It's not for nothing that much of director Michael Mann's thrilling crime drama Collateral recalls the glam and glitz of TV's Miami Vice: Pulsating soundtrack; nighttime cityscapes atwinkle with lights; a very cool leading man in a tailored suit.
Mann launched Miami Vice. And although Collateral is set in the seamier sides of Los Angeles, and although the man in the suit is not a cop but a hit man who commandeers a taxi, there's no discounting the ultra-hip coolness of the tale.
Mann also directed such gritty crime films as Heat and Manhunter, along with the Emmy-winning TV miniseries Drug Wars: The Camarena Story and the Emmy-nominated Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel, and all of them seem to have influenced Collateral.
Tom Cruise has played unsavory characters before (Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, Interview with the Vampire), but never with such single-minded, cool cruelty as with Collateral's Vincent. A sociopath whose trade is murder, Vincent approaches his job in a very businesslike, unsentimental way. "It's what I do for a living," he says matter of factly to Max (Jamie Foxx), the cabbie whom he has hired to drive him to his assignments around nighttime L.A. At first Max thinks he's a suave businessman. But after discovering the truth, Max is horrifed. Yet he's forced to become a sort of reluctant accomplice to the killing spree.
Five people -- witnesses to some drug cartel deal who are slated to testify at a government trial -- have been slated for death. Vincent, an expert in his field, has been hired to do the job in one night.
The details don't really matter. Save for one, most of the victims are anonymous, barely glimpsed characters. Near the start, Vincent carps about the anonymity of life in Los Angeles, where everyone is everyone's best friend, but everyone goes home alone.
The real point of Collateral is the give-and-take between Vincent and Max. Max tries to get inside Vincent's head to understand how someone could approach murder so unflinchingly, while Vincent dismisses Max's lifelong dreams as fantasies that will never come true. In the end, each man faces his own reality and it's not a pretty sight.
This is not quite as deep as it sounds, although Collateral is that rare action film that tries to get inside its characters' heads. Much of it is filmed in claustrophobic closeups, like a TV show, which underscores that point. Fortunately, Collateral is also very exciting, though it starts out mellow.
Max's first fare is a harried, troubled U.S. attorney (Jada Pinkett Smith), who is trying to do business over her cell phone in the back seat while also directing him to the fastest route to her destination. Max cuts through her frazzled style and manages to connect with her. Their flirtatious conversation hints at an unlikely bond, with the city's nighttime lights adding a magical sparkle. Mann has staged this with such a strong undercurrent of sexuality that it might have served as the basis for a whole other kind of movie.
But soon Vincent enters Max's cab as the fare from hell, offering Max $600 to drive him around all night to his destinations. When the first destination ends with a man crashing onto the roof of the cab, Max realizes the horrible truth. Vincent, sweeping shards of glass off the cab and tossing the body in the trunk deadpans offhandedly, "It's only a dead guy."
Soon Max has become Vincent's prisoner and later a sort of unintended accomplice. At one point Max, under a threat to a family member, must pretend he's Vincent to get some information from a hood in a nightclub that's under surveillance. This proves to be the film's most chilling -- with Javier Bardem's Felix telling a whisperingly creepy tale about Santa Claus to the terrified Max -- and also, in the end, its most amusingly satisfying scene.
Sometimes Vincent seems almost normal, stopping at a jazz club to coddle up to one of the musicians after his set. Here Mann lulls the audience into a false sense of security. But screenwriter Stuart Beattie doesn't allow such light touches to linger. Max very directly, very determinedly, very quickly, gets down to business in a very final way.
The killing odyssey is intercut with the detective work of a Los Angeles cop (Mark Ruffalo), who begins piecing the evidence together, ahead of the FBI, which is also on stakeout. Smart and likeable, he's an alternative to the grim action which is unfolding around the city, culminating in a graphic moment at a hospital morgue.
The action is never far from sight in Collateral. Mann has staged several thrilling sequences: a shootout in a crowded hip nightclub which leaves customers screaming in panic; an eerie murder scene in a darkened skyscraper, a shootout aboard a Los Angeles subway car. These scenes play strong and flashy. But it's the probing nature of the characters that gives depth to Collateral and makes it truly memorable.
*****
Collateral
Starring: Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Berg, Bruce McGill, Irma P. Hall.
Rated: R, contains violence, profanity.
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