Collateral (2004)
Directed by Michael Mann
Cab driver Max picks up a man who offers him $600 to drive him around. But the promise of easy money sours when Max realizes his fare is an assassin.
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42 films that influenced Collateral
What critics say influenced Collateral
I may be reading too much into the Vincent-Max relationship, but it has echoes of Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece, “Persona.”
Educated and unforgivably articulate, wearing an exquisitely tailored, miraculously wrinkle-proof gray suit that recalls Cary Grant's in "North by Northwest," Vincent indulges in endless speculation about the cosmic significance of his occupation.Sometimes Vincent sees himself as a rebel against stifling conformity.
And he sets it up with a cat-and-mouse situation in a darkened office, which is very effective; it opens with a touch of " Rear Window " as Max watches what's happening on different floors of an office building.
The tone of the film harkens back to Mr. Mann's 1986 "Manhunter" (in fact Mr. Cruise's salt-and-pepper locks evoke "Manhunter" star William Petersen).
Viewers will be frequently reminded of his previous films from Ali to The Insider , from Heat to Manhunter .
While it's not so ooky as the taut doppelganger relationships in Mann's superb Manhunter or even Heat, it's a connection that inspires consideration.
Michael Mann ("Heat"/"Manhunter"/"Ali") directs an excitingly tense noirish photographed crime thriller that works despite being built around an implausible premise, the hokey coming together of coincidences at every turn to move the plot along, and a trite story.
The meter is running... Michael Mann abandons the fact-based undercurrent of his last 2 films ("The Insider" and "Ali") and returns to the genre that made him a household name with 1981's "Thief" and 1986's "Manhunter."
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.
If the one constant of Mann's cinema is that a man with a certain code is placed into a situation where that code is in crisis - and it seems perfectly easy to me to apply that theme to each and every one of his features, from the TV movie The Jericho Mile through the otherwise uncharacteristic period films The Keep and The Last of the Mohicans , all the way up to Ali 's story of a man who gives up success for his beliefs - we find in Collateral a variation on that theme that gives it added interest, coming so far into his career: in this movie, we have a man with a code who is a bad man, and a man with no particular code being forced, at long last, to develop such a code.
In hindsight, knowing the kind of film that Michael Mann "ought" to make, The Keep seems like an inexplicably bizarre tangent for the future director of Heat and Collateral , wedged into his filmography like a square peg in a round hole to a degree that The Last of the Mohicans dares not even dream about.
While it's preferable to Mann's "The Keep" and "Ali", it's still nothing for 'ol Michael to write home about.
The film is not as ambitious, rich, or resonant as “Heat,” Mann’s best film to date, but it is certainly better than “Ali,” which didn’t have anything new to say about the celeb-prizefighter.
The maker of Heat and Thief--and The Insider and Manhunter and Collateral--is presumably the kind of man whom, in life, I try to keep as far away from me as possible.
Rhyming at least visually with Mann's Heat (the new film, in fact, looks and feels like a minor-key narrative thread edited out of the earlier epic), Collateral comes close to being a half-pint apocalyptic vision of the world's premier post-industrial sprawl as it sleeps unaware of its own rancid dreams.
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.
As with DeNiro and Pacino's characters in Heat, Vincent and Max, despite being on different sides of the law, are similar loners, since both – whether it’s driving a cab or killing for money – “do what needs to be done.”
After his excursions into corporate, political and biographical drama in “The Insider” and “Ali,” Mann returns to the home turf he so voluptuously explored in “Heat.”
If the one constant of Mann's cinema is that a man with a certain code is placed into a situation where that code is in crisis - and it seems perfectly easy to me to apply that theme to each and every one of his features, from the TV movie The Jericho Mile through the otherwise uncharacteristic period films The Keep and The Last of the Mohicans , all the way up to Ali 's story of a man who gives up success for his beliefs - we find in Collateral a variation on that theme that gives it added interest, coming so far into his career: in this movie, we have a man with a code who is a bad man, and a man with no particular code being forced, at long last, to develop such a code.
