Give some credit to Stuart Beattie!

Rating: Null/10 (1 October 2004)

SPOILERS, sort of.
If I don't check my watch at least once during a film, that's a high recommendation. During "Collateral," I lost track of the time and didn't care.
This film, despite some flaws, works well, and writer Stuart Beattie deserves a good deal of the credit for fashioning an engaging premise and then developing two great characters to carry it to its logical conclusion. This is as much character study as it is thriller. The cab driver, Max, living in the dreamy future for the past twelve years, is brought back to reality by his encounter with the hit-man Vincent, who seems to live almost entirely in the moment. It is a jarring confrontation for Max, who ultimately has to step up and stand up to the evil that Vincent embodies.
I have long enjoyed Michael Mann's films for their stylistic flair (don't miss "Thief" if you've not seen it), but unlike some visually gifted directors, Mann also makes movies that are about something, that have strong writing and characters whom one cares about, even if they are outlaws. "Collateral" is a visually satisfying film, but more than that, its characters engaged me far more than most recent movies.
Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise also are to be praised for taking Beattie's characters and making them work. I frankly had never paid much attention to Foxx's earlier work, writing it off as lightweight comedy/action stuff; but here he's superb. He develops Max from an unremarkable guy with unremarkable dreams into a very frightened hit-man's stooge to an unwilling hero. Cruise has long been underrated as an actor. In "Collateral" he was able to make me forget he was Tom Cruise (although a couple of times I thought he was Kurt Russell or Alec Baldwin) and made me buy Vincent as the amoral yet dedicated professional assassin who also kills Max's dreams and, in doing so, sews the seeds of his own destruction. This is a great performance; I predict Cruise will be nominated for Best Actor and (given the AMPAS's disinclination to nominate two actors from the same film in the same category, and that Cruise is the bigger star) Foxx for Best Supporting Actor.
As I said, there are some weak points. I came very close to looking at my watch during Max's endless introduction to a lovely female attorney (Jada Pinkett Smith) who, I finally realized, was bound to figure later in the movie. I gather Beattie and Mann wanted to make Max's transition and subsequent actions seem more strongly motivated, but that really isn't necessary and actually undercuts Max's growth to some extent. The other major weak spot is the nightclub shootout -- it's difficult to follow who's stalking and shooting who (I suppose that's realism), but I also had a hard time believing that a professional assassin who is unwilling to reveal himself to his clients would walk into a crowded room to shoot someone, even in the dark.
But ultimately this movie is about the relationship between Max and Vincent that builds, and then explodes. They (thanks to Beattie, Foxx and Cruise) make the film, and make it well worth a look.