Excellent for a Big Studio Film

Rating: 9/10 (23 December 2004)

Most big budget "thrillers" with a big name director and big name stars are very average movies. The number of two and a half star movies I've seen in the last few years is remarkable. Collateral is much better than that, but it's still not without flaws.
The movie starts out with Jamie Foxx as Max. He appears to be a hard working, blue collar nice guy who takes his job as a cab driver seriously. We learn early on that he knows exactly how many minutes it will take to get from one location to the next. 7 minutes? he is asked...not 8, not 6? When he's right, Max says he just got lucky and made the lights.
His first passenger is Jada Pinkett Smith in her least annoying role to date. They hit it off, making a bet over the best way to get across town. Over the 17 minute drive, we learn that Max has a dream of owning a limo company for the stars, while Annie (Smith) is a high powered lawyer who admits that she still gets nervous before a big case. She gets out of the cab and provides her business card, not knowing that it will save her life.
Max picks up his next passenger, Vincent played by Tom Cruise. If you saw the trailer, or if you can see Cruise's hair, you know that he is the bad guy. He offers Max $600 to take him around to five different locations because he has work to do at all five. $600 seems like a small amount for a man of Vincent's stature, but I guess it's good enough for an L.A. cabbie.
It turns out that Vincent is a contracted killer whose job for the night is to kill five people. Who they are has little bearing on the movie. This would have been a great reveal had it not been spoiled by the trailers. Anyway, Cruise's first kill goes awry and Max is forced into being part of the action. Instead of just driving Vincent to each location without knowing his business, Max must find a way to keep himself, and others, alive.
Collateral garnered a lot of critical acclaim because it supposedly had meaningful dialogue to complement the action. For once, the critics were right. Vincent and Max converse over the meaning of life, the meaning of killing, and general rights and wrongs in society. We learn that Max has been driving the cab for 12 years, even though he tells everyone, including his mom, that the job is temporary. We learn that Vincent is not your typical killer who is just out to do the job. He's conflicted about his role in society, about what society is, and he wonders if anybody will miss him when he's gone.
The movie runs into problems when it realizes that this story has to lead somewhere. The first hour is brilliant as we meet the characters, learn who they are, and we get some great cinematography of L.A. However, once Max tries to get away and throws all of Vincent's material onto the freeway, the movie started to lose me. It seems that Vincent would have had a more negative reaction if Max wasn't the lead character in the movie. I also didn't like the fact that the "feds" get involved and we have the stereotypical clashes between local cops and feds.
Then of course, Vincent, the feds, and the LAPD all show up at the same location at the same time. Guns blaze, and about 20 people are murdered in a 2 minute span. I didn't think this scene in the club really fit with the rest of the film. It's like the filmmakers were told there wasn't enough gunplay, and they made this scene bigger and better to have more violence and bloodshed.
The climax of the movie occurs strangely, as the two leads walk away from a high speed car accident unharmed, but the film recovers for the final showdown. It turns out that Annie is the fifth victim, and the reasoning for this is not as far fetched as it may appear. So, it's up to Max to save the day. The ending is well played and tries to make a grand statement. I bought it, but I can see how people could have trouble with it.
Collateral is filled with plot holes and unanswered questions. However, the performances of Cruise, Foxx, and Smith are wonderful. Any movie that can remind me of both Grand Canyon, for its L.A. cinematography; and 3 Days of the Condor, for suggesting that a contracted killer might not be such a bad guy, is alright with me.