Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Interesting spin on the usual police investigation story, that starts with the incident and then unravels the story over the 5 episodes as the main characters piece together what happened. Douglas Henshall is excellent as usual, in his trademark moody Scottish leadership role (see 'Shetland' for more Henshall) and the background story move along reasonably well. This had so much potential, with the calibre of the acting and the plot, it could have easily have been renewed for more than one outing, if only the producers had the foresight to take the format forward. The basic premise of the show, that of a road traffic accident and the subsequent investigation of all the many variables that led up to the crash, offers the possibility of many different season arcs as the characters investigate different scenarios over a number of episodes. If this had been an American show, I'm sure it would have been renewed.Nice twist at the end, which adds a whole new dimension to the whole story :)

"Collision" is a very engaging, human type of thriller. There's a certain air of improbability to the script, however. It's not so much that there's such a wide cross-section of people represented here (that goes without saying in a country so diverse as England), it's the fact that everyone has such a complicated network of secrets and lies which are directly or indirectly exposed by the crash. The acting is mostly very, very good. Douglas Henshall makes an especially engaging leading man. He acts his character on a more personal level, feels more familiar than most police characters. He's really what makes this miniseries work.The script is really quite brilliant, in its own way. The final conclusion makes you see the big picture with a sort of completeness that makes all the preceding events come into clearer focus. Not something you could watch twice, but it's certainly worth seeing.

Let me state this fact first.If the total running time was under 135 minutes the rating would have been much higher.This film was made for BBC & it was about 5 hours long.I do not know how long it was when it was first shown on the PBS stations last November,The DVD runs slightly over 3 hours (190 minutes). It still is too long.This is a multi-part tale of an investigation of a traffic accident (Multi car & casualties). The production is quite good as well.The acting for a large cast from British Television, mostly unknowns to American audiences, Is quite good.A few of the individual story lines are interesting,BUT in general we have a good film & not an outstanding one. The suspense was lacking,I liked what there was, I just was not in awe. Repeating what I said at beginning if this was under 135 minutes, rating could have been much higher.Ratings: *** (out of 4) 84 points (out of 100) IMDb 7 (out of 10)

This is not a detective mystery to any great extent, but a police procedural of the type written in the hundreds by John Creasey under a variety of pseudonyms. The end is never in doubt, and indeed, is replayed over and over during the course of dozens of confusing flashbacks. Only halfway through the five hours does it dawn on the detective, assigned in a totally contrived way to the handling of a highway pileup, that something may be out of the ordinary. And indeed everyone involved is hiding something, in good red herring fashion, but the only question is whether that had anything at all to do with causing the accident. Unless you are a transportation safety board employee this is probably not for you, and the money spent on it might have been more fruitfully spent on having the producers' heads examined.