Miami Vice producer meets Caribbean Pirates writer and...

Rating: 1/10 (4 April 2008)

...the result is a film that feels like a TV crime show with over-extravagant set-pieces. Collateral is written to the classic 'Hero's Journey' formula. To précis; Jamie Foxx refuses the call to adventure, is mentored (by the villain), then passes the threshold, enters the belly of the whale, undergoes the ordeal, seizes the sword (the cop's gun) and brings back the elixir of some revelation or other. Nothing wrong with that, but following that thread is the only thing that kept my attention in this flashy, overwrought thriller that ultimately collapses into cliché. It stops working when Jamie Foxx throws his case away and Cruise doesn't kill him. So any sense of urgent motivation is lost. After that, when Cruise attacks the busy club, it's so confusingly directed that my mind started to wander, and the immense plot hole that others have mentioned yawned open. Why is this supposedly top hit-man going round in a car with a big light on the top? Why can't he drive himself? Why can't he take the subway? Is it self-destructiveness? A sense of tragedy is feebly hinted at, but it doesn't wash, it's lip service. I didn't know Michael Mann had produced and written on Miami Vice but it makes sense. Collateral is strong on visuals and weak, very weak on thought processes. And then they hit you with a coincidence straight out of 3rd Grade storytelling: the DA is the hit-man's final target, but she just happens to be Jamie Foxx's prospective love interest. Nah. You blew it. There are a few interesting touches: there are vague echoes of Blade Runner, they try to deconstruct a couple of clichés (the bin through the glass door), and it has to be said that Tom Cruise is convincingly scary - that may be the Lizard People Theory association. But long before the time Collateral gets to the climax you can't suspend your disbelief any longer. I mean, this guy can pick out targets with a thirty-round clip in a crowded club but he can't hit two people in an office? And to end it with a subway chase is an Eighties' homage I could do without. Disappointing.