director
Michael Mann
screenwriter
Stuart Beattie
producers
Michael Mann
Julie Richardson
cinematographers
Dion Beebe
Paul Cameron
music
James Newton Howard
editors
Jim Miller
Paul Rubell
cast
Tom Cruise (Vincent)
Jamie Foxx (Max)
Jada Pinkett Smith (Annie)
Mark Ruffalo (Fanning)
Peter Berg (Weidner)
Bruce McGill (Pedrosa)
Irma P. Hall (Ida)
Bodhi Elfman (Yuppie)
Debi Mazar (Yuppie)
Javier Bardem (Felix)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 119m
u.s.
release: 8/6/04
video
availability: TBA
official
website
other michael
mann films
reviewed on this website:
- heat
- the
insider
- manhunter
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Vincent (Tom Cruise) is a well-dressed
man with a scruff of gray beard and short gray hair. By his looks
and demeanor, he could be a hip, scornful corporate attorney,
but if we've seen the ads we know he's not. Vincent climbs into
the cab of Max (Jamie Foxx), who has been hacking for twelve
years but still entertains the fantasy of owning a limo service.
Collateral, perhaps Michael Mann's best film since Manhunter,
is about the collision between a soulful dreamer and a soulless
man of action. Vincent, whose line of work as an assassin is
revealed soon enough, taunts Max about his unrealized dreams.
Maybe he's trying to get Max to show some spark, some will to
live, or maybe he's trying to justify killing a witness to murder
whose life isn't going anywhere.
Like most of Mann's films,
Collateral has cool to burn: Vincent is like a sleek gray
bullet ricocheting around the streets of L.A., killing with neither
malice nor reflection. He has a job to do; he does it. The casting
of Tom Cruise, Hollywood's number-one Type A personality, in
the role of a callous sociopath is a stroke of malign wit. At
several points in the movie, Vincent bowls over all obstacles
-- people, furniture -- to get to his prey, and Cruise makes
you believe in Vincent's unholy focus. Putting him up
against Jamie Foxx's resigned cabbie, who keeps his vehicle spotless
but persists in thinking of his job as a temporary gig, allows
for a strange and subtle dynamic. Collateral is less a
dead-cool thriller than a bluesy, melancholy character study.
Stuart Beattie's script defines
the men by their tastes and values. Max listens to old-school
soul; Vincent prefers improvisational jazz, but if there's a
less improvisational character in movies than Vincent, I'd like
to hear about it. "He likes to sing along and he likes to
shoot his gun," sang Kurt Cobain, "but he don't know
what it means." Nor does he care; Vincent goes with the
moment insofar as he doesn't waste time on the past, but every
move he makes seems utterly mapped out. This feels right for
a professional killer, and Vincent's yearning for unstructured
music humanizes him somewhat, shows us a pocket of his life where
he feels loose. The movie pauses so that a jazz-club owner can
regale Vincent and Max with an anecdote about the surly Miles
Davis, and it's one of the few times Cruise permits himself his
famous smile.
Collateral is neatly cast, even in walk-through
roles filled by Jason Statham or Javier Bardem, and Beattie writes
some teasing dialogue between Max and a comely fare played by
Jada Pinkett Smith. We know she'll turn up again at some point
in the movie, but we don't know how, and her re-entry feels a
bit movie-ish. Then again, so does the whole story, which lingers
on moods and tensions but almost skims over the action sequences,
as if Mann agreed with Vincent that they were necessary tasks
that should be handled without fuss. Mann seems to have outgrown
the empty posturing of films like Heat;
he gives us iconic characters here, but then burrows inside them.
I don't think Collateral
is the masterpiece a lot of critics are selling it as -- it's
a little too smitten with its own L.A. mood. Still, it's a welcome
change-of-pace dramatic thriller, in which the formerly too-emphatic
director hints at depth rather than insisting on it. The movie
goes down smooth and easy, and should make a star out of Jamie
Foxx, the true anchor of the film. Cruise gets to be a violently
proficient bad-ass, but Foxx has the harder role, a decent man
who speaks and acts in defense of humanity. He does it without
piety; his Max just wants to get through the day without incident,
and thinks everyone else should, too. Vincent has a colder view
of the universe and where he fits into it, and his fate is as
appropriate as it is haunting. You get the sense that he finally
knows exactly what it means.
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