Collateral Damage

Rating: 8/10 (7 August 2004)

****SPOILERS***** Early in the film "Collateral" Vincent, Tom Cruise, the hit-man with ice water in his veins for blood tells L.A cab driver Max, Jami Foxx,that in the city of L.A people are so detached and impersonal that he heard a story once about someone dying on a L.A transit train and nobody noticed he was dead until a day and a half later. Vincent didn't know it at the time about just how prophetic he was.
Nail biting big city crime thriller about an out of town hit-man commandeering a cab as a getaway car with the reluctant driver going along for the ride. The hit-man makes his rounds in taking out a conglomerate of mob bosses crooked lawyers and government protected mob witnesses. As well as about a few dozen police mobsters and FBI agents in the process.
Over-the-top and exciting but never boring movie has Vincent go through both the mobsters and law enforcement officers in L.A like a mad bull in a China shop seeing red with L.A cabbie Max unwillingly tagging along. Max picked up a pretty young federal attorney at the start of the movie Annie, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Annie was so impressed by Max's driving and knowledge of the city that she gave Max her card that had her business address and phone number. Unknown to both Max and Annie at the time it turned out to be a real lifesaver. Max later picking Vincent up at the L.A airport is given $600.00 by Vincent for him to drive him to five different stops as he does his rounds as a hit-man for the rest of the night. That $600.00 didn't make up for the damage that it cost Max who's cab was totaled and who's nerves were shot to pieces by the time the night was over.
Vincent does his job with style and pizazz as well as bullets by blasting people out of windows and in high-rise law offices as well as during jazz sessions and in crowded nightclubs. Towards the end of the movie there was a incredible shoot-out at an L.A Chinese night spot, the Fever, that made the shoot-out at the OK Corral look like an episode of Sesame Street. "Collateral" is the type of movie that you really can't take too seriously and have to suspend some belief watching it.
The connection between Max and Vincent is a bit too contrived and very strained with Vincent putting up with all the nervous and unexpected acts that Max's does in the movie. these antics could have cost Vincent his freedom or even his life. Where at the same time we see Vincent blast away anyone in the film, who as much as looks at him a little funny, with out a show of emotion. But if Vincent did Max in right away the movie would have been over. At the same time if Max was too terrified to talk or even think and just went along with Vincent, even when he left him alone like Vincent did a few times in the movie, it would have taken away Max's personality which was what made the movie as effective as it was.
"Collateral" is not a great film it has a lot of loose ends that are left untied by the time the movie is over but it keeps the pace and action moving. Especially with the sharp and funny inter-action between Max and Vincent in and out of Max's cab and on the streets freeways high rise buildings and subways of L.A. "Collateral" is sure to become one of the summer of 2004 biggest hits.