Collateral

Collateral is great.

Interesting that people have complained that it suffers from genre trappings, when I think Mann did everything he could to avoid that. Only thing that has a slight ring of cliche is the whole "Save the Girl" element. But that's the story and there's no real way around that. I have a feeling that Stuart Beattie's original script was more "commercial" and "action-packed." Think about it... the movie climaxes on a train. It was probably more like Speed in a taxi until Mann had Frank Darabont polish it.

What's left is a remarkably tight thriller with two great characters at its core. This and Magnolia are Tom Cruise's best performances. Funny that he seems to be at his best when playing douchebags.

I think the relationship Vincent and Max forge is very interesting. By the end, you get the feeling that Vincent genuinely likes Max and would probably spare him, had he not gotten so directly involved. The film's final moments actually have a moving eloquence because of this.

It's been a while since I've seen this (loaned a friend the DVD about 5 years ago, still waiting to get it back), so I may be wrong here. When Max goes into the club impersonating Vincent, the cops believe that the guy they're looking for looks like Foxx and not Cruise.

Not to mention the fact that the mob guys believe that he's 'Vincent', and even threaten to kill him if he doesn't finish the job, which would be killing off Jada. He may have survived the battle with Cruise, but he's got quite a few people out looking for him by the time the credits roll.

Or maybe I missed something explaining this. Like I said, it's been a while. Damn good flick, though. I'll have to get it back...

Collateral is great until Max crashes his taxi. The film goes from being a great thriller to a typical boring action film. I'm especially annoyed at the way Max shoots Vincent. AlthoughVincent ending up alone on the train does save the ending.

This is my favorite Tom Cruise performance. I saw Vanilla Sky a couple of days ago and even when playing a character whose face, arm and leg are crippled, he couldn't help being Tom Cruise instead of a character. He's very restrained and subtle as Vincent. Plus, he looks great with the gray hair and stubble.

Because of this film, I keep hoping Jason Statham will someday star as the ultimate bad-ass in a Michael Mann film.

The scene with the Coyotes crossing the road in the dead of night is one of my all time favourite moments in cinema.
This film is greatness.

Other than the aforementioned lackluster final act, my main problem with Collateral is that it feels too rigid; too considered. The movie says life is jazz, but feels nothing like it.

I call this film "cinema hypnosis". It just sucks you right in.

Has one of my all time favorite character deaths in cinema. Vincent just sitting down after being shot and saying "A guy gets on a train. Dies." gets me every time. One of my favorite Tom Cruise performances (and I fucking love Tom Cruise)

Wonderfully shot, too. Whoever decided to go digital should be commended, as video always makes the streetlights a little...warmer, orange, almost hellish in a way that normal film doesn't compute as well.

I don't necessarily agree that it falls within the trappings of the genre, at least not in the way the final confrontation is set up and pulled off. Within the context of the interplay between the characters, there's really no other way it can go. The Ruffalo character needs to be removed because he's Max's only lifeline, and confronting Vincent is the only way for Max to progress as a character in a meaningful way. And what I love about Annie being the final intended victim is how it flies in the face of everything Vincent's spent the entire movie espousing about improvisation and living for the moment. It's like the subtextual middle finger to go with Max's literal bullets. I'm willing to buy whatever the strain on credibility may be when it services the story in a very specific way by playing into the contrasting tenets of inevitability (which is further evoked by the way Vincent dies in exactly the way he'd described earlier in the film).

The last fifteen minutes offers some of the absolute best scoring Howard's ever done for anything.

Wiki says Darabont took a pass at this. Didn't know that.

Now that I can agree with.

I don't know, I had a hard time with this one. I love Mann to the point where I think Miami Vice was awesome, but this one just didn't click for me. Vincent was just too stupid to be a good killer. He made one dumb decision after another and rather than come off as cool, collected and menacing, Cruise portrays him as a rabid dog, which makes him feel rash, impulsive and ultimately not very menacing. I'm not one of these people who hates Tom Cruise in everything, but I was never once concerned about any main character at any point in this film. So he kills Nikki Katt, a character we barely even know. That's the way the movie is communicating that "anything goes?" Please.

I liked Jamie Foxx in it. But the whole "point" of the thing (which I guess is something along the lines of "do something with your life before death gets in the back seat of your car") is forced and heavy handed. I don't even really like the way it looks, aside from a few early shots. I hate that gimmicky opening shot with Jason Stratham (and that's got Cruise's fingerprints all over it) .

Agreed. The movie is full of shit.

I can understand some grips with the characters and where the story ends up going, but the incredible visual texture and style of it trumps that for me.

A good movie. Compared with Manhunter, Heat and (especially) The Insider, it just doesn't hold up.

