Great genre piece (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (7 August 2004)

Jamie Foxx picks up Tom Cruise, who offers him six hundred dollars to ride him around LA while he makes "stops". These "stops" turn out to be hits and Cruise turns out to be a professional killer.
Fantastic genre piece from a master of the form. The storyline's incredibly tight -- if you can buy a couple of early implausibilities it works like clockwork from there, which is all anyone can ask from a movie script. Mann gives LA a grainy, bleary kind of look, like a drunkard's dream. He's also very good about making what could be a relatively static, boring series of shots in Foxx's cab seem exciting.
If you like HEAT, this movie somewhat riffs off the central "duality" concept in the famous De Niro/Pacino scene. Foxx has escaped the world in dreams; Cruise has embraced nihilism. They're two sides of the same coin, and the movie ultimately is the story of how they try to connect.

Foxx has never been more likable, underplaying his role for the most part and giving us a very believable schnook. Cruise is good even in crummy movies, but he's particularly good when he plays around with his persona, and he does so to devastating effect, here. The two together have an interesting chemistry, especially as the movie draws on and a strange kind of bond starts to form between the two men.
Highly recommended, first class all the way.