Review - Michael Mann's Collateral (3 out of 4 stars)

My second of two “twisted buddy flicks” involves a cabbie driving an assassin around town to do five hits. This was Jamie Foxx’s attention-getting role, which he followed up later with a show-stopping performance in Ray (which I still have to see). It’s not always easy to share equal billing with Tom Cruise, but Foxx does admirably here. He’s Max, an LA cab driver who aspires to save enough money for his own limousine service in Vegas. He’s been driving cabs “temporarily” for 12 years, trying to iron out all the risks before taking the plunge. Cruise looks great as Vincent, a phenomenal hitman hired to take out five witnesses for a local crime boss. I love Tom’s look in Collateral – salt-and-pepper hair, dark suit, silenced pistol, unflappable.



You’d think this was an action film, and it is in many spots, but I like it as a buddy film. Sort of like Training Day, the best parts of the film are when Max and Vincent are driving around town getting from hit to hit. Vincent talks about his outlook on life, and Max reluctantly divulges his. Max changes a lot in one night. Didn’t really care for the ending, and I’d have written it differently.

Director Michael Mann keeps the film moving along at a good clip. Again, I feel that the film could have been tightened up a bit and excised a few minutes from the scenes that didn’t involve Max and Vincent. The audience isn’t stupid – with the trail of bodies the cops were bound to pick up on Vincent’s trail of death. It didn’t need to be spelled out by wasting time on the relationship between the feds, the street-smart cop and his pussy of a boss.

Cruise has had better performances (Jerry Maguire, for one), but this one is memorable just because he makes a kick ass hitman. Much more believable than freaking Tom Hanks (Road to Perdition). Foxx did well in his role, though the changes that Max goes through were so drastic that it wasn’t easy to show the evolution in such as short time. I’m definitely seeing Ray.

Bottom line: Fine film. See it if you can.