In 2004’s Collateral, Jamie Foxx stars as Max, a taxicab driver who is hoping, in those days before Uber, to start his own limousine company. When we first see him, he’s giving a ride to a federal prosecutor named Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) and he’s even getting her phone number after he drops her off at work. Unfortunately, for Max, his next passenger is a bit less friendly.
Vincent (Tom Cruise), with his gray hair that matches his suit, is polite, quiet, and direct when he speaks. He carries a briefcase with him everywhere that he goes and anyone who tries to take the briefcase soon discovers just how far Vincent will go to hold onto it. Vincent pays Max $600 to drive him around Los Angeles for the night. Vincent has a lot of business that he needs to attend to. Max agrees, not realizing until it’s too late that Vincent is a hired assassin and that his business is killing people. Vincent has been hired to wipe out a collection of crooks and lawyers and, though Vincent is careful not to reveal his emotions, it’s obvious that he’s looking forward to the challenge.
To his credit, Max doesn’t really have any interest in being a part of Max’s killing spree but he soon finds himself unable to escape from Vincent and being forced to drive from location to location. Along the way, Vincent and Max engage in debates of both morality and philosophy. Vincent sees death as just being a part of the job. Max is horrified, especially when people who haven’t done anything wrong end up as collateral damage in Vincent’s killing spree. The truth of the matter is that, even if Max hadn’t picked up Vincent, there’s no guarantee that he wouldn’t have picked up some other madman. As a taxi driver, Max surrenders his control once he unlocks the door and allows someone to get in the backseat. Sometimes, he gets a passenger like Annie. Other times, he’s going to get a passenger like Vincent. Somewhat improbably, Vincent and Annie turns out to be connected and Max’s chance encounter with her becomes even more important.
Because this is a Michael Mann film, Los Angeles is as much a character in this film as Max and Vincent. Mann captures the shadowy darkness of the city at the night and the feeling that both opportunity and danger could lurk around every corner. Claustrophobic scenes in the taxi cab are mixed with scenes in an equally claustrophobic (though for different reasons) club. The film’s haunting final image takes place not in the cab but instead on a train. Everyone is heading somewhere and, at some point during the film, both Vincent and Max deal with the feeling of having no control over where they’ll end up.
When Collateral first came out in 2004, I remember that a lot of people were shocked to see Cruise playing a villain. Cruise does give one of his best performances here, playing yet another one of Mann’s cool and efficient professionals. Strangely enough, Jamie Foxx is the one who was nominated for an Oscar, even though he’s actually a little on the boring side as Max. (In all fairness, Max is meant to be the conventional member of the film’s involuntary partnership.) The film is dominated by Cruise and his performance is still powerful to this day.
Through the Shattered Lens 