Stylish, atmospheric, well-acted, but none too credible

Rating: 6/10 (20 February 2009)

Max Durocher is a Los Angeles cab driver who picks up a man named Vincent, who claims to be in the city to put together a business deal. As this will involve him making five different stops, he asks Max to be his personal chauffeur for the evening. (The action all takes place on a single night, between 6:30 PM to 5:40 AM according to the director Michael Mann). Although this is against regulations, Max reluctantly agrees when Vincent offers to pay him double his normal nightly profit.
The first stop is at a tenement building, and while Max is waiting outside a body falls onto his cab from an upstairs window. He realises that Vincent has shot the man, but he is unable to escape and is forced to help Vincent hide the body in the trunk. It transpires that Vincent is a hit-man, and that his real reason for being in the city is to murder five people who are potential witnesses in, or otherwise connected with, a prosecution that the Justice Department are preparing against a local criminal gang. Max is forced to drive Vincent to his other destinations as he sets about eliminating his targets.
"Collateral" is a film about which I have mixed feelings. On the one hand there are many things about it that are very good. It is sometimes regarded as an example of neo-noir, the modern equivalent of the classic films noirs of the forties and fifties. I am not sure that I would agree with this description as it lacks many of the classic noir characteristics such as a complex storyline and a tone of cynicism and moral ambiguity. It is in many ways a straightforward story with a straightforward good-and-bad morality. Nevertheless it does share one characteristic with many noir and neo-noir films, a powerful sense of atmosphere conjured up by Mann's dramatic photography of the Los Angeles cityscapes, the night-time setting and a colour scheme dominated by dark blues, greys and whites.
The acting is also good. Jamie Foxx was nominated for a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar, even though the role of Max is really a leading one rather than a supporting one. This was presumably done so that Foxx could receive two Oscar nominations in one year; this was, of course, the year in which he won the "Best Actor" award for "Ray". The characterisation is deeper than in many thrillers; Mann said that the general theme of "Collateral" is the clash of ideals behind the two main characters. Max is that classic thriller character, the little man who accidentally, and through no fault of his own, suddenly finds himself at the centre of a crime drama. He is conservative, cautious and painstaking, disliking changes from his set routine. We learn that he has long cherished the idea of setting up his own limousine company but has never done anything about it because he believes that the idea needs careful planning and preparation. He is also a devoted son; a visit to his hospitalised, and rather demanding, mother, with Vincent in attendance, plays an important part in the plot.
Vincent, by comparison, is proud of "living in the moment" and of his ability to adapt and improvise. He even taunts Max for his supposed lack of initiative. The irony is that it is the cautious planner Max who is forced to improvise and think quickly as he desperately tries to think of a way in which he can thwart Vincent's schemes. The film is notable for the fact that Tom Cruise plays a villain, something he rarely does; in most of his other roles he has played a sympathetic or heroic character. Although he makes Vincent a cool and stylish, if ruthless and sinister, villain he did not, unlike Foxx, receive an Oscar nomination. Cruise does not, in fact, seem to be a favourite of the Academy; he has in the course of his career received three nominations, but has never won, and some of his best performances ("Rain Man", "Eyes Wide Shut" and the recent "Valkyrie") have been overlooked altogether. (Perhaps his support for Scientology is to blame). Despite the obvious differences between Max and Vincent, Foxx and Cruise are able to suggest that a curious rapport, verging on friendship, is growing between them, even though we are well aware that their relationship is bound to end with the death of one or the other.
What I didn't like about the film was the way in which the plot seemed to stretch credibility well past its breaking-point. There was an over-reliance on coincidence; for example, Vincent's final target just happens to be the female lawyer who was Max's previous passenger before him. More importantly, I found it difficult to believe that a hit-man would go about his business in the way shown here. Vincent's cover story was rubbish; a businessman trying to put together a real estate deal would no doubt go to downtown offices in normal business hours, not at night to residential addresses in working-class neighbourhoods. Would a professional killer really be so careless to shoot his victim in such a way that he falls out of an open window? Would he really carry out a hit in a crowded nightclub teeming with potential witnesses? Would he really make his way around the city by taxi, thereby providing the police with another witness who could testify to his movements? And would he really pride himself on his carefree, improvisatory attitude to life? It strikes me that his is one profession where his every move needs to be meticulously planned if he, and those who hire him, are not to end up on Death Row. This was a film that was stylish, atmospheric, well-acted but at the end of the day none too credible. I suppose, though, the same thing could be said about some films noirs that are today regarded as classics. 6/10