I saw the film, and I'm pretty critical of it. (maybe spoilers)

Rating: 1/10 (7 August 2004)

I was talking with a friend of mine just now, and we got on the subject of movies. He asked me if I'd seen anything recently, and I responded in the negative... but quickly had to correct myself; I'd nearly forgotten that I went to 'Collateral' last night... yeah, it's that memorable.
What I do remember about that movie was that I greatly disliked it. It had its moments... like the bad guy getting shot by the person he totally didn't think had the guts to fire a gun. But that's not cliché at all.
I'm still not sure why the whole 'wolves crossing the road' scene was thrown in there. Was it supposed to be a profound, mystical thing? It was lame and not at all clever -- a little like the rest of the film.
The "twists" are much too predictable. I was able to call more than five lines of dialog before they were spoken, and I don't go to movies to think; that's just poor writing.
Foxx's character was WAY too dynamic to make any sense. A polite, considerate, taxi driver who is ready to puke/faint in the presence of death becomes, in the span of a few hours, capable of talking down fully armed mobsters and of shooting a man in the face. Granted, there's a woman involved, so I can certainly see letting that slide a little... but then her involvement brings me to my next point.
This movie relies WAY too much on totally absurd coincidences. I kept thinking to myself, "What in the heck?! What are the chances--!?" Overall, the actors weren't terrible, though their abilities should have been spent doing something else; the writing was rather lame, and as I said before, it just wasn't clever.
If you'd like to watch a movie with a couple of gunfights, a bunch of things breaking, some folks dying, and a hit-man arguing philosophy with his cab driver, this is probably the flick for you. Enjoy.