“I'm now getting back to the authentic, to the nitty-gritty.”
-- Stephan Jenkins
-- Stephan Jenkins
Cruise as Vincent Collateral is a movie that could've succeeded as a play, it's so focused in scope, being primarily concerned with Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise playing off each other, which they do incredibly well. Director Michael Mann caught both his stars at their apex, and got incredible performances out of each. Cruise is clearly relishing playing against type, as a vicious, ex-military hitman, but still well enough within his wheelhouse to shine. Foxx also did Ray in 2004, meaning he took home Best Actor (incorrectly, but he was still very good) and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his work in this movie, both in the same year. Quite a stretch to follow up with Stealth and make us think it was an aberration. Regardless, 2004 was definitely the year Foxx definitively made the leap from television actor to film actor, and it was on the strength of those two movies. For some reason though, Ray is still remembered fondly while Collateral is largely forgotten.
**WARNING: MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD**
**WARNING: MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD**
Foxx as Max I realize this will be an unpopular opinion, but even though Heat is regarded as Mann's better movie, Collateral is more impressive, even though it is arguably an easier task to direct these two stars. Where Heat focuses on an ensemble and has plenty of storylines going, Collateral scales it down to just having the illusion of multiple storylines that are all revealed to be part of the same one. Along the way, the minimal cast gives us much more time to get attached to these stars, so where Heat relied on Pacino and De Niro to bring audience compassion with them as actors, Collateral can bond us to the players through the story. And what a story it is. To start, we're introduced to Max, a cab driver with dreams of being much more. We learn what he's all about through the short time with his fare Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith), a prosecutor prepping for a big case. Max's sense of humor and plans for his future win her over and she gives him his business card after exiting his cab. If only that had been the end of his night. His next fare is Vincent, a wolf in sheep's clothing trying to pass himself off as a business man, but whether it's through Cruise's inability to play a shlub, or direction from Michael Mann, we never buy it.
Smith as Annie At his first stop to "collect a signature" Vincent offers Max a sizeable amount to just be his personal driver for the night. As Max doesn't realize Vincent's true intent yet, he accepts and by the time he'd like out of the deal, he knows too much. From there we get Vincent cutting a bloody swatch through L.A. while Max tries to stop him in various ways with a range of ineffectiveness. Along the way, we also meet Mark Ruffalo as Fanning, a delightfully sleazy-looking cop who is surprisingly straight-arrow. As law enforcement tries to wrap their head around the increasing number of bodies left in Vincent's wake, Fanning thinks there's more to it than the prevailing notion of Max being the hitman (the idea being that a hitman found a cabbie who looked like him, killed him, and is just using the cab for the night). Annie is also reintroduced, but this always feels like a duel between Max and Vincent, much like Heat did between Pacino and De Niro; this movie just makes the wise decision to trim all the fat away from that central conflict. Mann's direction is typically gritty, and keeps the mood surprisingly tense as each new stop on Vincent's tour provides a new way to explore the relationship between the two stars. Just like Heat, you find yourself rooting for both, but given that movie's ending, the way Collateral wraps it up won't surprise many viewers.
Ruffalo as Fanning Still, viewed in a vacuum, it's an incredible movie, and given that its screenwriter didn't work on Heat, the movie can hardly be blamed for similarities. It seems an easy decision now, but Mann deserves credit for casting Foxx in the dramatic lead role, as he'd largely done comedic TV series up to that point. His real stroke of genius, however, was in casting Cruise as a hitman. Even when Cruise had played a semi-villain before in Interview with the Vampire, it had been with a sort of playfulness that is completely absent in Vincent. Realizing that his antagonist was nothing if not an alpha male, though, Mann wisely believed Cruise could portray the role. Cruise has toyed with altering his look before, dyeing his hair to play Lestat, or using makeup to simulate horrific scarring in Vanilla Sky, but his salt and pepper hair in Collateral is one of the few times Cruise has allowed his character to show age, which demonstrates how completely he bought into this project. It also marks one of the few times Cruise has deigned to play a character who could only generously be described as "co-main". Collateral is worth the watch to see the sort of project Cruise compromises for, if nothing else.
A gripping thriller with great performances, but is slightly derivative of Mann's previous work
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