If the one constant of Mann's cinema is that a man with a certain code is placed into a situation where that code is in crisis - and it seems perfectly easy to me to apply that theme to each and every one of his features, from the TV movie The Jericho Mile through the otherwise uncharacteristic period films The Keep and The Last of the Mohicans , all the way up to Ali 's story of a man who gives up success for his beliefs - we find in Collateral a variation on that theme that gives it added interest, coming so far into his career: in this movie, we have a man with a code who is a bad man, and a man with no particular code being forced, at long last, to develop such a code.
Of the Michael Mann films that I’ve seen—The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Heat (1995), The Insider (1999), and Ali (2001)—Collateral is most similar to Heat, featuring two multi-pronged protagonists who intensely resemble each other, despite being on opposite sides of the law.
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.
Collateral is a sluggish work that tries working you over rather than pleasurably working on you, which was far from the case with Mann's Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans and The Insider.
While not all of his movies have been unequivocal success stories (Ali), most of them, like The Insider and The Last of the Mohicans, have hit their mark.
He directed the first film bland enough to put me to sleep with The Last of the Mohicans.
The maker of Heat and Thief--and The Insider and Manhunter and Collateral--is presumably the kind of man whom, in life, I try to keep as far away from me as possible.
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.
Mann captured the essence of Chicago in Thief, and Miami was more a developed character than Crocket and Tubbs ever were on his television hit, Miami Vice.
Even so, Mann--who's also made "Thief" and TV's "Miami Vice"--is definitely one of the premier crime moviemakers around, a worthy noir heir and a hell of a guy with a chase or a gunfight.
This business of his taking fairly ordinary writing and turning it into something worth watching doesn't just extend to his crime dramas--"Thief," "Manhuner," "Heat," "Collateral," "Public Enemies"--but to his other dramatic films as well--"The Insider," "Ali."
Like most of Mann's better films (the monosyllabic "Heat" and "Thief" spring to mind), "Collateral" is essentially a character study set amid a smoky, neon-lit Los Angeles, a wet and hurried urban landscape abuzz with dreamers, diehards, and desperate living (think "Taxi Driver" with Travis Bickle in the back--instead of the front--seat of a cab).
Unlike Frank Capra's Oscar-winning 1934 delight "It Happened One Night," which took place over the course of several nights, "Collateral's" action really does happen one night, its central characters teetering precariously on the high-tension wire that passes for life in L.A. (At least in a Michael Mann movie.)
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Los Angeles is a, if not the, main character here, as alive and seething as Martin Scorsese's New York of After Hours and Taxi Driver , Philip Kaufman's San Francisco of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Nicolas Roeg's Venice of Don't Look Now.
Los Angeles is a, if not the, main character here, as alive and seething as Martin Scorsese's New York of After Hours and Taxi Driver , Philip Kaufman's San Francisco of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Nicolas Roeg's Venice of Don't Look Now.
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.
One of my favorite scenes in Paul Schrader's script of Taxi Driver (1976) is when Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle seeks out a philosophical cabbie called the Wizard (Peter Boyle) to try to come to terms with his freaky spiritual dislocation.
In "Collateral," Jamie Foxx plays Max Durocher, a Los Angeles taxi driver (and, before there are any further comparisons to Scorsese films, let it be said that Max is far more easy-going and friendly than the infamous Travis Bickle of "Taxi Driver") who fantasizes about owning a first-class limo company he would call Island Limos.
Like Martin Scorsese's under appreciated 1985 comedy "After Hours", Michael Mann's "Collateral" feels like the work of a skilled director taking a break to enjoy himself.
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Cruise is used to maximum effect here, nicely cast against type (a la Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West ), but he lacks Fonda’s gravitas.
Mark Ruffalo ("13 Going On 30" and "You Can Count On Me"), Peter Berg ("Cop Land" and the TV series "Chicago Hope"), and Javier Bardem (Academy Award nominee for "Before Night Falls") all have supporting roles, and their combined talents add a great deal of depth to the mix.