Collateral **** (2004, Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Irma P Hall) – Classic Movie Review 529

Director Michael (Heat, Ali, Manhunter) Mann’s very, very good 2004 existential crime thriller tantalisingly conjures up memories of European film noir art movies, especially those of Jean-Pierre Melville. It boasts a fine screenplay by Stuart Beattie with a startling setup and unforgettable characters, superb performances, some brilliant, hypnotic sequences, a marvellously achieved L.A. atmosphere and tension you could cut with a buzzsaw.

If greatness stubbornly just evades Collateral, it has its totally conventional, race-against-time, save-the-girl ending to thank for that. It’s a tacked-on sort of thing involving the kind of decision you can just hear studio executives desperately pitching: ‘Not enough’s happening – where’s the action? – where’s the woman?’

A surprisingly grey-haired Tom Cruise bursts into awesome action as an apparently unstoppable hitman who hails a nice L.A. cabbie (Jamie Foxx) and forces him to drive him on a long night of killing. Mann’s thriller is mean, moody and mesmerising, with the Neon-lit streets of L.A. as much a star as Cruise and Foxx, though both of them are word and deed perfect.

Perhaps the best thing of the entire movie is the way they relish their hard-boiled dialogue when they’re chewing the cud as they’re motoring along by night. The brief scenes involving loveless attorney Jada Pinkett Smith and Irma P Hall as Foxx’s hospitalised mom are enjoyable if not quite in the same class.

A couple of the bursts of violence, particularly the killings in the nightclub are dazzling, and if the movie isn’t quite great then it is effortlessly stylish and exciting, with dazzling filming on LA’s mean streets, much of it shot on digital video.

At the time it was Cruise’s best film for ages.

There are no credits at the start of the movie, not even the film’s name.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 529

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