Attention absorbing movie craft work

Rating: 8/10 (3 January 2005)

My one word review of Michael Mann's 'Collateral' is "Crisp." Such a professional piece of work; no bells and/or whistles, just super solid crafting. The acting performances from Cruise, Foxx, and Smith are pitch-perfect, with Cruise grabbing the title of 'biggest surprise' as he more than pulls off the bad guy act while shading the character of 'Vincent' with some humanity.
Mann's direction embodies the idea of camera as innocent documenter and not the camera as fully involved character. We are shown what happens, the scenes are framed well to properly convey the evolving story, but Mann does not dress things up with unnecessary trickery. And, at least for this film, that methodology pays off handsomely.