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Collateral
Release Date: August 6, 2004
Studio: DreamWorks Pictures
Director: Michael Mann
Screenwriter: Stuart Beattie, Frank Darabont, Michael Mann
Starring: Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo,
Peter Berg, Bruce McGill, Dennis Farina, Irma Hall, Javier Bardem, Bodhi Elfman
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
MPAA Rating: R (for violence and language)
Official Website:
Collateral-themovie.com
Plot Summary: Max (Foxx) has lived the
mundane life of a cab driver for 12 years. The faces have come and gone from his
rearview mirror, people and places he's long since forgotten...until tonight.
Vincent (Cruise) is a contract killer. When an offshore narcotrafficking cartel
learns they're about to be indicted by a federal grand jury, they mount an
operation to identify and kill the key witnesses, and the last stage is tonight.
Tonight, Vincent arrived in L.A...and five bodies are supposed to fall.
Circumstances cause Vincent to hijack Max's taxicab, and Max becomes
collateral-an expendable person in the wrong place at the wrong time. Through
the night Vincent forces Max to drive him to each assigned destination. And as
the LAPD and FBI race to intercept them, Max and Vincent's survival becomes
dependent on each other in ways neither would have imagined.
Reviewed by John
Barker © 2004
- Better than a cheese royale: buy one while its hot
Those glistening white teeth, that
unmistakable debonair smile, and the gleaming pennant to elevate even the
hookiest Hollywood movie to blockbuster status, ladies and gentlemen, I present
to you the lovable Tom Cruise.
The
golden boy of Hollywood’s latest role sees him retreat into the darker recesses
of his on-screen persona as aggressive assassin Vincent, in Michael Mann’s
newest crime opus. Although the viewing audience may simply negate the film to
the level of pure B-movie fodder, as the plot resembles a mixture of Speed’s
chase mentality and Lethal Weapon’s odd-couple mechanics. The ethnically
diverse duo of Vincent and Max (Jamie Foxx) are a far removed from the
usual buddy movie pairings. Max is the optimistic dreamer, the classic
rags-to-riches character, who hopes some day to own a luxury limousine company,
whilst Vincent is the pragmatic, mature and nihilistic passenger from the
underbelly of urban America.
Unlike Lethal Weapon’s, cooperative crime coupling of Gibson
and Glover, Vincent forces Max to drive him around Los Angeles on a hit-man’s
rounds and the cityscape in which the narrative takes place is familiar terrain
for director Michael Mann, as he returns to the location of L.A which was also
employed for his neo-noir masterpiece, Heat. Mann’s earlier film
presented the City of Angels as a mosaic of blues and greys, and whilst
it is not a million miles away from Heat, Collateral sulks in the
shadows of L.A rather than basking in the architectural glory of modern America.
The films visual sheen actually owes a huge debt to Taxi Driver as the
skyline and neon lights of the street appear abstractly in and out of focus,
much as they did in Scorsese’s urban nightmare.
The digital photography employed to create this effect is a
revelation, as darkness hasn’t appeared this hauntingly beautiful since Seven
cinematographer, Darious Kunji, used (over use of employed try: implemented,
exploited etc) silver-nitrate retention techniques to create the films
devastating décor. But, Mann still demonstrates a plethora of visual devices,
which distance this film from any of his previous features. There are a huge
number of reflective shots that epitomise the binary oppositional nature of the
central characters relationship and an interesting use of extreme close-ups to
film the taxi, reminded me of Darren Arnofsky’s oblique angles and framings.
Despite the films beautiful framing this is by no-means a
perfect film. The visual performance from Cruise owes a lot to Robert De Niro’s
role in Heat and although at points he is convincing as a brutal hit-man,
Cruise has just missed the target in terms of pulling off the aged assassin. It
is also a shame that when the film reaches the final act it descends into
formality and even convention. The climatic confrontation between Cruise and
Foxx is pretty much a ‘Hall of Mirrors’ scenario and the proceeding face-off on
a underground train, brings us back to the films structural unity with Speed.
Nevertheless, Jamie Foxx remains relatively unscathed,
bettering his roles in Any Given Sunday and Ali with this more
understated part and even copes well with the rhythmic demands of Stuart
Beattie’s tight dialogue. The film is overall a good solid taxi ride across the
entertainment highway, but I m not sure if you should tip the driver for the
final part of the journey.
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