Movie Review:

Collateral

    Tom Cruise has won three Golden Globes, but the Oscar glory that has been visited upon nearly all of Hollywood's other biggest stars has thus far eluded him in three attempts.  Critics charge that he pretty much always just plays himself, or at least always plays the same smirking character, and it's that belief - or perhaps reality - that has helped cost him not just an Oscar win, but also what many considered to be cases where he could have been nominated (for example, 2003's The Last Samurai).

    And there's nothing wrong with that per se - heck, Cary Grant received only two Oscar nominations (and not exactly for his best known roles, either), and his only Oscar was an honorary award in 1970, the old "we all liked you but never voted for you" pat on the back.  I don't mean to compare Tom Cruise to Cary Grant exactly, just to say that there are worse fates than having Oscar elude you.  In any case, Cruise's latest film, Collateral, is one that could put him in the running for Oscar again.  The Academy seems to love it when traditionally good guys go bad - the most recent case being Denzel Washington's win for playing corrupt cop Alonzo Harris in Training Day.

    In Collateral, Cruise plays Vincent, a contract killer who hires cabbie Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him around all night as he offs people connected to the case of a prominent drug dealer.  At first Vincent tells Max he is involved in real estate and is in town to close a deal, but when his first victim falls out the window and lands on the cab, the jig is up and Max is now forced to drive Vincent - who alternates between genial and psychotic - around to his various destinations.

   Collateral is really a film about the randomness of life, as well as its dynamic nature.  Director Michael Mann fills the canvas with all kinds of shifts - in character arcs, in the plot, even just in the way that connecting scenes run.  On a couple of occasions Mann slows the action to a crawl and the sound to a hush, before amping things up again.  A scene late in the film featuring a coyote is particularly effective at being this kind of cinematic relaxation tank.

    The film's best section comes right before that sequence, as it is both a wonderful example of building to a climax and a good exhibition of the two main characters.  Max, attempting to stop Vincent, runs off with the list of targets and throws it onto the freeway.  Unfazed, Vincent forces Max to pretend to be him and get another copy of the list from Felix (Javier Bardem), the drug dealer who contracted Vincent in the first place.  Understandably nervous, Max makes his way to Felix, where he finally realizes he has nothing to lose and goes from stammering apologies to being a cool customer in about two minutes.  This is only part of the transformation, though I won't give it all away, but it is distinctly a turning point for Max.  Then, the FBI, LAPD, members of Felix's gang, and Vincent and Max all converge on the location of the next target, as the energy builds to an explosive climax - which is then immediately followed by the tranquility of the coyote scene.

    Mann's direction and pacing are terrific, but the movie is hardly flawless.  Vincent does a lot of pontificating, which I suppose is intended to make him seem deep but really just feels hollow in most places.  The bigger problem is the question of how the audience is supposed to feel towards Vincent.  He's kind of like a Hannibal Lecter character - sometimes witty, occasionally noble (in a manner of speaking, at least), often able to penetrate the hero's psyche, and all the while just a killer.  Lecter, as Anthony Hopkins played him, was always a popular movie villain, for whatever reason.  Vincent is a thornier case than Lecter because we know so little about him, and also because his killing people is at least something of a choice.  Why is he given so much philosophical dialogue?  Mann and writer Stuart Beattie use Vincent and Max to play off each other, and we know Max's backstory.  If Vincent didn't have the philosophy he wouldn't have much at all, and the relationship between the characters would barely exist - hence the necessity of the dialogue.  The schizophrenia of Vincent's character - bouncing between seemingly amiable and sociopathic - works sometimes, but not always.  Having him turn into a virtual Terminator at times is even worse.

    The other problem with Collateral is that it's not that original.  We've seen most of this before, and while Mann's direction makes the film stylish enough to cover most of that, there's the nagging feeling that all the pop philosophy is supposed to generate novelty, which it just isn't up to doing.  Fortunately, all the performances are good, which helps cover up the fact that a lot of the dialogue is nothing special.

    Still, it's a smooth film that actually has some decent philosophical points to make, and not ones brought up in the dialogue.  Human interaction and the pace of life are pretty interesting things, and Collateral does some pretty interesting things with them.  It's regrettable that it couldn't have put together slightly subtler dialogue in places, but that's forgivable - the film is a thriller that actually contains some very good character study, a rare combination.

    Will Cruise get award recognition for Collateral?  It's certainly a good role for him to do so - the character is enigmatic and can't always decide what it wants to be, but Cruise plays it well.  Unlike Tom Hanks' against-type role as a killer in Road to Perdition, Cruise feels perfectly cast.  Perhaps he won't be the one recognized for Collateral, but it's a good enough film that someone should be.
A-

Collateral is a Dreamworks Pictures and Paramount Pictures release.  Rated for violence and language.