My review of Collateral

Rating: 8/10 (1 August 2010)

In the movie Collateral there are many twists and turns like you would see in your typical thriller. Collateral however combines 2 types of movies in one. It is an action packed thriller. It stars Tom Cruise as the hit man Vincent, Jaime Fox as Max the taxi driver, and Jada Pinkett Smith as Annie the district attorney. This film is about a taxi driver Max who drives Annie to her office and during the trip she tells Max about a case she is working on. After dropping her off he picks up another fare, Vincent. Vincent is a hit man using Max to transport him around Los Angeles to do his contract hits in one night. When Vincent first approached Max's cab they almost didn't even hook up. Everyone in the audience knew something wasn't right with Vincent but they didn't know what. Unfortunately for Max he didn't see it coming in the beginning, however he should have suspected something when Vincent wanted him to drive him to his various business appointments and wait for him. After Max told Vincent he wasn't allowed to wait for fares Vincent pulled out a stack of $100 dollar bills and enticed him to drive him around for $600. This is when Max should have known something wasn't right but money can make people do what they ordinarily wouldn't do. Everything went downhill from here for Max. That first stop changed the rest of his night. As you watch the film Max's night will come full circle.
The director (Michael Mann) did a great job in the beginning of the film to demonstrate the upcoming suspense but you weren't sure what was coming. He showed Vincent and another man walking through different parts of an airport. In these scenes all the people around them were blurred and the voices were muffled as to show that they 2 were destined to cross paths. They bumped into each other and one dropped his brief case while the other set his down to apologize then they each picked up the others case. This scene was very well done. It is much better than one sitting on a bench reading a magazine or something and then the other sitting down next to him and then one leaving and picking up the others case. Basically I'm saying it wasn't predictable. Looking at the film as a whole this was a great way to start the film.
This film was a very entertaining action packed suspense thriller and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The editing for the most part was superb, however I did find a couple of areas that either could have been done differently or better. First some (not all) of the taxi scenes were unrealistic. The viewer knew which taxi window scenes were real and which ones were movies playing in the window. There weren't many but in my opinion with today's technology there should not be any scenes that look like a movie in the background window. Next in the end of the movie when Max and Annie are fleeing Vincent in the subway they go to the lower level platform and hide out of the sight of Vincent. As Vincent comes down the escalators he stops at the platform above the lower platform as 2 trains come into the station, one on the lower platform and one on the level he is on. He is trying to determine which train he thinks they're on. The director or editor didn't show Vincent going down or even attempting to go down to the lower platform they just showed him getting on the same train as Max and Anne. Like I said earlier, this is a great entertaining thriller with just a couple mistakes on the editing side of things. Maybe I am a bit too anal.