Stylish yet largely predictable and uninvolving.

Rating: 6/10 (9 November 2004)

Collateral deals in the dark and violent world of Vincent (Cruise) a hit man out to remove a handful of key people from this life, and Max (Foxx) as the unlucky cab driver brought into this world by a collection of bad luck and unlikely coincidences.
Opening with a teasing sequence involving Vincent at the airport, Collateral's subtlety ends with this slightly ambiguous scene and the questions it poses about Vincent's intentions. After this, Collateral presents a distinctly blunt plot blunted further with needless exposition.
We are first presented with Max as he picks up customer Annie (Smith). This evolves into a half-hearted scene intended to build some form of connection between the two, in order to have this connection serve as a plot turn point later in the movie. However, whilst Foxx does an admirable job as the well-meaning, genuinely nice cab driver, Annie simply falls insignificantly into the background. Later in the movie, when Vincent's scheme ultimately comes to involve her, Annie remains a blank and unengaging character. Smith gives little in her performance, but to be fair there is little in Annie for her to work with, and the character is really disposable.
Collateral is really about Vincent and Max. Everyone else is incidental, and in many cases superfluous.
Max discovers Vincent's profession early on. It's rather hard to miss as a body falls from the fourth floor window onto his cab and Vincent calmly responds to Max's incredulous query with a dismissive 'I shot him. The bullets and the fall killed him'. The body is stuffed into the taxi's boot  an out of character action for Vincent designed purely to create not one but two extremely contrived scenes later on. At this point Max is held as both hostage and driver while Vincent passes through LA on his quest to kill four more victims.
Vincent and Max develop a curious relationship, with Max becoming surprisingly open at times and Vincent offering stark commentary about Max, about people, and about the universe. Collateral is about the differences between the two  on the one hand we have Max's good beardedness, lack of genuine ambition, and earnestness, while on the other we have Vincent's brutal, amoral, nihilism. During the course of the movie Max develops somewhat, and at one point in particular you can see the change occur.
Foxx does a surprisingly good turn as the naive and frightened Max, with characterisation that almost makes you believe the changes that happen. Cruise too gives Vincent a suitably brutal portrayal and becomes a decent villain.
There is a parallel, but lesser, plot involving the inevitable police and federal investigations but really this serves only to add unnecessary exposition to what we can clearly see with our own eyes. The involvement of some shallow, ineffectual, police figures does little to enliven the movie and in truth they are all but ignored.
What Collateral really has going for it is style. This is perhaps not surprising given that director Michael Mann is of course famous for 80s style icon Miami Vice. Here he makes wonderful use of night-time LA, framing shots which simply ooze style and character. Both the wide vistas of streetlight lit LA, and the narrow focused shots of signs and lights evoke a strong sense of place. A highlight is certainly the climactic hunt in a darkened office, but again this is due to the flair of the shot, and to a lesser extent to Cruise's Vincent, rather than anything much else.
Where Collateral fails is in the story and, to a lesser extent, in the secondary characters. Everyone other than Max and Vincent are really props, not people. They are set items used to push along the plot in predictable and expected ways. There is no development within any of them  though given the minimal screen time for any beyond the two principals this is hardly surprising. As a result they come across as flat and dull. We are perhaps not truly intended to care about Annie (Smith) and her fate, but rather Max and his. The problem with this approach is that we know what the fate of both of them will be from the moment that Annie climbs into Max's cab.
Collateral has significant style. It offers spectacle and an occasional glimpse at excellence but mostly falls flat under a predictable plot which sags under the weight of the contrivances put in place to make it work. For Mann's next movie one can only hope that there is someone to help bolster the style with some real substance.
6.5/10