The new Netflix Collision Course action movie is not the kind of the movie you can half-watch while scrolling on your phone. It’s the kind of maybe you really need to pay attention to, if you want to have any hope of understanding what’s going on.
Directed by Daniel Sanchéz Arévalo, who also co-wrote the script with Ramón Campos, Collision Course (aka Colisión) is a Spanish film that was released on Netflix on October 30, and quickly climbed the streamer’s trending titles charts. It’s currently the No. 1 film in 25 countries across the world, and it’s sitting at No. 3 in the U.S. In other words, a lot of people are watching this movie!
The ensemble cast includes Laia Costa, Karra Elejalde, Luis Zahera, Tamar Novas, Álvaro Cervantes, and Lluís Homar. It’s a bank robbery heist movie, but it doesn’t follow traditional storytelling rules. An unconventional structure, reminiscent of the German film Run Lola Run, lets viewers really get to know this cast of characters.
If you aren’t watching closely, then it’s easy to get confused. But don’t worry, because Decider is here to help. Read on for a breakdown of the Collision Course movie plot summary and the Collision Course movie ending explained.
Netflix’s Collision Course movie plot summary:
The movie opens with a text explanation of the context of the story’s timeline, which takes place in 2013: “For years, Spanish banks sold complex financial products to ordinary people, such as savers, pensioners, families. They were promised security. They took on risks they didn’t understand. Many lost their savings, others, their homes. In 2012, after the system collapsed, the state bailed out the banks with over 60 billion Euros.”
From there, we follow a bank worker named Ernesto (played by Luis Zahera) to his job in the morning. He is not a well-liked man in his community, as evidenced by the fact that an elderly woman tries to dump dirty water on him as he walks by. But apparently, Ernesto is used to the hate.
Before the bank officially opens, an old man knocks on the door begs to be let in for a deposit. Ernesto relents when the old man tells him he has a winning lotto ticket for five million Euros. It’s a mistake: The old man was a ploy. The old man, Pedro (Karra Elejalde), is part of a team of four bank robbers. His accomplices, Tomás (Tamar Novas), Carla (Laia Costa), and Raúl (Álvaro Cervantes), follow Pedro into the bank wearing masks.
The robbers target a specific safety deposit box meant to contain diamonds. Pedro gets to the box first, and claims the diamonds aren’t there. The robbers take some other money and valuables instead. In the getaway car, Tomás accuses Pedro of stealing the diamonds for himself. He begins to attack Pedro, causing chaos. A car collides with the passenger side door, killing Pedro. A title appears on screen: “1. Pedro.”
As it turns out, Pedro is Raúl’s dad. Raúl doesn’t want to abandon his father’s body. But Carla convinces him they need to burn the car, the body, and the evidence, in order to protect themselves and Raúl’s mother. Raúl reluctantly agrees. Tomás burns the car, and they flee the scene in a stolen vehicle.
In the police investigation that follows, we learn that all four of the bank robbers are actually police officers. Pedro was a retired sergeant. Raúl followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the force. Carla is a police lieutenant. And Tomás is an evidence examiner on the forensic teams.
Also, Carla and Tomás are married. Also also, Carla and Raúl are having an affair, and have a plan to run away together when this heist is over. Raúl, upset about his dead dad, wants to run now, but Carla refuses.
We learn that the banker, Ernesto, was also in on the robbery, and in fact is the one in contact with a mysterious sixth accomplice, who hired everyone for this job. But no one is happy because they don’t have the diamonds, and got much less money from the heist than they hoped for.
As it turns out, Tomás was right, Pedro did steal those diamonds for himself. He hid them on his person. The diamonds were recovered and confiscated by the authorities from the burned car. The police identify Pedro’s body and start to close in on Raúl. Raúl turns on the others and flees.
At this point, about 30 minutes into the movie, we go back to that moment of the car crash with the getaway car. This time, Raúl is the one who dies in the crash, instead of Pedro. A new title card appears on screen: “2. Raúl.” In other words, we are about to see four different timelines of how this story will go, depending on who died in the car crash. If you’ve seen Run Lola Run, you’re familiar with this story-telling structure.
In the dead-Raúl timeline, Pedro explains to the police that his son must have stolen the money to help him, Pedro. Pedro got caught up in a complicated, bad loan with his bank, and he lost everything. Pedro and his wife had to move in with their son.
Pedro hides the diamonds he stole in his son’s casket. Eventually, Pedro is arrested because he’s suspected of helping his son attempt this bank heist. (This is brought to light thanks to a Pedro’s boot print, left in dog poop on his way out of the bank.) Carla’s supervisor on the police force, Luis (Lluís Homar) finds out that Carla was having an affair with Raúl, and he realizes she is trying to help Pedro get away with his crime. She, too, is arrested. The movie resets again, and we see what happens if Carla died, aka “3. Carla.”
