Darkness Reveals

Rating: Null/10 (6 August 2004)

With an opening momentarily becalming yet hypo-energetically transmitting chemical interaction between as unlikely a pair as could be imagined; cab driver and lady lawyer, we are hooked. We have seen Tom Cruise in a fleeting exchange of packages but we want to know more about this pair. Instead we are brilliantly led through an admittedly stretchy sequence of overtly criminal acts misdirecting our attention entirely from the hookup that eventually puts a human face on events crazier than we might ever conceive.
Jada Pinkett Smith (playing lawyer Annie) and Jamie Foxx (as cabdriver Max) are the pair we want to follow. But Tom Cruise (Vincent) so persuasively moves Max (throwing cash around) to cooperate in his evening's agenda we are compelled to watch what might happen; the why becomes less interesting as the how propels us. This is an actioner for the more discriminating viewer.
Director Michael Mann has shown us brilliance; his ability to draw great work from gifted actors was displayed in the very memorable `Heat'. DeNiro and Pacino show us more acting in one exchange across a restaurant table than we might find in 10 movies. Mann does it again, lending that signature spoken about previously: his view about `a movie's genetic coding': a swirling double helix of image and sound, character and story, fantasy and fact.' (http://www.salon.com/bc/1999/02/02bc2.html)
Tom Cruise will never fail to impress us with his athletic ability and flat out complete mastery of any and all he is asked to do onscreen. Witness the absolute talent involved in his gun handling (watch that magazine change mid-movie), his marvelous twist (an exceedingly nimble foot-twist) as he crashes through a pane of glass or just watch him run. There is no one as compactly and fervently packaged.
But on no account can the work of Mark Ruffalo (a seriously focused detective) or Jamie Foxx be minimized; they ground the environment Cruise operates in, giving us plausible moral rightists attempting to set things right. But Tom trumps all when he tells us `I'm paid to do this' toward the end of the film; a line intoned to accommodate a nihilistic view (auteur).
In a season of film completely devoid of the darkness and truth that makes us re-evaluate life as a series of violent and semi-violent acts, we have `Collateral'. Savor the small things presented: the streets of LA shot from above, that no one can film club scenes like Hollywood can  small wonder the world envies us; we shoot better, more deliberately, than ever another nation would convey; no apology in the mayhem. Watch it twice, there is no film release of the past few months equal save `I, Robot'.

Rating: 3.5 Stars.