Collateral

Collateral– 2004

**** Out of ****

Michael Mann has had an extremely impressive career directing gritty crime dramas, from The Insider to his epic classic Heat, but Collateral out-trumps all of his previous efforts based on sheer creative vision and impact. Boasting superb performances all round, Collateral is powerful and crackles with realistic writing and most importantly perfectly implored narrative, which although concise, is rivetingly paced and erupting with raw energy and passion. Although consistently stellar, some of Mann’s latter works could have seen the steady hand of an editor. With movies like Heat, that run at nearly three hours in length while by no means unexciting, such features boast stretches of downtime from the energy for character development and purposes of forwarding the plot which, don’t get me wrong, too many films suffer from not enough of the former, but this could simply could be accomplished in less screen time.

Collateral on the other hand, manages to uncover a surprising amount about its characters despite its 110 minute running time. In fact, the characters are fuller and boast more depth in their respective rolls than any of Mann’s previous efforts, and certainly that of the average film. To categorize this movie further, I would go so far as to say that Collateral has the best character development for its running length and amount of action then any movie made before in history. Cast against the grain is Tom Cruise as Vincent, a hit man visiting Los Angeles for a busy night of work and Jamie Foxx as Max, a cabby who gets caught up in the night of violence that Vincent unleashes. On the trail of the carnage is Mark Ruffalo as Detective Fanning who is attempting to uncover if it is the cabby or a mystery passenger that is leaving this bloody trail across the city. We get nice supporting work from Jada Pinkett Smith as a prosecutor and Javier Bardem as Felix, a drug lord.

Cruise’s Vincent bursts with professionalism and animalistic brutality, and ranks amongst his best work to date. Jamie Foxx has come a long way from Booty Call, as the cabbie who hates his job and has future ambitions, but gets dragged along for the ride. As Max drives Vincent across L.A., they start to develop a strange bond, which seems foreign to these characters and to the audience, for it is clear the Vincent plans to execute Max at the end of the night and it is this odd bond that makes the film so intriguing to behold. The dialogue veers between banter, in-depth psychological discussions and astonishingly realistic anecdotes that are shared amongst Vincent, Max and the range of characters they encounter over the night. At times the delivery, timing and circumstances of the dialogue is so accurate and rings so true you can only shake your head. It is so terrific at times I honestly can not convey it in writing; you’ll have to hear it yourself.

Mann is known for bringing brutal violence and loud piercing sound to the film’s gunshots and Collateral is no exception. The technical aspects are all top-notch, and continue to showcase Mann’s obvious technical gift for filming. The deserted city of Los Angeles is a character of its own; Mann’s sweeping and steady shots of the city as the cab weaves around its streets is mesmerizing and beautiful, and suits the philosophical tone of the film perfectly. Taking place over the evening and night of January 24^th, Mann gives us numerous windows to view the exact time of day, which is interesting of course, but gives the film further depth and realistic credit. A fascinating aspect is Mann’s integration of small snafu’s that occurred during filming. At one scene as Max speeds away from a club, his cab clips some parked cars along the side of the road. This was completely unintentional, and Cruse was actually sitting in the back seat at the time. At another scene, when Vincent is giving chase to his next marks, he throws a desk chair through the glass wall of a cubicle in an office. As he vaulted through the now shattered window he half lands on the chair he had just tossed through and tumbles to the ground. These two examples not only perfectly, and I mean perfectly add to the spirit of the scene, but could not have been written in by the most clever director. They add an inexplicable amount of credit and validity to the delivery of the story, and I absolutely adore the decision to include them.

With so many clichéd crime stories being executed in recent years it is more then a breath of fresh air to see Collateral, which is not only a movie created against the grain of its genre, but is as good a movie as Michael Mann has ever made, and boasts as good as performance as its stars have given before. Collateral is a thrilling and original adventure that will hold its own against all movie that confront it in the future.