Another feather in Mann's cap

Rating: 8/10 (8 August 2004)

There are few directors that I would consider to have a resume that is flawless. Not Steven Spielberg (sorry, Hook and Always jump off the page too quickly. Not Ridley Scott (1492 and Legend bring back nightmares) and even the great Stanley Kubrick had his Eyes Wide Shut.
However, there are a few directors who have yet to have that career back step due to a colossal misjudgment. Michael Mann is one of those directors.
He might not be a household recollection, but with credits including Heat, The Insider, The Last of the Mohicans and now Collateral under his legacy belt, it is only a matter of time.
Collateral stars Tom Cruise as Vincent. We first meet Vincent in an airport when he discreetly exchanges briefcases with another unsavory character. Vincent is not the Tom Cruise that we have come to know. Here, the character has gray hair and a matching beard. He wears a gray suit and his eyes look locked-in to his objective.
We first meet Max (Jamie Foxx) in his cab as he picks up fares and shares dreams of an island getaway. Max is a 12-year veteran of the Los Angeles' taxi force and can ramble off directions, streets and ETA's quicker than most of us can name our own family members. He has dreams of starting up his own limousine fleet and the night had started like any other.
Max and Vincent both meet innocently enough. Vincent is looking for a ride, and Max just became available. Vincent reveals that he has five stops to make and offers Max $600 to rent his services for the evening. Although against company policy, Max accepts the more than gracious offer, and an evening rampage is then born.
At their first stop, Max is minding his own business when a body falls on the roof of his car from a 4th floor window. Max's emotional confusion over the event is tempered by the calm demeanor of the now reappearing Vincent. In but a few moments, Max puts the pieces of the murdering puzzle together and realizes that he has been driving a killer to his prey. This realization transforms Max into a victim who is essentially kidnapped and forced to drive from kill to kill until the evening's work is complete. The movie then follows the travels of the two participants as investigators and feds try and get a jump ahead of the contracted killer and as Max tries desperately to free himself from his abetting actions.
On paper, the storyline might not jump out and bite you like a Discovery Channel shark attack, but in the hands of director Mann, this movie sizzles with action and with as much mood as I have seen on screen since Kill Bill Vol. 2. Tom Cruise continues to take on roles that are completely opposite from his preceding film vehicle, and as contract killer Vincent, he is a force to be reckoned. His fast draw hands and his ruthless and unemotional attachment to his victims would give Hannibal Lector cause to write him fan mail. When two street thugs take Vincent's briefcase from the cab, his resolve is quick and decisive, leaving both men dead, one being shot as Vincent is already walking back to the taxi and focusing on the jobs still to be carried out. As educated as he is implacable, Vincent justifies his actions to Max by comparing Rwandan villagers who were slaughtered to his one take down of a known criminal and how our Western lack of physical reaction to the news of tens of thousands being wiped out in other countries makes us a form of hypocrite.
Ying to his yang, Max is the conflicted 'good guy'. He is pressured without a successful exit strategy into helping Vincent on his evening killing spree and when efforts to escape fail, he beings to inquire as to the mechanisms behind the killers intentions in almost an innocent way of passing the time while taking ones mind of his criminal involvement. Max eventually reaches a breaking point that is a believable reaction to a night of extraordinary circumstances and soon after he finds himself as the only one between Vincent and the final target.
Watching Cruise and Foxx banter and bludgeon, I could not imagine any other pairing to successful pull this thriller off as believable. Early reports were that Russell Crowe and Adam Sandler were both in consideration for Vincent and Max, and thinking of those two behemoths of Hollywood in the similar circumstances, just doesn't work with even the most inventive imaginations.
Much like Mann's Heat, there are great face-to-face confrontations, secondary characters that don't become overbearing and actions sequences that explode in Dolby Surround Sound. Where Heat had the DeNiro/Pacino talk in the restaurant, a cheating wife and a shootout that still stands as one of the best ever filmed, Collateral counters with a great conversation between Vincent and a jazz bar owner, cops who don't smother the screen in their revelations and a shoot out in an L.A. hot spot that had the audience squirm towards the edge of their seats.
In a summer that has been better than expected with an eclectic group of theatrical entries, Collateral might just be the best of them all. Thrill seekers can revel in that week over week, we have bettered the format in bringing The Bourne Supremacy, The Manchurian Candidate and now Collateral to our local playhouses.
Collateral in all likelihood will not garnish any trophy consideration come the end of the year, but that is not due to the product. Mann has cast perfectly and directed through an evening in Los Angeles with the precision of a brain surgeon. And now that Collateral has offered him another feather for his cap, I think he can finally make that Indian headdress that other directors can only dream of.