ColLAteral Confidential

Rating: 10/10 (3 August 2016)

Action and adventure movies are meant to immerse the audience in a sparkly and (sometimes literally) explosive plot, silly as they may be, so that we forget our own lives for a couple of hours in a manic episode of escapism. Good action movies place the viewer in a seemingly real-word scenario to which they can relate a bit more convincingly and can even make us feel all too interconnected and even paranoid. I'm thinking of the recent films that use the oft-used formula, albeit a somewhat tiring one, of espionage in the modern area, some of which (Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation) do a better job than others (Jason Bourne).
Then there are the rare action thrillers that place us in a setting we recognize, yet make us feel so very alone and trivial as human beings. Collateral fits this description. Tom Cruise, who plays the nihilistically charming hit-man Vincent, and Jamie Foxx, who plays the pathetically jaded cab driver Max, both knock their performances out of the park.
Mark Ruffalo makes an appearance as a trustworthy LA beat detective, only to show you where those qualities lead you and reinforces how meaningless and random life can be. Paradoxically, by the end, Max's character does a 180 and challenges Vince's proposition of people being merely "lost in space," that even if we don't know "the guy in the trunk," sometimes growth can develop from even the deaths of seemingly corrupt individuals, or society as a whole.
With an excellent soundtrack to boot, any action movie buff would be happy to be resigned to mere collateral for a couple of hours, if only to see that this film is one of the most unique in the increasingly insignificant pantheon of films within the genre. 4 out of 4 stars.