This Dark Thriller Gleams

Rating: 8/10 (15 August 2004)

(trailer-level spoilers)
Hitchcock was once quoted to say that he hated movie scenes in cars because they were purely transitional. You get in the car in one scene and then you get out in the next  nothing significant happens in the car. Times have changed, and car scenes have become as much a set as any school, bedroom or office. `Collateral' presents itself as a taut thriller about a terrible night when a great deal happens in a Los Angeles taxi. Under Michael Mann's strong direction, this film thrives and succeeds on the psychological claustrophobia of Hitchcock's cinematic pet peeve.
A mostly unspoken opening introduces us to Vincent (a scruffy and white-haired Tom Cruise) and a cab driver named Max (Jamie Foxx). As he enters LAX, Vincent bumps into another business traveler (Jason Statham) and they subtly exchange briefcases. Max does crossword puzzles as he waits for his cab to be freed up from the guy driving the day shift. We see Max dodge the pitfalls of taxi work before he picks up Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) and some potentially romantic heat smolders between them during the cross-town fare. Vincent has been doing some work of his own downtown and enters Max's cab after Annie has departed. Typical cabby-rider chatter starts between them until Vincent offers Max $600 to be his driver for the rest of the evening. Unfortunately for Max, he accepts the deal just before being presented with grizzly evidence that Vincent's real-estate persona is his cover story as a hit man for hire. Vincent is in LA for a night of 5 contract murders and now has Max (as driver, witness and unwilling accomplice) locked to his side. Vincent is experienced and ruthless, but in territory he does not know or like. Max is witty and observant, but resigned in his routines. The pair moves through the LA night and pull at each other for control as things become increasingly complicated.

The acting of `Collateral' is one of the best special effects of the summer. The unknowns of the film are all top-notch, and any lesser-known familiar faces are given star treatment on camera. Jada Pinkett Smith brings the whole world of a high-powered attorney with her in her brief time on the screen. Tom Cruise is the biggest name here, but he's not just riding a star vehicle. He's breaking type for the benefit of his experience as well as ours, and he slinks right into the shoes of his hit man. `Vincent' is scary because he is constantly considering what he does and evaluating the world round him. Cruise lets us see all of that subtly glancing here and there at `Max' and others he encounters during the night. He doesn't just kick in a door and kill for pleasure of macho fury; he does it because it's what he's good at. What humanity he has makes him all the more lethal because it keeps him unassuming. Jamie Foxx turns in a performance that has an easy sincerity to it. Once pulled into the territory of assassin's accomplice, he is struggling to first wrench himself free, and second to gain any sort of control back. Foxx's performance is one of an ordinary man with quickly elevating panic and then gradually rising desperation, and it is a struggle performed with knowing and not one stutter, hesitation or yell is out of place. (Combined with the biopic `Ray' coming this fall, it'll probably lift Foxx permanently out of the comedy stereotype and on the Hollywood top list, ala Tom Hanks's emergence in the early 1990's.) After their second visit to a night club, these two have a confrontation of words about their perceptions of each others' lives that crackles with the same fierce sincerity of the coffee shop scene between Robert DiNero's thief and Al Pacino's cop in Mann's own `Heat'.
The plot is tight, and to give more detail of the deadly evening away would ruin the enjoyment of this intelligent mano-a-mano contest. Director Michael Mann is expert with crime stories, and he brings the necessary visual edge to Stuart Beattie's script. They aren't afraid to play it straight with the situations they drop their characters into. When questions come up, like the taxi dispatcher calling Max to chew him out, Vincent hops on the radio and actually helps Max win some respect on the job  in service of keeping the dispatcher out of their hair. Mann's typical skill with setting the camera is here, too. The guy clearly has a visual love affair with nightime LA. Every light by the airport gleams and the beauty of the city is captured in reflection of the underbelly of a black police helicopter. He doesn't get back to the consistent criminal perfection of `Heat', but he is making everyone put their best out there. His camera is constantly on tight close-ups, yet is not afraid of making an image deliberately grainy or dropping the majority of the picture out of focus to achieve emotional emphasis.
There is a great deal to praise here. Some have criticized the climax as cliched, and there are some plot elements in the final act that are familiar. It would have been interesting to see an even more thematically-driven ending. However, the film has built so much momentum by that point that they are forgivable and thrilling because of the excellent direction and performances. It is, after all, a thriller, and it succeeds greatly where many films this year have failed.
8 out of 10