One of the best movies of the year...

Rating: Null/10 (7 August 2004)

....as long as you're a drone who adores contrivances and circumstantial occurrences galore. What I really mean is of course, is that this is yet another insult to intelligence; amateurishly written and featuring a terrible clichéd beginning, middle and end.

I won't necessarily fault Michael Mann completely, since he was given this drivel to direct, although I will fault him for accepting it.
SPOILERS AHEAD - Beware the spoilers!
Tom Cruise plays Vincent, a hired-to-kill and white-bearded (for no apparent reason) bad-boy who just has to get the job done. Jamie Foxx plays a cabbie who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (of course). Jada Pinkett Smith plays a prosecutor, who just happens to get into a cab with Foxx.
After moments of complete boredom at the start..(Mann thinks viewers will find a cab-driver talking to a lawyer absolutely riveting), the movie picks up, albeit not much.
Cruise has 'to kill five witnesses' (to a case that Pinkett Smith just happens to be prosecutor for). What makes no sense is the way it's carried out. Firstly, you just have to accept the incredible contrivances such as Pinkett Smith just happening to go into the same building that Cruise leaves, and then later, the cop investigating the subsequent deaths just happening to be in the same elevator as Cruise and Foxx. Right. After a body ends up in the trunk of Foxx's cab(again, for no apparent reason), two cops pull him over and are about to open the trunk when they get a call that there's 'been a shooting'. But of course. Then you're expected to accept that a phone would have no signal in downtown LA, and that the cellphone battery dies seconds later. You also have to wonder why Cruise would need his computer rather than the convenience of a post-it note or variation thereof to jot down the names of the hits. I mean sure I'm not experienced in the ways of assassination, but if I were an assassin, I surely wouldn't be carrying round a battery-operated list of people to kill. Later, we find out that Pinkett Smith is on the list (of course, and for no apparent reason since she's just the prosecutor). You also have to wonder why Cruise didn't kill her first, since she was RIGHT THERE at the start. Oy gevalt. In the final shootout of the movie, you have to accept that Cruise, top hit-man, would lose to a cab-driver in a scene rather reminiscent of the ending of 'Heat' (also Mann).
What was interesting about 'Collateral' was the way it was shot. It has a smoothness about the camera very much like repellent TV show 'Cops'. I'm not entirely sure it fit too well in this kind of movie, but it did make the shootouts feel very aggressive and violent, in much the same way as the famous bank shootout in 'Heat'.
Unfortunately what you're left with is just too many contrivances and clichés to be taken seriously. One can only suspend so much disbelief.