The third act does hurt. I don't mind Pinkett-Smith's character being the center of it all; I just didn't like the transition into an action film. Overall, I guess the third act works, but it works much less than the first two. Good ending, though.

Way better than the high-concept garbage it should be, thanks to Mann, Cruise, Fox, and Ruffalo, in that order.

I disagree, at least in the way I think you mean it. I think the movie is more about rectifying two contrasting halves of the same whole; on the one hand you have Vincent's mercenary, live-in-the-moment mentality, and playing against that you have Max's overly measured, nutshell existence. The narrative bounces between the two until ultimately neither one is right. Max isn't seen as a failure because he's a cabbie who's planning to own a limo company and doesn't; it's only because he won't put his plan into action. Vincent is aces at what he does, and yet he's done in because he doesn't have a plan to deal with a wildcard in Max.

What's interesting is that Max and Vincent aren't even absolutes in the sense that they strictly represent one philosophy versus the other. Take, for instance, Max's shape-shifting in his conversation with Felix. Or, on the other hand, the way Vincent, even though spontaneity seems to be his mantra, cannot deviate from his assignment.

The conversation in the jazz club is a wonderful playground for these ideas. Again the idea of jazz as "improvisation" is brought up, but key to the scene is the discussion of Miles Davis. He'd told Daniel back in the day that he was good, but he wasn't ready, meaning he was not yet skilled enough. And then comes the question, Daniel's so-called exit door, about where Davis learned music. The subtext I think is about the difference between improvisation and chance. You can't pick up a trumpet and improvise. You can only improvise once you've acquired great skill, once you've planned and practiced and planned and practiced some more. Vincent embodies this from the outside in, while Max does from the inside out. So yeah, I guess the movie's saying life is jazz. But it doesn't mean so in a random, unstructured way.

I don't think the movie's perfect, but I'm having a hard time buying the idea that its third act is a devolution or is needlessly reductive. It's just playing all of the film's ideas out in a literal setting (particularly the Vincent-as-wolf metaphor). And goddamn it's shot like a motherfucker.

I don't know anything about Jazz, but, for the purposes of tying it into Collateral, I'd say one of its hallmarks is improvisation built around a structure, theme, or idea. Which is not to say that the film must have an improvisational feel simply because it uses Jazz as a metaphor for life. Just that it's funny, considering how much of it feels composed specifically to service its own big ideas, that I never saw it as anything more than a musical exercise, if you will.

I think that's fair enough. I definitely took a more generalized (if not necessarily correct) view of your post and went from there. I happen to disagree, but in the end that's more a matter of taste.

Not much to add but in terms of acting, Foxx is fantastic. The Max who walks out of the train at the end is not the same Max who gets into the cab at the start of the film.

One of the (if not THE) best night club shoot outs ever

Why? What's so great about it?

That slow pan up over those 3 Korean hootchies grinding before Vincent enters the frame helps a lot.

This is the one reason why a friend of mine hates this movie. He says this imagery is very heavy-handed, but then couldn't describe exactly what it's supposed to mean in relation to the film as a whole.

I fucking love Collateral.

Sure as hell doesn't hurt. One of those girls haunted my dreams for at least several weeks before being replaced by another broad.

It's no coincidence that Mann kicks off the third act with the taxi crashing. For all the shit BATMAN BEGINS (deservedly) gets for its third act, I'm not sure how this one has managed to retain avoid massive backlash.

Because it was well done. The third act received the most criticism which was levelled at the film, but it's still well shot and the film finishes strongly.

A Korean version of Paul Oakenfold's 'Ready Steady Go', for one thing.

Also: hoochies.

Although after having watched that Fever shootout again recently, there is a weird 5 or 6 second lull before the camera cuts right after D-day gets shot that still sticks out.

Matt, I know (though not that well) quite a few K-town club-hoppers that showed up as extras for that scene, but haven't had a chance to confirm it was one of them in that shot. The ass looks familiar, though. Then again, Alllooksame.

Throw me into the disappointed in the third act action tack-on. Cool ending, but yeah. Just the genre trappings onto a story I really didn't think needed to end with a chase and silly low battery cell phone situations. Tired, but still well done since I was obviously thrilled by the chase. I was conflicted.

Nice guys. Cover the screen with enough pussy and you'll lap it right up. The scene still sucks.

Word. But seriously, that shot where Vincent parts their grinding asses and walks straight toward the camera, I love that.

"Like Mooooses, parting the Red Sea!" (nods)

I think I actually found the Fever sequence to be kinda underwhelming. Seeing Vince in action was cool though.

For those who didn't like the third act: How would you have done it?

All this complaining about the third act really annoys me. It's a genre film at the end of the day - a thriller. And, as such, must concede to certain conventions. I like how Mann is aware of this, yet still makes it as interesting as possible, managing to top it off with a genuinely pensive and moving moment.

