My thoughts on Michael Mann's great film

Rating: 9/10 (22 June 2016)

Collateral is a movie from twelve years ago by Michael Mann and a great script by Stuart Beattie. It stars Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx and showcases LA like a painting.
Collateral is a crime-drama/thriller about a cab driver named Max (played by Jamie Foxx) who is seasoned with his directional skills in LA territory. An unsuspecting Max has a hit-man named Vincent (played by Tom Cruise) in the back of his cab, paying Max a large sum of money to ensure that he takes him to five different locations and waits for him. Once Max learns that Vincent is a hit-man, Vincent takes him as a hostage and threatens to kill him if he does not drive him to all his stops, or in reality, all five of Vincent's targets. This movie had a few thrilling moments, but in between these is some really well-constructed dialogue. The screenplay is great, and I love the relationship between Max and Vincent. Most of the movie is them trying to make conversation in the taxi, usually by ridiculing each other for missed opportunities or no regard for consequences of actions. There is a lot of great character building in these scenes in the cab, where we learn more about these two men while they try to figure each other out at the same time. I also really liked to see Tom Cruise as the bad guy, after all being in heroic roles for the majority of his career.
Michael Mann makes this film look absolutely gorgeous, with stunning shots of the LA skyline, and somehow essentially recreates LA to look extremely colorful and pretty. There was a lot of nice colors in this movie, like pale greens and washy blues. What impressed me with Collateral was how the film slowly winds up tension between these 2 characters. With each conversation they have, they start to resent each other more and more, and the final act of this movie was extremely well handled. The ending to this movie was perfect, and the resolution made sense. That being said, I didn't have that many problems with the movie, but one thing I would have liked to see would be the really good action scenes or intense moments spread throughout the movie more. The last thirty minutes of this movie are extremely fast paced, but they should have had more of these incredibly good scenes.
The pacing in this movie is done well, they still could have added a few more action scenes to keep the audience interested. The dialogue in this movie is really smart, so the movie never dulls or feels boring. This movie was wild and unpredictable, and it had a genius concept for a movie.
+ Great Character building - These intense moments could be more spread + Gorgeous setting and camera-work + Some well directed intense moments + Character interaction and dialogue really well written 9/10