Brutal and tense. A really decent thriller

Rating: 8/10 (29 October 2010)

I really enjoyed this. It was great to see Tom Cruise in a different role than the usual action hero and I thought he did villainous contract killer rather well. The show was stolen by Jamie Foxx, as always he gave a brilliant performance. I found the premise to be really interesting and different- almost Hitchcockian (man gets into a taxi- he's an assassin). To add to that, the whole film was consistently so tense it really felt like Strangers on a Train or even Rear Window, especially the final showdown. It was a shame how the "message" of the film felt a little shoehorned in, in the long monologues of Foxx and Cruise, but they were well delivered. The brutal and tense tone made it a real experience to watch and you really can never predict what is going to happen, or who is going to die, next.