If you'd had Foxx and Cruise duking it out on the roof of the train, with Cruise being decapitated or thrown to his death, I could understand the complaints and join right in... But this is a thriller based on conflict. Three main characters are introduced at the beginning of the story and it follows that they must be there at the end.

The climax is a necessary component of the story and it is still done in the same tone and tenor as the rest of the film.

Where is the problem?

Michael Mann is a director who is talented enough to go against "conventions".

What I don't like about the third act:

Vincent is presented as an OCD professional killer who his extremely efficient. I have a problem with such a character not putting his seatbelt on, especially when Max starts accelerating.

Vincent is also shown to be a superb shooter so it doesn't really work at the end when he keeps missing Max while he, having never shot a gun before, gets the hit.

The third act is from a typical average thriller. It's bad because the first two-thirds weren't.

The climax on the train is the point of the movie.

It's not tense for reasons stated above. If Cruise was a better written character or in the least was performed with more integrity as a thoughtful killer, it might have been tense. As is, it's ridiculous. If this is how this so called professional killer is behaving he should have been killed or sent to county long before he got the chance to silver chrome his hair.

Are you talking about the final shootout on the train? Because if you are, you've missed the whole point of the scene and why it's so perfect. Vincent loses because he's a victim of his training. He fails to adapt. His training is to double-tap to the body, then put a round in the head (this is a typical method in gun-fighting, and you see him use it when, for example, he takes out the thug trying to rob Max in the cab). On the train this means shooting first at the doors, which he does. Max, on the other hand, improvises by shooting first through the window, and his shot gets through and hits its target. Like Rath says, this is the point of the movie.

I would expand that out to encompass the entire confrontation, but yeah. I'm sorry, but anyone who's looking at it and sees only "standard action movie ending" is seeing it in strictly literal terms. Like it or don't like it, but at least realize there's more going on than just the action beats.

There's more to it than that. Max gets to Vincent. He weakens him... By the end of the movie, his cool exterior has kind of been broken away. And, in underestimating Max, Vincent makes the fatal mistake that results in his undoing.

You have to realize that by the end of the movie Vincent has been in a car crash and shot in the face. He is far from firing on all cylinders. And, much like in Heat, a part of Vincent doesn't actually want to kill Max. That's why he falters and ultimately fails. He doesn't have a goal anymore.

But Max is determined to save the girl, even at the cost of taking Vincent's life.

The ending is actually pretty good because of all this. And it is by no means a conventional action movie ending. A conventional action movie ending would have been more about spectacle and catharsis. There is nothing particularly triumphant about the ending to this film. It ends the only way it can end.

It reminded me of the great French thrillers of the 70s and 80s.

Than as Parker said, it's a wonder that Vincent got to live so long. Because he doesn't improvise (wich he does BTW, when he sends Max in the nigthclub to impersonate him), he shoots through a door instead of a window. Mann should be better than this.

Yes, but Parker loves The Fifth Element.

"See guys...he's dead...and on the fucking train! AND NOBODY EVEN REALIZES HE'S DEAD! JUST like the dialogue from earlier in the film! And the train keeps going around and around in circles! Don't you GET IT?"

Yeah, I'll admit there is more going on. How can you miss it? It's like a hammer to the cranium.

I also love apples and oranges. And bringing up personal taste is an example of the weakest argument possible. I'm surprised in you L to the D.

Man, have you even read the whole thread? He does improvise, throughout the movie. But he's also, despite his pontifications, just as mired in a plan as Max. And conversely, Max, despite clinging to the comfort of a plan he can't initiate, is quite adept at thinking on his feet if necessary. The train scene is a microcosm and crystalization of the thematic struggle that's been taking place the entire film.

And I ask again: What would be "better"?

What is with the Statham cameo?

Did he have a larger role that was cut?

Cruise was a big fan Lock Stock/Snatch fan. I think he wanted to look cool, which is why I'm convinced it was his idea. It's stupid and yanks you out of the movie before it even begins.

Damn, Parker. You really have a bee in your bonnet with this movie!

Banks knocked it outta the park with his defense. Totally agree.

It's not really even the movie, but the tremendous amount of praise it receives that bothers me more (including the reviews when it came out suggesting it was the best crime drama in decades). I respect people's opinions, but lets have a discussion about it as opposed to "Collateral is cool!" over and over again.

I will say one nice thing about it: it led to one of my favorite CHUD bylines ever. When Cruise accepted the role of Vincent, Devin (I think) wrote, "Death Cab for Cruise-y." That still makes me laugh.

The opening to this movie also functions as the opening to Crank. That's what's with the Statham cameo.

The bulk of the thread has been more "discussion" and less "Collateral is cool!" which, I agree, is irritating.