Stylish, Exciting, Well-Crafted Thriller Of LA Cab Driver Who Picks Up The Wrong Guy

Rating: 7/10 (27 January 2010)

Max is a Los Angeles cabbie who works nights. He picks up Vincent, a guy with several errands around town, who pays Max a hefty bonus to be his personal driver for the night. Big mistake - Vincent turns out to be a hit-man whose errands are all assassinations, and Max has become his unwilling accomplice
Michael Mann is a great director whose recent work has been a little uneven, but this is a cracker of a thriller in the slick style of previous greats like Thief and Heat. The plot may have the odd cliché - you can be sure that the beguiling woman Max meets at the start is gonna be the last name on Vincent's hit list - but it has great character archetypes, terrific action scenes, fascinating performances, and a dreamlike three-o'clock-in-the-morning atmosphere flowing through it. The dynamic between Max and Vincent subtly changes as the story progresses to the point where both men come to an unpalatable realisation of how empty their lives are; Max has big plans that he's never gonna follow through on, and for all his slickness and live-fast ethos Vincent is lonely and unfulfilled. One lacks the courage to break his routine and the other lacks the courage to make a routine. Foxx is a great Everyman, not afraid to play Max as a somewhat nerdy loser, whilst Cruise (with a rather stylish grey hair-dye job) makes a fine egotistical psychopath in his first (only ?) villainous role. Watch out too for the first English-speaking role by Bardem (No Country For Old Men) as the gangster who tells the chilling Black Peter story, and a walk-on right at the start by Jason Statham as the airport bagman. I love it-all-happened-in-one-night stories (see Assault On Precinct 13, Miracle Mile, many others) and the surreal, spaced-out quality of the picture is intense and absorbing; Max and Vincent seem to be drifting through a weird alien planet of neon, dusty palm-lined avenues and endless freeways. James Newton Howard's cool score and the eclectic source music add to this odd quality, and complement Max's journey from control freak to victim to hero. This is a great return to form for Mann, an impressive change of pace for Cruise and a cool, exciting, crime thriller to be savoured.