In the dead-Carla timeline, Tomás is the top suspect. Carla’s boss, Luis, reveals that the bank that was robbed was the same bank that screwed over Tomás and Carla via a series of microloans. (Pedro and Raúl also presumably had beef with that bank, given the bad loan that ruined Pedro.)
Tomás is devastated when he learns that his wife was pregnant when she died. Apparently, Tomás and Carla had tried and failed to have a baby years ago. Tomás confronts Raúl, and accuses him of having an affair with his wife. Raúl admits to the affair, but he didn’t know about the pregnancy. Tomás believes the baby had to be Raúl’s, but Raúl insists to Tomás that he, Raúl, can’t have children. Hm. So who is Carla’s baby daddy?
Finally, we get to the fourth timeline, aka “4. Tomás,” aka Tomás dies in the car crash.
In the dead-Tomás timeline, Pedro once again secretly steals the diamonds for himself. Carla gets Tomás’s share of the other money they stole from the bank. She tells Raúl about the baby but confesses she doesn’t know who the father is. Raúl says he doesn’t care and just wants to be with her. The banker, Ernesto, also gets two shares of the money, because he’s going to deliver one to the secret sixth accomplice that no one else is in contact with.
Pedro takes his stolen diamonds to a jeweler and discovers that they are fake. He confesses to the rest of the heist team that he has the diamonds, but they are fakes. Carla realizes that the owner of the safety deposit box must have known about the heist. Said owner swapped out his real diamonds for fakes, and then collected on the insurance policy. He got the insurance money and he got to keep the diamonds.
Pedro trails the diamond owner, and spies the man having coffee with a mysterious woman. Carla recognizes the women as the barista from the cafe, who helped the police identify the robbery suspects. Apparently, this woman is the sixth accomplice. The diamond owner gives the cafe woman, Lola, her share of the diamonds. She goes to the bathroom and swallows them.
Pedro tries to follow Lola, but is stopped by the police. The pawn shop owner squealed to the police about the guy who came in trying to sell fake diamonds, and gave them Pedro’s picture. But Carla and Raúl follow Ernesto to the airport, as they suspect he has double-crossed them. They’re right!
Ernesto meets up with Lola at the airport. He is, apparently, in love with her. The two of them have a plan to run away together with the real diamonds. He does not seem to be aware that Lola swallowed the diamonds. When she excuses herself to use the bathroom, he implies they are in a different crevice in her body. (If you know, you know!)
While Lola is in the bathroom, Carla and Raúl confront Ernesto in the airport. Ernesto convinces them to let him get on his flight rather than cause a scene that will get them all arrested. He also says something weird about Carla being “quite a woman,” which made me wonder if Ernesto was Carla’s baby daddy—but we never get confirmation on this. Carla and Raúl are arrested on their way out of the airport. Either Pedro ratted them out, or the police made the connections between Raúl and his father.
Ernesto waits on his flight for Lola to join him, but she never shows. Eventually, she calls him from a different plane and reveals she will not be going with him. It turns out, Lola’s brother was also screwed over by the bank and their shoddy loans. Lola believed she could work with the enemy, the banker, in order to get revenge on the bank. But when Ernesto came up with the plan to double cross the others so that he and her could keep all the diamonds for themselves, she realized that Ernesto would always be that evil banker at heart. So she double-crossed him.
Ernesto reveals that Lola was right, he is an evil banker at heart. He tells her that he needed insurance before he could trust her. The diamonds that Lola swallowed are also fakes. Ernesto has the real diamonds on his person. He double-crossed her.
But wait, the movie isn’t over yet. There is one more alternate timeline to explore: The one where no one dies in the car crash. In this version, the four robbers successfully burn the evidence and flee the scene in a stolen car. As they drive down the highway, they pass a billboard advertising the bank: “Condal Bank: Your Money In Good Hands.”
Tomás comments that it smells like shit, and Pedro replies that he better get used to it. (I guess in reference to the fact that Pedro stepped in dog poop while leaving the bank, and that it’s probably still on his shoe?) With that, the movie ends.
But wait, what will happen in this timeline? Will they get away with it? Will Pedro reveal to the group that he stole the diamonds for himself? Will he learn that they are fake? Does this mean the diamond owner and Ernesto the bank owner got away with their insurance fraud?
Many questions are left unanswered. Perhaps the point of the movie isn’t what really happened, but just a chance for us to learn about these different characters through the various alternate timelines. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure, so you can choose which one is real.
But hey, that’s just my take. If you have a different interpretation, let me know in the comments.
