//WOOOOW all the new John Simm stuff was SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!
Collateral is a dry nuanced political thriller that engages the issues of Syrian refugeeism very saliently.
And features John shirtless:
playing a Labor Party Shadow Cabinet member who is an amazing dad and good person @_@ <3
And Trauma. Whoa MAN Trauma.
John is mesmerizing, terrifying, like a collapsing star with his rage and resentment and grief, pulling out all the stops as his strength--the edgy, sympathetic antagonist--while Adrian Lester plays opposite as a loving father who internalizes all the pressures at work, who may have made a fatal mistake, but is also a good human being. Dying for more!
//Trauma was amazing, I’m sobbing, Jesus. If anyone else saw it I’d be happy to scream about all the symbolism in the finale and all the social issues that were brought up. I see both sides of it as equally valid, and I understand that John did what he did to secure Dan’s family’s peace of mind, but it was also an act of self-preservation, and I lean toward sympathizing with Dan a little more than with John, perhaps because I don’t come from money either, and I bust my ass trying to earn a living and you’re damn right I resent the wealthy for thinking that I could be as wealthy as them if I just “tried harder,” and for their LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ANYTHING, and my grandma, who was like my other mother, died quite prematurely because of a serious medical mistake.
This was difficult to watch but I am still glad I did. John Simm gave the finest performance easily, though the whole cast was strong.
“I just want it to be fair”: not just justice for his son Alex, but a fury with the systemic unfairness and the coverups of wrongdoing which those who are disempowered have no venues to rectify. And in the end, he was able to bring the “obscene” wealth, the marriage, the parent-child bond, and the career of John Allerton down to his level. “J-Justice,” he said, in a stammering voice, with black circles under his eyes. Nobody can garner sympathy for a difficult character like John Simm can.
@alez-on-mars I know exactly why you and @doctamastacanon said that Dan Balker reminds you of my Master characterization.
The premeditation and acting for one, the preoccupation with fairness and resentment of unequal chances. The capacity to infiltrate someone’s life and space and head and make them their own enemy: John lost his daughter the moment he beat Dan up, and she (in some ways correctly, in some ways not) attributed all that happened between them to her father’s failings and excessive control.
But even more?
Dan’s line: “I feel like I’m going mad, but I’m not, am I? Am I mad?” And stopping the psychological and physical threads the moment John confirmed to him that what he suspected was true. THIS IS IDENTICAL TO THE MASTER feeling isolated as a “diseased” monster by Time Lords because of a supposed psychiatric illness (the “drums,” which everyone thought were an auditory hallucination) which, it turned out, WAS A PERSON IN A POSITION OF POWER AND AUTHORITY USING HIM AND LYING TO HIM. And the moment he had VINDICATION that this was true, it was an immense and almost euphoric relief.
