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COLLATERAL
by Peter Sobczynski

August 6, 2004

(out of 4 stars)

FILM CREDITS: Written by Stuart Beattie. Directed by Michael Mann. Starring Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Mark Ruffalo, Jada Pinkett Smith, Peter Berg and Bruce McGill

Professionalism. That is the character attribute that has fascinated Michael Mann throughout his career, which has encompassed such films as "Thief", "Manhunter", "The Last of the Mohicans", "Heat", "The Insider" and "Ali" and it is the one that he never tires of exploring. It doesn’t matter what the job is-cop, thief, woodsman, soldier, lawyer, journalist or serial killer-as much how his characters approach what they do. If they perform their tasks, no matter how unsavory they may be, there is sympathy and admiration while sloppy, unprofessional behavior (consider Waingro, the half-cocked psychopath whose hotheadedness kicks off a string of problems for fellow thief Robert DeNiro in "Heat") results in scorn and ridicule. "Collateral" is his latest hymn to professional behavior; it centers on four people who are inordinately skilled at their chosen professions (hit man, cabbie, cop and lawyer) and illustrates how their highly refined abilities end up throwing them together one long, violent L.A. evening.

This point is illustrated right at the top of the film as we see Max (Jamie Foxx), a cabbie with vague dreams of starting his own limo service, meticulously cleaning out his cab for another night of collecting fares. He takes so much pride in his work, in fact, that when Annie Farrell (Jada Pinkett Smith), a federal prosecutor on her way to the office to pull an all-nighter before an important case, gives him specific directions, he advises her of an alternate route that will save her time and money. After dropping her off (and getting her business card in return), another fare, Vincent (Tom Cruise) gets in and makes a proposition. He is in town for a real-estate deal and needs to get five signatures that evening and he offers Max $600 to take him to the five locations and back to LAX. Needing the money, Max agrees and thinks that none of this is strange until Vincent enters a building at his first stop and within a few minutes, a dead body flies out a window and lands right on Max’s cab.

As it turns out, Vincent is really a cold-blooded hit man and his five stops are to pull off a series of murders that he has been contracted to perform. Now an unwilling partner, Max is forced to drive Vincent around to his assignments while trying to figure a way out of his predicament but every attempt to free himself from his nightmare only pulls him in deeper. At the same time, a cop (Mark Ruffalo) begins to connect the trail of bodies together and realizes that they are all connected with a major mob and were supposed to testify at a grand jury hearing the next morning-one headed by Annie, the last name on Vincent’s list.

"Collateral" has one of those catchy, yet fundamentally absurd, premises, that you could imagine being stretched into a pretty good "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" episode (or, as others have pointed out, an adequate Larry Cohen screenplay); what is impressive about the film is how Mann takes the premise (supplied by screenwriter Stuart Beattie) and quietly and efficiently transforms it into a sleek, stylish thriller that is about as good as anything you are likely to see emerge from a major studio this year. Part of this comes just from the sheer visual beauty of the film-working almost entirely at night and shooting for the most part on a series of digital-video cameras, cinematographers Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron have captured the streets of L.A. after dark in a way that makes you look at them as if you had never seen them before. (Mann’s short-lived 2002 TV series "Robbery Homicide Division" also experimented with mixing digital video with conventional film stock but the results here are stunning-this is the first film I can recall that lives up to all of the promises that DV proponents have been making for the last few years.) Not since John Boorman’s "Point Blank" has the City of Angels looked so gorgeously terrifying and I suspect that years from now, when people are compiling lists of the best-looking films, "Collateral" will be assured of a high ranking.

Almost as startling is the way that Mann is able to take what could have been a one-note narrative gimmick and fleshes it out without betraying the purity of the concept. There is not a single moment of narrative fat in the entire film-even the one sequence that seems on the surface to be a pointless digression (a jazz-club interlude) winds up dovetailing back into the main plot so seamlessly that you can’t help but be impressed by the ease with which he has drawn us in. Instead of attempting to figure out ways of getting Vincent and Max out of the cab, he relishes keeping the two of them confined to the car in order to ratchet up the tension. This allows the film to work on two different creative levels. The scenes in the car (which take up roughly a third of the film) allow Mann to indulge in his fascination for scenes in which cool and efficient men discuss their work and ethics, especially when their respective jobs clash with each other. And when they get out of the car, they demonstrate that Mann is arguably the best filmmaker alive today in terms of sustained action set-pieces; an extended nightclub shootout rivals even the centerpiece bank robbery of "Heat" and the final Max-Vincent showdown overcomes its patent unlikeness through its sheer kinetic kick-it may be the best such climax to a crime film since the finale to Brian De Palma’s "Carlito’s Way".

The other thing that elevates "Collateral" is the fact that Mann is the rare director who is equally at home with actors practicing their craft as he is with pyrotechnics and he tends to inspire great performances from everyone he works with. For example, he has correctly recognized that for all of his heroic and notable turns, Tom Cruise tends to be more interesting when portraying scumbags (as he did so memorably in "Magnolia"). His work here as Vincent, the cool killer given to flights of philosophical fancy, is as good as anything he has done before. The real surprise, though, is the performance of Jamie Foxx as Max; although Mann got some interesting work out of him in "Ali", he has spent most of his career appearing in horribly schticky comedies (remember this summer’s "Breaking All the Rules"?). Here, he effortlessly nails the role of Max without ever appearing to be straining to be serious in the way that some comedians do when they attempt to play straight. And even though the film is basically a two-person story, Mann still finds room for brief, memorable turns by such performers as Ruffalo, Bruce McGill and Javier Bardem, the latter actually takes one of the most cliched roles in the book, that of the vicious Latino crime overlord, and manages to find a fresh approach to it.

Although it lacks the overwhelming ambition of something like "Heat", a film which consciously set out to transcend its genre, "Collateral" is still a compulsively watchable movie that takes what could have been a standard-issue thriller and makes it feel thrillingly alive in a way that most major films (especially those released in the summer) simply aren’t. And as a character study of people doing their work, it is absolutely fascinating to behold. As I said before, the typical Mann character is someone who goes about doing their job in the most skillful and impressive way possible; if one of them suddenly decided to take those skills and become a filmmaker, "Collateral" is the kind of film they would probably come up with..

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2004 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.