Good, but got a little off track at the end

Rating: 7/10 (12 August 2004)

(spoilers herein) I just saw Collateral tonight and thought it was pretty good. I especially liked Tom Cruise doing what he does best (being cool). I thought the story was pretty interesting, even though I kind of guessed what case the witnesses were from and where the film was headed. There is also some good black humor mixed in with the killings that keep things really entertaining. There were definitely some moments that seemed a "little too convenient" like the people in the "elevator" or the very fact that Jada Pinkett Smith and Tom Cruise use the same cab right after each other. Still those are only minor problems. My biggest problem and the thing that kept me from giving this movie a higher rating (gave it a 7, which translates to like ***/**** on my scale), was in fact the ending. Things just got too outlandish for me here. First of all max crashes the cab doing like 80 and Vincent is virtually unharmed (even without his setabelt on) and is able to get up like 30 seconds after the crash and book it down the street. Then when he gets into the office building where his final target is, he stupidly wastes time turning off the buildings power, which IN FACT gives his victim an unnecessary edge. At this point it became obvious how things were going to turn out and that the movie didn't really have the balls to follow through with what it set up in the first hour and a half. I wish they would have had the guts to keep things going as they did earlier and work within the limits for the characters set up. Before the final shoot out Cruise warns Foxx that "this is what I do for a living" which if it were true the scared cabby would be dead instead of the professional killer who up until that point should excellent marksmenship. What Cruis should have said is "this is what happens at the end of 99% of all movies"...the bad guy dies and the good guy gets the girl. Still as an overall experience I found the movie to be entertaining with strong performances all around and having an engaging story.
Zoopansick