and some of the script still holds up with Pat Morita also providing a few laughs.
This is that kind of jaunty 80’s action picture that is simply not made any more with its lighthearted tone and cheery music score from Ira Newborn.
There is surprisingly some decent action here including a punch up in a bowling alley, some shoot-outs, explosions and even a ridiculous bad guy death.
Chris Sarandon is on villain duties and is your typical action movie antagonist, but I think Tom Noonan (who played his henchman) would have been more intimating as the big bad because his turn as Kane in RoboCop 2 still haunts me. He did initially have a bigger role and was asked to do some rewrites on the script when director Bob Clark was attached however, once he left the project Noonan’s rewrites were removed and his role diminished.
Leno has stated since that he considers this a “horrible” picture and the movie ran out of budget, so it’s amazing it still manages to entertain at all. There isn’t much that makes it stand out in the buddy cop genre and it’s hardly Lethal Weapon, but despite the lack of originality the sheer lightness of tone makes it a fun time.
Overall, Collision Course is an entertaining buddy comedy with some jokes that still land and some that don’t; it has some surprisingly decent action scenes and it’s hard not to like Leno and Morita’s double act.