Unusually good. Review on Collateral Movie

Michael Mann has made some memorable movies in the past which include 'The Last of the Mohicans', the vastly underrated 'Heat', the powerful 'The Insider' and more recent Ali biopic 'Ali'

Unfortunately, he has still not been bestowed an Oscar for his own brand of filmmaking. I would put him in the category of directors like David Mamet, directors who like artists, have their own distinctive style and which avid watchers of cinema will have no trouble in identifying.

'Collateral' is the mixing of two movie genres : the buddy movie and the thriller. It has in principle only two characters.

The Los Angeles cab driver Max(Jamie Foxx) who dreams someday of having his own limo company and the contract killer Vincent(Tom Cruise)

All the other characters are simply there to fill in the gaps.

The movie begins with Max driving Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) an asst Dist Attornet downtown. They strike up a conversation which ends with Max getting Annie's card.

As he drops her off, in gets Vincent. He tells Max that he is town for a real estate deal and needs to make 5 stops before taking the early morning flight out of LA airport and offers him 600 $'s

for the whole night.

Very soon, as the first of Vincent's 5 targets lands on his cab roof, he realises that he is not estate agent but a killer and there is no escape for him as he has to drive him from one target to another.

Soon, the FBI and LAPD latch on which leads to a thrilling shootout in a night club.

Turns out that Vincent is bumping off people related to a drug case which begins the next day. And I will give you three guesses as to who victim number 5 is.

The plot is tight and the dialogues are so tongue in cheek that if Vincent was not bumping off people in between I would have thought that this was a action-comedy.

The photography is typical Mann, aerial street shots and the gleam of LA by night.

The acting is the best part of the movie. In a gray suit, with gray hair and steel gray eyes, Tom Cruise as Vincent is cold, calculating and scary.

Watch the scene where he discusses jazz with one of his targets before blowing his brains out.

His response to

Max: You just met him once and you killed him like that?

is

Vincent: What? I should only kill people after I get to know them?

Jamie Foxx is excellent as the woebegone Max and is the perfect foil for Cruise's Vincent.

All in all a great movie. It could have been a bit more gripping but actually exceeded my expectations.