Collateral

Synopsis: Vincent (Tom Cruise) is a visiting hitman in LA. He hires a cab for the night on the pretence of needing to visit five 'friends'. The pretence becomes unstuck and cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) becomes an unwilling hostage to Vincent's plans.. As their unlikely relationship develops, both men discover something unsuspected.

As a fan of his indisputable masterpiece, Heat (1995), I was keen to revisit Mann's darkly poetic visualisations of Los Angeles and his take on male relationships and criminal morality. Collateral has plenty to offer in that respect, but fails to stand out in the end.

The film is like watching the end of a story that has been in progress for months, or years. This tends to leave you scratching your head about the somewhat complex events that led to Vincent arriving in LA. The main clues are provided by the detective (Mark Ruffalo) who is on Vincent's trail. Ruffalo does a great job, and in many ways could have made a better Vincent than Tom Cruise. While Cruise has a hard time not being Cruise, Ruffalo lives and breathes his characters. I'm still having trouble believing this enigmatic grizzled cop is the same guy who was the geeky technician in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which was also released in 2004.

This is not to say that Cruise doesn't give Vincent's character a tantalising sense of complexity. But the substance to the characterisation remains frustratingly obscured by the superficial style (the suit, the hair) and mannerisms. Cruise doesn't do immorality convincingly. Vincent's behaviour should really bring more odium upon him than Cruise allows.

Max, the taxi driver (Foxx) is a character that is easier to get to grips with. Collateral is really his story - his past, his frustrations, his dreams. One dream in particular is about his last customer before picking up Vincent, a bright young prosecuting attorney (Jada Pinkett Smith). Without the catalytic Vincent, Max would still be driving his taxi, still chasing the dream. The film is most interesting when these two men are forced to reevaluate their relationship within a tightly defined space and time, and maybe teach each other something.

Collateral stands out visually from the ugly morass of other crime/thriller flicks out there. Mann is the kind of director that experiments with seventeen different shades of paint for the taxi before starting shooting. His L.A. is a vast entity pulsing with artificial light under an inky blackness. The roads, freeways, and bypasses snake through the high-rise and ghettoes, threading vast spaces with movement and energy. It's a pity that the soundtrack by James Newton Howard often adds a discordant note to this smooth visual style and the hyperbolic but precisely choreographed set-pieces.

The script is tight and sharp; without too many distracting attempts to lighten the mood. But it is unavoidably based on a fairly unlikely premise, which could be forgiven were it not for the ending's inexplicably ignominious descent into Hollywood schlock. Four stars for the first half, three for the second half, abjuration for the ending Collateral is, disappointingly, second tier Mann.

 

Want something different?