Collateral
Starring: Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx
Directed by: Michael Mann
Rating: 2 (out of 5)
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There's nothing, and I mean NOTHING, worse than a great movie that turns on you.
You're enjoying a good, taut thriller…the performances are excellent…the writing is superb…the direction is unique yet compelling…suspense is building…the cute blonde sitting on your left is leaning forward ever so slightly, taken in by the excitement, unknowingly pushing her pert breasts out…
…and then, before you know it, you're watching the final act of a Stallone direct-to-video crapfest.
I mean, the pert breasts that you got an eyeball full of do take some of the sting out of it, I'll grant you that. But otherwise, you're left with a dull, empty, numb feeling (unless you had the breast thing happening, in which case, at least one of your extremities is experiencing some blood flow).
"Oh God Jamie...PLEASE make him stop talking about his weiner..."
"Collateral" is one of those movies. I mean, it's starts off GREAT. In fact, the first 2/3 of the movie is of one of the best thrillers I've seen in a long, LONG time. But then, somebody fucked it all up. The last third is so BAD that I actually felt anger afterwards.
Picture watching the first two thirds of "Citizen Kane", and then the final third of "Freddy Got Fingered". It's not really the same, but I just think it would be funny if someone did that.
The movie opens inside LAX Airport. Vincent (Cruise) is strutting through with a briefcase in his hand. He looks exactly like Tom Cruise, except the fact that in this fantasy world, pretty much everyone else in the airport is 5'7" or under. (Okay, I made that part up…I just wanted to take a pot shot at his Hobbit-esque stature. If the movie had been better, I wouldn't be feeling so bitter.) Also, this version of Tom Cruise sports some seriously gray hair.
"Go on...make fun of me again...I DARE you..."
An aside: I've got nothing against actors aging, or even looking their age. I mean, the guy's 42 years old. There's no real reason why people should be going on about his gray hair in this movie. I'm much younger than him, and I've got a healthy amount of gray myself. Richard Dreyfuss - a personal fave of mine - won an OSCAR at 29 for playing a character that was in his 60's. That's what I call making premature gray WORK for you. That having been said, it just looks so WEIRD on Cruise. I know it's not natural…it's a dye job, and not a great one at that. But he's Tom Freakin' Cruise - the kid who danced around in his tighty-whities in "Risky Business". The point I'm trying to get to is the fact that with his new, "mature" look, I was waiting for him to start dancing around in his Depends. There, I said it.
Anyway, he bumps into some guy, they put their briefcases down, exchange pleasant apologies, and pull the ol' briefcase switcheroo. It doesn't take Hercule Poirot to figure out that Cruise's new case has weapons and other nasty bad-guy stuff in it, but I'm wondering what the OTHER guy got in return. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the other case contained…a Snickers bar, some Tom Cruise DVDs, an Anthony Robbins tape, a collection of "Garfield" cartoons, an assortment of condiment packets, and 4 back-issues of "Juggs" magazine. That's just a guess though.
Then we meet Max (Foxx). He's a cab driver, which I was able to figure out by the fact that he was sitting behind the steering wheel of a cab. (Take THAT, Poirot!!!) The cab, by the way, has the WORST fake number in the history of movie fake numbers. You know how normally they always start with 555? Well, I guess Mann wanted to go with something that was still fake, but less obvious. So, as a result, the number on the cab is 1-800-148-TAXI. I'm sorry…148????? That's WORSE than 555! Why didn't they just go all the way and use 1-800-FAKE-NUMBER?
"Man...listen to this guy NITPICK..."
Max is a very, very good cab driver. He picks up a smokin' hot lawyer named Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) and bets her that, using HIS directions, he can get her to her office quicker than with HER directions. And haven't we all been there? This one time, a cabbie told me he knew a short cut, and then wound up charging me $87 to get home from the bar down the street. But, to be fair, I DID pass out in his cab for 3 hours and vomit in the back seat, so maybe it's not as over-inflated as I thought.
But in this case, Max is honest. He saves Annie a heap of time, and she gives him a nice, healthy tip…her business card. Come on…ALL smokin' hot, young lawyers secretly want to do the mommy-daddy dance with cab drivers. At least, that's what adult films have led me to believe. That's why when I quit this gig, I'm either becoming a cab driver, a pizza delivery guy, or a pool cleaner.
I should mention at this point that Max isn't REALLY a cab driver. He's actually trying to start his own limo company, so he's only driving a cab temporarily. In this case, temporarily means 12 years. That's like me saying that I'm only writing movie reviews for free temporarily…you all know damn well that I'm still going to be doing this 12 years from now. There's just no market for a movie critic who can't write a review under 1500 words and uses the word "fuck" a lot.
"Look, you KNOW I hate doing things like this in public, Jamie, but I just think we should start seeing other people."
