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 ome actors have made cottage careers out of
playing homicidal maniacs or calculating killers. Tom Cruise ("The
Last Samurai") is not one of them. In
"Collateral", the silver-haired Cruise plays, for the first time
in my memory, a completely unsympathetic character. Fortunately for
the movie, we can't wait to see what he'll do next.
Admittedly, the plot summary for
"Collateral" borders on the absurd. (A hitman hijacks a cab
driver into driving him to five killings over the course of one night.)
Director/producer Michael Mann ("Heat"
and "The
Insider") sidesteps what could have easily been an implausible
movie by paying attention to the characters and casting actors that keep
up with his vision.
Cruise plays Vincent, a killer-for-hire who practices
his trade with a detachment normally reserved for window washers. At
one point Vincent actually has several drinks and a nostalgic conversation
with one of his victims prior to finishing the job. Max is a cab driver
played by Jamie Foxx ("Ali"),
an actor best known for his comedy. The movie opens with Max
undertaking yet another monotonous night behind the wheel. If you've
seen the trailers you're not surprised when Vincent hops into Max's cab
and subsequently requests to hire the car and its driver to make five
stops. Max reluctantly agrees in order to make some extra cash,
unaware that Vincent intends to kill someone at each stop.
All of Vincent's potential victims are key witness in
a Federal criminal case set to begin the next day. Evidently, time is
of the essence and all witnesses need to be extinguished by morning. Needless
to say Vincent's plan is revealed when one of his victims swan dives from
the fourth floor of a building directly onto Max's cab while Max is
sitting in it.
What makes the movie work is not the originality of
the script but the development of complex characters both separately and
together by Cruise and Fox. Fox ignores just enough of his natural
comedic instinct to hit the right notes as Max. His role is perhaps
more important than Cruise's because Max is the character that the
audience must identify with (unless the theater is full of trained
assassins) in order for the film to feel plausible. Fox paints a
convincing picture of a man stretched to the brink more than once and then
back again. By the end of the picture you feel emotionally exhausted
for him.
Conversely, Cruise takes a welcome departure from the
heroic protagonists that have come to, somewhat unfairly, define his
career. The boyish charm that Mr. Cruise leaned so heavily upon early
in his career is almost completely absent from the film except when he
needs it -- and you'll know when that is.
The movie pauses several times to explore the
detached relationship that forms between Vincent and Max. A lesser
movie would have breezed by these scenes with nonsensical anecdotes and
inane one-liners meant to fill time until the next action sequence. Mann
turns the other direction and gives these two very different actors the
freedom and direction to explore the two men rather then falling back on
stereotypical action/thriller
characterizations.
At times, some of the material in the screenplay is
mildly annoying, and there are a few conversations where Vincent strains
to rationalize his chosen profession. Additionally, Vincent may be
the most reckless contract killer ever portrayed in film. Call me
crazy, but it seems that the typical professional gunman would find more
discreet methods of disposal then offing his victims from across a
restaurant table or in a crowded nightclub.
On the balance, however, Michael Mann has delivered
his third film in a row that genuinely explores a relationship between two
men under extreme duress. In "Heat" it was Al Pacino and
Robert De Niro and in "The Insider" it was Pacino again with
Russell Crowe. While "Collateral" falls slightly short of
those two films it is by no means a step back for Mr. Mann, and stands on
its own to command the respect it deserves.
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