A Desert of the Mind

Rating: 6/10 (14 May 2006)

In this one, Tom Cruise is a hit man who's job is to wipe out five witnesses scheduled to testify against a drug lord, and then beat it. He's a real pro. He's a steel gray inside and out, from his hair to his suit and socks. He kills ruthlessly, with no regard for whether the victim deserves it or not. "I do this for a living." But he explains to the cab driver (Jamie Foxx) whom he has coerced into driving him around that he was abused as a child, so that explains everything.
There are a couple of minor subplots. An LAPD detective (Mark Ruffalo) begins to twig to the fact that the people being murdered so quickly, one after another, seem to form a pattern among the drug community. It's the serial murderer routine. There is even a boss (Peter Berg) who refuses to believe Ruffalo and says, "I'm tired. I'm going home." Then there's the woman. Jada Pinkett Smith, looking and acting pretty good. Her main function in the film is to give Jamie Foxx somebody to get hysterical about saving. There is the expectable scene in which he calls her on a cell phone and warn her that Cruise is inside her building, looking for her. "Max," she tells him, "isn't it kind of late to be calling?" And will his cell phone cutting out, Foxx stutters, "Anna, Anna! Listen. You've go to listen to me! Anna?" Tom Cruise is a killer made of ice except that he saves Foxx's rear end in a shoot out for no discernible reason. He seems to stalk through the movie like The Terminator on meth. Jamie Foxx isn't a seasoned actor but his very tentativeness, his awkwardness, contribute to the effectiveness of his performance as the pleasant unreflective dutiful son who is satisfied with keeping the cleanest cab in town.
None of the other characters registers much except for one -- the city of Los Angeles at night. You know how they say, "You're always loneliest in a crowd"? Well, you would never be lonely in L.A. because the streets are completely deserted. A few exceptions, true, such as when the plot requires a couple of street muggers. But, otherwise, we can be sure that if we happen to glimpse a pedestrian he is only walking a short distance, from one car to another probably. There is practically no traffic on the streets. The marmorial office buildings themselves are flourescently lit and morgue-like in their carpentered right-angled purity.
The director, the photographer, and the art director have this urban desert in their grasp and it makes the entire movie better than an average action flick, although the skeleton of that primitive structure still shows through what we see on the screen.
But -- well, take a scene like this. Cruise is forcing Foxx to drive him to another destination along an empty thoroughfare. They stop for a red light. There is no music or other sound. The cab rolls to a halt in slow motion. Neither of the two men speak. And then, out of nowhere, trotting across the city streets in front of the car, two coyotes with gleaming eyes go about their business while the two men follow them with their gaze. The animals seem certain of being ignored, and why not? Everybody ignores everything in L.A. It's brief but telling. Someone had to actually think about shooting that footage and editing it in.
There is a final shootout on a ghostly subway train. The damsel in distress is saved.
It's an ordinary action flick in its conception. No doubt about it. But its execution is more impressive than the original imitative script deserved.