Well, his career path is about to take a turn for the worse, because just after dropping off the smokin' hot young lawyer, he picks up a smokin' hot, old hitman…that would be Vincent, by the way.
Vincent, as it turns out, is just as impressed with Max's cab driving as the hot young lawyer. So, Vincent offers Max a deal…he'll give the driver a few hundred bucks to ferry him around town all night. Max is initially hesitant, but finally agrees, because this is slightly more than he'd make by following the rules and driving DIFFERENT people around all night. Maybe Max just has a thing for short guys with gray hair…I don't know.
But, it turns out that Vincent has plans of his own. During his first stop, he enters an apartment building, and kills a guy whom he then tosses out a window onto Max's car. After this incident, Max plays a little Hercule Poirot of his own, and comes to the conclusion that Vincent might just be batshit insane. Cab drivers are intuitive like that.
"Yo dude...that had BETTER be a gun in my back..."
Of course, Max then faces the same problem that millions of cab drivers with fake numbers on their cars have faced before him. His "customer" is sociopath, and he's stuck driving the guy around town to kill a bunch of people who are slated to testify in some drug trial. If he doesn't, he faces two big problems…problem 1, Vincent will kill him deader than Rick James (what…too soon?) and problem 2, he's out a few hundred bucks. What follows is the kind of wack, fucked-up shit that's even too hot for HBO's "Taxicab Confessions". And maybe, just MAYBE, the hot young lawyer figures into this plan as well.
Of course, Max isn't alone…although he doesn't know it. A young cop named Fanning (Mark Ruffalo) has a pretty good idea what's going on as well. The problem being everyone - from Fanning's fellow officers to the FBI - are about as bright as Paris Hilton after a week-long tequila-bender at the Viper Room. The REAL story is very obvious to Fanning (and to us, although to be fair, we're the audience) and to anyone else with a double-digit IQ. But these other cops and feds just aren't that bright.
Welcome to Keystone...these are your Kops.
And by the end of the movie, you won't be either.
Let me start with the good stuff, which can be summed up in three words…"Cruise and Foxx". Both performances, no matter how bad the movie gets, are almost flawless. Foxx has NEVER been better, and he plays the straight man (for lack of a better term) to Cruise's psychotic-yet-charming killer. I don't think Foxx even SMILES in this movie, but he's excellent in an intense role. As for Cruise, he's solid too…but I've always been a fan of his. He doesn't play evil often (I don't know if Lestat counts) but he really pulls it off well…I didn't feel like I was watching Tom Cruise act evil…I felt like I was watching an evil guy who happened to look like Tom Cruise's dad. Even when it's time for him to make with the violent, psychopathic stuff, I believed him.
And that is due largely to Michael Mann's direction. There's an awesome scene in which Vincent goes nuts in a nightclub. You might think that Cruise couldn't pull this off, but he does brilliantly. The scene - just like the rest of the movie, is put together beautifully by Mann. It's not quite as good as the bank shootout scene in "Heat", but it's not far off, either.
Mann DOES that, though. He's amazing at finding the suspense in almost every scene. Hell, he managed to take a story about a white-collar nebbish-turned-whistleblower and a TV producer ("The Insider") and inject suspense into it. And "Collateral" is as suspenseful as his best films…when it's not sucking.
"Oh YEAH baby...raise the roof!!!"
Unfortunately, most of the final third of this movie sucks ass water. It's not the fault of Cruise, Foxx, or Mann. It's BAD FUCKING WRITING.
I really don't like dealing in spoilers, so it's tough to be specific about the flaws in the movie without giving anything away. Let me just say this…I don't know what Hollywood hack took over writing the end of this movie, but he should have his hands amputated so he never writes again. There's just no way that the truly excellent first two-thirds of this was written by the same guy who broke out all the bad clichés for the final third. It's just impossible. If it was the same guy, he must have finished the screenplay while drunk. It's the only explanation.
How else do you explain the police and FBI being CONVINCED that Max is the killer? Fanning even POINTS OUT to them that he's been driving a cab for 12 years, and has never been in trouble with the law. But no…they're STILL convinced that Max is the killer…they refuse to even CONSIDER that this pillar of society might be innocent, despite having ABSOLUTELY NO reason for doing it. If these were real cops, they'd be busted down to crossing-guard duty for being so obtuse.
"Tom, leave the guy ALONE, man! HE didn't write the script!!"
That's just ONE of the fatal flaws late in the movie…I can think of about a dozen more, but they would constitute spoilers.
It seems to be a trend lately, too. The same thing happened with "The Village". The movie grabs you for the first little while, and then devolves into something worse than mediocre. And Mann, Foxx, and Cruise should all damn well know better than to allow this to happen to a movie they're involved with.
The
best way to enjoy this movie is to rent it, and then take a break two-thirds
in. Or, if you have to see it in a theatre, park yourself next to a cute
blonde with pert breasts. In fact, MOST movies can be made better that
way. Trust me.
