Collateral (18)

Collateral deals in the dark and violent world of Vincent (Cruise) a hit man out to remove a handful of key people from this life, and Max (Foxx) as the unlucky cab driver brought into this world by a collection of bad luck and unlikely coincidences.

Opening with a teasing sequence involving Vincent at the airport, Collateral's subtlety ends with this slightly ambiguous scene and the questions it poses about Vincent's intentions. After this, Collateral presents a distinctly blunt plot blunted further with needless exposition.

We are first presented with Max as he picks up customer Annie (Smith). This evolves into a half-hearted scene intended to build some form of connection between the two, in order to have this connection serve as a plot turn point later in the movie. However, whilst Foxx does an admirable job as the well-meaning, genuinely nice cab driver, Annie simply falls insignificantly into the background. Later in the movie, when Vincent's scheme ultimately comes to involve her, Annie remains a blank and unengaging character. Smith gives little in her performance, but to be fair there is little in Annie for her to work with, and the character is really disposable.

Collateral is really about Vincent and Max. Everyone else is incidental, and in many cases superfluous.

Max discovers Vincent's profession early on. It's rather hard to miss as a body falls from the fourth floor window onto his cab and Vincent calmly responds to Max's incredulous query with a dismissive "I shot him. The bullets and the fall killed him". The body is stuffed into the taxi's boot - an out of character action for Vincent designed purely to create not one, but two extremely contrived scenes later on. At this point Max is held as both hostage and driver while Vincent passes through LA on his quest to kill four more victims.

Vincent and Max develop a curious relationship, with Max becoming surprisingly open at times and Vincent offering stark commentary about Max, about people, and about the universe. Collateral is about the differences between the two - on the one hand we have Max's good-heartedness, lack of genuine ambition, and earnestness, while on the other we have Vincent's brutal, amoral, nihilism. During the course of the movie Max develops somewhat, and at one point in particular you can see the change occur.

Foxx does a surprisingly good turn as the na ve and frightened Max, with characterisation that almost makes you believe the changes that happen. Cruise too gives Vincent a suitably brutal portrayal and becomes a decent villain.

There is a parallel, but lesser, plot involving the inevitable police and federal investigations but really this serves only to add unnecessary exposition to what we can clearly see with our own eyes. The involvement of some shallow, ineffectual, police figures does little to enliven the movie and in truth they are all but ignored.

What Collateral really has going for it is style. This is perhaps not surprising given that director Michael Mann is of course famous for 80s style icon Miami Vice. Here he makes wonderful use of night-time LA, framing shots which simply ooze style and character. Both the wide vistas of streetlight-lit LA, and the narrow, focused shots of signs and lights evoke a strong sense of place. A highlight is certainly the climactic hunt in a darkened office, but again this is due to the flair of the shot, and to a lesser extent to Cruise's Vincent, rather than anything much else.

Where Collateral fails is in the story and, to a lesser extent, in the secondary characters. Everyone other than Max and Vincent are really props, not people. They are set items used to push along the plot in predictable and expected ways. There is no development within any of them - though given the minimal screen time for any beyond the two principals this is hardly surprising. As a result they come across as flat and dull. We are perhaps not truly intended to care about Annie (Smith) and her fate, but rather Max and his. The problem with this approach is that we know what the fate of both of them will be from the moment that Annie climbs into Max's cab.

Collateral has significant style. It offers spectacle and an occasional glimpse at excellence but mostly falls flat under a predictable plot which sags under the weight of the contrivances put in place to make it work. For Mann's next movie one can only hope that there is someone to help bolster the style with some real substance.

Collateral (18) - The main characters in this movie are Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. I wouldn't think of these two working together, but it works. The film also stars Jada Pinkett. She always seems to play a catty, unlikeable role. I personally don't think it is acting, I think she is that way in real life. I don't see what my boy, the Fresh Prince, Will Smith sees in her anyway. Oh well, they say opposites attract...

This movie was made by Michael Mann. He is most famous for one of my all time favorite tv shows, "Miami Vice". Some of the music in this film reminded me of the composer he used to use, Jan Hammer. At times, this movie did feel like a slow episode of Miami Vice.

Tom Cruise plays a contract killer for hire, by the name of Vincent. He is very good at his job. He's been doing it for about 6 years. I respect his style as he kills people. Too many characters in films these days don't make sure their adversary is dead. They shoot at them only once or twice, or hit them hard, and then wait for them to get up. Not Vincent! TC shoots a guy about 3 times, and then he always finishes off with a signature shot right to the middle of the forehead. His victims always earn a one way ticket to the morgue - Quincy style!

Jamie Foxx's character is a cab driver. He tells everyone that he is actually saving his money to open up his own limo service. It is going to be very high class, an "experience" he kept saying. Meanwhile, you get the feeling that he will always be a cab driver. He is very good at his job though.

Vincent makes a deal with Jamie to rent his cab for the rest of the evening to run some errands. Jamie is reluctant at first, but Vincent offers a lot of money. All seems normal, until at the first stop - a dead body falls out of a window - directly on top of the cab. Jamie tries to bail, but TC has a gun, and forces him to keep taking him to different locales.

The local cops and the FBI are working on similar cases involving Vincent, but they don't realize it. Ethan Hawke, in one of his worst pieces of acting ever, plays one of the local cops who just doesn't care. He treats the job as 9 - 5, whereas his partner actually cares about solving crimes.

The rest of the movie is following Vincent and Foxx around in the cab, and watching how TC just kills people.

The ending of this movie is truly disappointing. It was like they ran out of money, and just decided to end the film. It lacked structure, and really took away from the rest of the film which was pretty good. I give this movie a 7.5/10.