El Ciudad de Los Coyotes

Rating: 9/10 (28 March 2005)

Twenty years ago, Ridley Scott brought us his vision of the Los Angeles of the 21st Century,"Blade Runner". The gleaming Ultra High Tech of the future juxtaposed with the decay and poverty of the teeming ethnic stew masses.
Michael Mann's "Collateral" is a similar vision of a megalopolis where as hit man Tom Cruise muses, whats one life amidst the 17 million plus souls of Los Angeles? Evidently not much given the body count that accumulates as Cruise and his hostage Cabbie, Jamie Fox traverse the Los Angeles of today.
From the booming Latino nightclub to the Asian high tech disco in Korea town, to the African American Jazz Club in the Crenshaw district of L.A., Mann is taking the viewer on a journey that few ever leave their falsely safe enclaves in L.A. to see or experience. L.A. is more of a Balkanized city than an ethnic melting pot. Different parallel worlds of culture and experience.
As in the earlier "Blade Runner" the collision of past, present and future on the streets of Los Angeles is exhilarating, frightening, and disorienting, as it seems to always be eroding ones spirit and sense of self. Anomie brought to explosive levels, with predictable results.
Mann one ups Scott in a sequence that only someone that has grown up in certain parts of L.A. would appreciate. After fleeing the carnage wrought at a futuristic disco, Cruise and Fox speechlessly and with amazement and bewilderment on their faces, witness a denizen of the last Ice Age cross their path in the early Pr-dawn hours. A coyote brazenly trots across the street in front of their Taxi. Its pretty clear on the message. The coyote is saying, "You and your ways are passing through, I've always been here and always will here, I'm the true survivor not you."
The issue of time is continually referenced, especially in regards to the schedule that Cruise is adhering to in his mission. Time is also discussed as in how long it takes to get from place to place on L.A.s crowded thoroughfares. Human impatience over mere minutes.
Cruise tells Fox a story of the deceased person who rode unnoticed for days on the Metro line. Forshadowing the films finale where Cruise the human coyote rides off into eternity.
The coyotes both real and metaphorical, prowl and wait, for they are immune to the dictates of time.