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‘Collateral’ Fromage
Director Mann’s latest style is substance-thin
by Scott McNutt
Tom Cruise as an existential bad guy and Jamie Foxx as his dramatic foil may be high concept for a Hollywood summer blockbuster, but Collateral’s pretensions to intelligence have more surface than depth. Given that director Michael Mann frequently manages to transform style into substance, this may come as a disappointment; but the movie’s drawbacks are manifold, and its rewards scant.
Foxx plays Max, a bespectacled L.A. taxi driver who keeps his vehicle scrupulously clean, wins the good will of his fares with his encyclopedic knowledge of the shortest routes around town, and knows when to talk and when to listen. In an admittedly engaging sequence early in the movie, Max is drawn into conversation with attractive and vivacious passenger Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith), so we further learn that Max dreams of owning a limo service and has a keen eye for detail. As the ride ends, Annie reveals that she is a federal prosecutor getting ready to try a big case. When she carpe diems to hand Max her card, it’s evident she’ll be reappearing later.
Then, through kismet, karma, coincidence or uninspired writing, Max’s next customer is gray-haired, gray-suited Vincent (Tom Cruise). Vincent tells Max he’s a real estate agent who has only until dawn to close a deal and needs a driver who can help him get to several stops in timely fashion over the course of the night. He offers Max $600, twice what he’d normally make in a shift, plus $100 at the end of the ride, to act as his driver. Max reluctantly agrees.
When a body slams onto the top of his cab at the first stop, Max discovers he should have trusted his better judgment: Vincent is no real estate agent; he’s a stone-cold, cynical killer for hire who must finish four more assignments before dawn. Max now has no choice but to be Vincent’s chauffeur, and likely his final target of the night. Thus begins a series of meaning-of-life conversations between semi-hostage Max and semi-kidnapper Vincent, which are interspersed with several stops for some escalatingly cartoonish death-dealing.
Put aside the improbability of a professional assassin allowing a victim to position himself in front of a window out of which he conveniently pitches once shot. Further put aside the improbability of the victim landing on the assassin’s car. In fact, put aside all the improbabilities, coincidences and conveniences that populate the plot of Collateral. Simply posit that, had Mann and scriptwriter Stuart Beattie satisfied themselves with a minimalist piece focusing on Max and Vincent’s discussions and inevitable conflict, they might have ended up with a gripping film. However, that film wouldn’t have been a summer blockbuster, and it isn’t the one they made.
Sadly, the movie they did make can’t even be called a triumph of style over substance. Oh, the movie looks good. Mann makes the cityscape of Los Angeles into a supporting character, coordinating the color of Max’s cab with the gas pumps he stops at, blending any number of urban murals into the cinematic canvas, transforming streetlamp halos into the very light of God. But this isn’t anything new from the creator of Miami Vice.
And other style choices, such as Vincent’s all-neutral shadings, are pointlessly overt. Cruise’s dialogue and acting are sufficient to convey that Vincent is indifferent to the world, that concepts like good and bad are meaningless to him. We don’t need his gray suits and gray hair on top of that.
Returning to the plot, the obvious intention is that Foxx’s Max be affronted not only by Vincent’s amorality but also by his ruthless efficiency in pursuing his chosen profession. The challenge for Max is not only to somehow fight Vincent’s actions but also to combat his philosophy, and in so doing overcome his own ineffectual nature. While the potential is there for dreamer Max and doer Vincent to play off each other, there is less there, unfortunately, than meets the eye.
The characters could be explored in greater depth through such a philosophical conflict, but Vincent’s apparent existential, only-the-moment-matters philosophy is so much window dressing too. That is, it’s hard to take Vincent the philosopher seriously when one of his first soliloquies runs approximately like this: “Shit happens. Gotta roll with it. Adapt. Darwin. I-Ching.” Sure, timid, wishful-thinking Max can garner something from resolute, action-oriented Vincent’s attitude, and he eventually uses Vincent’s words against him. But it’s clear that when Max does act, it’s as much from life-or-death necessity being the mother of invention as from him actually learning anything from Vincent.
Amid ever more outlandish gun battles, chases and philosophical debates, the movie builds to its obvious climax, naturally involving federal prosecutor Annie as Vincent’s last target. The final subway-set chase scene is to be missed. Unless you really think you don’t know what’s going to happen.
On the good side, Collateral demonstrates that Jamie Foxx can handle dramatic roles.
August 12, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 33
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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