Excellent thriller

Rating: 8/10 (17 February 2005)

Sometimes serendipity can be a blessing, and other times a curse. Max (Foxx) a Los Angeles cab driver, finds that serendipity isn't going his way when he picks up Vincent (Cruise), a seemingly normal looking man in a suit who asks him to become his personal chauffeur for the evening while he makes some business calls. Max is reluctant, but the $600 he is offered makes it a lucrative evening, so he agrees. Unfortunately, while sitting and waiting for Vincent at the first stop, a body comes crashing down onto his cab, and Max realizes that Vincent's blasé and no-nonsense approach to dealing with this certainly unusual situation isn't just good coping skills. This is just the first stop of five, but other people either become involved, or get in the way, of Vincent's spree and essentially become collateral damage. All the while, Max is trying to not only save his own life, but when he figures out who one of Vincent's future victims is, he has to try to save theirs as well.
I absolutely loved this film. I am naturally drawn to films where actors take on roles that are set against their regular "persona", and since I am generally ambivalent to Tom Cruise to begin with, I was anxious to see him play a bad guy. He did an excellent job portraying Vincent. With his gray hair and sort of ill-fitting suit, he looked like Jeffrey Wigand, a character from one of Michael Mann's earlier films, going medieval. His lack of emotion and constant drive reminded me of Yul Brunner's role in "Westworld". He gets knocked down; he gets up and continues after you without hardly breaking his stride. Cruise was intense and frightening, and I thought he did some fantastic work. Jamie Foxx also was very good as Max; he was able to do something very important in his role (at least for me since his roles in every other film and television show I had seen him in up until this point other than "Any Given Sunday" made me cringe) and that is make me forget that he is Jamie Foxx. I am not so shallow of a person that I will not like someone no matter what role they play, but I kind of had Jamie Foxx in my "Jim Carrey Category", where I won't watch his comedy, but will give his other roles a shot.
Michael Mann's direction is just excellent. The slick colors, sleek digital cinematography and urban settings were just perfect for the script. The pacing of the film was perfect; there was not one moment where I felt like a scene dragged, particularly toward the end of the film. He also worked in some great subplots without drowning us in exposition (the stories of the cab driver from a couple of years ago, Max's mother, his business) which made the film entirely believable. (Which is kind of frightening.) I had to kind of figure out how the ending happened the way it did, but it wasn't so outlandish that I was irritated or anything. I also was kind of questioning the use of the hard rock music in the soundtrack, but in my opinion there's a silver lining to that as well; how often do we hear music like that during a film like this? I wish I had gotten around to seeing this film on the big screen because I think that on the big screen, with digital sound it would have been breathtaking. With a script this good, direction this dead-on and performances that are this strong, one can see that it is a strong Oscar year for the major categories since this one did not garner any major award but a supporting actor nod for Foxx, but I guess that says something for both the offerings we had in 2004 and subsequently, the strength of this film to stand out as one of the best among many great works. "Collateral" gets a very strong 8/10 from me.
--Shelly