Very underrated; Possibly Cruise's Best

Rating: 8/10 (22 June 2005)

'Collateral' is probably the coolest, most stylish and intelligent crime thriller of the new millennium. Again, Michael Mann has directed an established star--Tom Cruise, as the sociopathic hit man, Vincent--to what might be his best performance ever, at least in an action film, and has taken a relatively obscure and unaccomplished actor--Jamie Foxx, as mild-mannered cabbie Max--and helped transform him into a major star. And, again, Mann has done so in the kind of film that straddles genres and reminds audiences that it is possible both to entertain and to provoke thought about serious themes.
The story is deceptively simple: Max (Foxx) is a hard-working cabbie in L.A. with a pipe-dream of opening up a limousine business called 'Island Limos.' Mann and writer Stuart Beattie employ subtle touches to characterize the contemplative Max: he keeps his cab meticulously clean; he keeps a postcard of an Island paradise above the cab's sun-visor so that he can 'go on vacation' when dealing with traffic or obnoxious customers; in the film's rising action, Max picks up a beautiful attorney (Jada Pinkett-Smith) and proves his decency by convincing her to let him follow a time-saving shortcut, creating an unlikely romantic spark and earning himself an unexpected proposition from a woman even Max would consider out of his league.
But Max's fate takes a perilous twist when he picks up Vincent (Cruise), a somewhat ostentatious and brusque character who offers Max six hundred dollars to ferry him to five different stops over the course of the evening to conduct 'business' before dropping him off at LAX in the early morning hours. Max is reluctant, but Vincent won't take 'no' for an answer, and so Max agrees, discovering shortly and shockingly what Vincent's 'business' actually is: he is a contract killer, in town for one night to eliminate five witnesses against members of a Mexican and Colombian drug cartel currently facing federal charges for murder and narco-trafficking. With his secret revealed, Vincent forces Max to continue their hellish journey, and the two carry on a philosophical battle of wits, with the brash, cynical Vincent challenging the virtuous and timid Max with a jaded, merciless view of human frailty as they speed towards a confrontation with an unlikely destiny.
For all of his fame, Tom Cruise too rarely finds the right vehicles for his scrappy, athletic and intense performing style, and Vincent may be the one role that allows him the opportunity to do so many of the things audiences have come to love him for. Mann styles Vincent in a smart, '50s-style gray suit with a matching gray brush-cut and five o'clock shadow that signal both his maverick sensibility and his precise, disciplined approach to the business of murder. He philosophizes about the nature of life and death, offers biting criticism of the inhumanity of man to man epitomized by Los Angeles, America's most modern and superficial metropolis, and taunts Max for his naiveté and ineffectual lifestyle. When Vincent goes to work, Cruise stalks the screen like a lion let loose in the urban jungle, striking down his prey with an efficiency that is as beautiful as it is heartless and terrifying. Cruise fits the role as well as he fits in the finely tailored gray suit, so that the audience remains ambivalent about Vincent, who becomes a sort of Satanic hero over the course of the film.
Jamie Foxx has been endlessly applauded for his performance in the title role of the recent Ray Charles bio-pic, but his Max should not be overlooked as a finely-wrought performance, full of subtle tics of reality and quiet reactions to Vincent's violence and perverse moral philosophy. Though Cruise is clearly the star of the film, Max is really its hero, an average Joe thrown into an incredibly frightening and unlikely scenario who manages to work through his fear and passivity to match wits with Vincent.
Most of the film takes place in and around the cab, but this scene is hardly limiting, as it affords Mann the opportunity to exploit the beauty of Los Angeles at night, using aerial shots and sweeping vistas of the city, accompanied by a typically excellent soundtrack featuring superb electronic music as well as soul, jazz, and Mexican narcocorrida pop from the likes of Richie Havens, Miles Davis, and Bandidos de Amor.
Mann wisely pulls away from the cab on occasion to fill in the back-story, using LA detective Fanning (Mark Ruffalo) and his partner Weidner (Peter Berg) to unravel the connection between Vincent's victims. Spanish actor Javier Bardem (a two-time Oscar nominee for best actor for 'Before Night Falls'[2000] and 'The Sea Inside'[2004]) dominates the screen in a brief appearance as Felix, the drug cartel's top man in L.A. Jada Pinkett-Smith is as lovely as always in a role that reappears in a crucial plot twist towards the end of the film.
But the show belongs to Cruise's Vincent and Mann's Los Angeles, true visions of the American Sublime. The film is so perfectly suited to their talents that it's hard to believe that it wasn't written for them (Russell Crowe, Colin Farrell, and Edward Norton were all offered the role of Vincent before Cruise, and Scorsese, Spielberg, and Spike Lee all turned down the director's chair before Mann accepted). 'Collateral' is easily among the best action thrillers in recent memory, and despite a few possible plot holes in the form of highly unlikely coincidences, it is persuasively realistic, fabulously entertaining, and thought provoking to boot. Crazy or not, Tom Cruise is as commanding a screen presence as ever, and this partnership with Michael Mann might be his best work.