Collateral

by Bill Henry on Aug.06, 2004, under Bill Henry's Movie Reviews

Bill’s Review

Credit the interest of Tom Cruise that a script by Stuart Beattie that has been kicking around for years entitled Collateral has finally made it to the big screen. Maybe Mr. Beattieâ€™s participation with a somewhat well-known movie called Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl helped, but not as much as Tom Cruise giving it a thumbs up. Credit the direction of Michael Mann and the performances by Cruise and Jamie Foxx for taking a simple script and making the movie as good as it is. The story is fairly typical of the â€œhigh conceptâ€ school of screenwriting (a story that can be summed up in a single sentenceâ€”preferably in a pitch meeting to movie executives).
One of the old definitions of collateral was something held in trust to guarantee compliance. Thanks to the Newspeak bureau at our Department of Defense, modern listeners most often hear the word collateral linked to the word damage to refer to the people we killed by mistake while we were busy killing the people that we really wanted dead. Making liberal use of both definitions, this Collateral is a deftly enjoyable genre picture that goes beyond its ordinary script and is even able to overcome an attack of the â€œstupidsâ€ in the final reel.
For Los Angeles cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx), the night has started off promisingly by helping out a pretty lawyer (Jada Pinkett Smith) with his superior knowledge of L.A. geography and traffic patterns. And he barely has time to log in her ride when attractive, personable, and well-dressed Vince (Cruise) climbs aboard with an offer to keep him busy throughout his shift with several stops and a bonus for a swift completion of his appointed rounds (admittedly, wrong public service, but I am unaware of the cabbyâ€™s code). Unfortunately, while waiting for Vince outside an apartment building, a potential fare drops in smashing his neck and Maxâ€™s windshield. Worse, it turns out Vince knows the guy and insists that they give the new friend a ride, albeit in the trunk.
Well Max may be only one of the few native-born, English-speaking cab drivers in Los Angeles county, but he thinks something just might be wrong and Vince informs him that while their night filled with stops may entail Vince killing somebody at each destination, at least he was serious about the bonus. Now Max has no choice, but to play accessory with a hack license or else Vince is going to see just how much room there is in the trunk. Meanwhile, coppers Mark Ruffalo and Peter Berg are trying to see the pattern in the crime spree and wondering why each crime scene is connected with a federal agent (Bruce McGill).
Although Mr. Mann has done the cops and robbers stuff much better in Heat, Thief, and Manhunter, he gets more mileage out of less script by concentrating on turning the movie into an anti-buddy picture. The scenes between Foxx and Cruise are the movieâ€™s finest asset and as he proved in Magnolia, Mr. Cruise shows himself a better actor as a sociopath than he has ever been allowed while acting the heroâ€”maybe it is the infectious grin. Foxxâ€™s abilities are no surprise to anyone who saw him in supporting roles in Any Given Sunday or Ali (also for Mann).
Michael Mann has produced a better movie in just about any feature he has ever done, but that is more a credit to the uniformly superb nature of his filmography than the deficiencies of Collateral. Early on, the camerawork is a bit claustrophobic with too many tight-in shots of faces, but once things get rolling Mannâ€™s framing opens up a bit as well. That the Mann touch manages to enhance this story to such a degree is more a compliment than many of his other films. Getting a good movie out of a novel by Thomas Harris or the true stories of Muhammad Ali or the tobacco lobby and 60 Minutes is childâ€™s play compared to keeping Collateral going for two hours. The script still betrays its New York City original setting that makes for an especially weak subway ride final reel confrontation. Hey guys, you are in Los Angeles and your hero is a cab driverâ€”take to the road.
Still even with its tarnish, one wishes that every summer entertainment were as fully realized and well made as Collateral–or even every Tom Cruise vehicle.