Thrilling and fun, wonderfully performed by its two leads

Rating: 7/10 (2 December 2014)

In Collateral, Michael Mann - a director who was still working at the top of his game back in 2004 - combines his favourite and familiar traits - an ice-cool soundtrack, buckets of visual style, and a conversational showdown as important as the physical one that inevitably follows. It follows one night in the life of Los Angeles cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx), who after accepting a multi-stop fare from the slick-looking Vincent (Tom Cruise), has his life turned upside down. Vincent looks and sounds like a businessman looking to close multiple deals in the course of a few hours, but when a dead body lands on the top of his cab at the first stop, it becomes clear to Max that Vincent is a hired killer.
The two verbally poke and prod each other - Max at Vincent's complete detachment from real-life and the emotional abuse and/or neglect he must have surely suffered to lead him on such a dark path; and Vincent at Max's tendency to procrastinate at every aspect of his life. Max frequently flicks down his sun-visor and stairs at a picture of a desert island, waxing lyrical about his grand plan to set up his own limousine company. At the start of the film, Max drives Justice Department prosecutor Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) and the two share a spark. He should ask her for her number but he doesn't. Luckily she takes the initiative and gives it to him anyway. Vincent may be a remorseless psychopath, but at least he grabs life by the balls.
Such an engaging character study and a film so packed with marvellously shot set-pieces should lead to an equally great climax, but like Heat (1995), Mann's other L.A.-based crime noir, the film ends on a weak note. Vincent just may be the worst hit-man in cinema history. He's physically capable of taking down multiple foes with fists and weaponry, but his decision-making is laughable at times, and in the end he is forced into a rather bland chase after his prey through a subway. But for the most part, Collateral is thrilling and fun; at it's best when its two leads are simply sitting in the cab and conversing, wonderfully performed by Foxx and Cruise.
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