Vincent (Tom Cruise) is a contract killer in Los Angles for one night to eliminate five targets who are going to declare in a grand-jury case. Max (Jamie Foxx) is a taxi driver with grandeur dreams of having a limousine business. Vincent gets in the cab and decides that Vincent is going to be his ride for the whole night. Their cat-and-mouse game starts there and doesn’t stop until the end of the movie. That’s the story of Collateral, one of the best Michael Mann movies, with Tom Cruise’s best villainous performance, and here’s why:
Tom Cruise, the Villain
DreamWorks Pictures
For most of his career, Tom Cruise has played heroes. That’s why it is so interesting when he decides to play complicated, gray characters (Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, Born on the Fourth of July), or evil characters (Interview with the Vampire, Collateral). We would’ve liked to see more of this side of Cruise, as his whole acting style changes and makes him a more interesting actor. In Collateral, Vincent is methodical, charismatic, and pragmatic, using all the qualities that make Cruise a star for evil. He wears all gray to try to be, well… gray and unmemorable, but that’s impossible. Tom Cruise’s acting sometimes looks like someone trying to act as a human, and in this movie, that’s a benefit, as Vincent is trying to act like a human to be less menacing, and more mundane. At least until the first kill in the movie happens, and then we see the devil behind all that grayness, and Cruise having fun: “improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, sh*t happens, I Ching, whatever man, roll with it…” Vincent tells Max, as it was Cruise talking about shooting the scene.
His character (as most by Cruise and all by Mann) knows he’s the best at what he does, and this night will present him with a challenge that will help sharpen his always-great skills. Vincent is the devil, and as so, he first has to be conniving and seductive, and Cruise nails that part of his character. Mann and Cruise together in a movie is a match made in movie heaven. They both go all-in in the preparation of their characters. Cruise had all kinds of training to prepare for the movie, and Mann had an extensive history of the character; well-thought-out, even if it doesn’t appear in the movie. Of Cruise’s gray look, Michael Mann told Entertainment Weekly: “I saw Tom as all steely, and the visual for that was silver hair and a tight gray suit. The man he’s playing is erudite, well-read, and [his] sociopathy is total. With Tom, you don’t get what you hear from a lot of movie stars, which is ”Don’t move me out of my range, what I bring to every movie I do.”
Foxx vs Cruise: Incredible Acting Fight
Michael Mann loves heavyweight fights between two actors at their peaks. It’s spectacularly shown with Pacino and De Niro in Heat, but it also happens in Collateral. Cruise was still in one of his best moments, working with Spielberg, and still wanting to get challenged by movies; before he became a stuntman ready to die for entertainment (we love the Mission Impossible movies, and we’ll be the first in line at the cinema, but his acting in those movies is no challenge). Jamie Foxx had already shot Ray, but the world hadn’t seen it yet, so he was still trying to prove that he was much more than a comic actor. Both actors were at the perfect moment to be opposed to each other in this movie, and as in tennis, playing against a great opponent makes you top your game. With a few scenes in his cab, Mann artfully presents to us who Max is; smart, observant, with a big dream, and good at his job. That’s why Vincent uses him, and that’s why he becomes the best foil for our bad guy. Foxx’s character isn’t cool (the greatest trick Foxx plays on us is to get us to believe he’s not cool), but he’s resourceful and has a moral code. That’s why the conflict between both characters and actors is so interesting. They’re not that different, except for the killing, a duality Mann always loves to play, showing they might be two sides of the same coin.
Once the conflict is set, the movie never stops (literally) as there are four more killings to get to, creating a strange, scary tour of L.A. Both lead actors are great, but at those stops is when we see the incredible cast Mann has selected for the movie and, in small roles, they shine. Javier Bardem might only have a scene, but what a scene; it could be said that it’s the best of the movie, as the menacing Mexican who has his own way of looking at life. The same has to be said about Barry Shabaka Henley and the scene in the nightclub. We can see the moment he understands he’s about to die and how his whole body, face, and mannerisms change in just a second. Jada Pinkett Smith is sexy in her first scene with Max in the cab, and we understand their connection almost instantly, even if at the end, she’s a little bit too much of a damsel in distress. And then there’s Mark Ruffalo as the detective; he’s never looked so sleazy, with an earring and his hair all gelled back. Ruffalo always looks like a smart professor (one of the things that made him great for the Hulk), and here you can believe he has an ex-wife who never gets her alimony payments in time. The moment he dies is also surprising, as we understand Collateral is a different movie, one without heroes, and Max will have to survive this hellish night by himself. Even the Jason Statham cameo leaves us with questions. Is this his Transporter character? Probably, but we’ll never know for sure.
Michael Mann’s Brilliance
Michael Mann is an obsessive, brilliant director who always loves to make movies about men who are great at their job, but who don’t have that much more out of it. They only really live when they work, and the rest is blurry: romantic partners, friends, holidays, those don’t matter as much, and their personal hell would be spending too much time in those worlds. And Collateral is no different. Both Vincent and Max live and breathe their jobs, one of the reasons that makes them such good pairs in the movie. In another world (where Vincent is no killer, or Max’s morals are less important), this could’ve been a buddy movie, as both characters get to understand each other, but here they’re rivals.
Mann loved the script because “the whole movie is like the third act of a traditional drama”. We only catch this guy on this specific day and moment in time. With those ingredients, Mann could obsess on the small details that make him a unique director and try new things. This was the first film in which Mann (or really any A-list Hollywood director actually) used high-def video instead of film stock. Mann has said that to capture the silhouettes of L.A. at night, celluloid wouldn’t have worked. Also, there’s coherence in the route the cab takes; something that is usually not that important for directors as long as it makes for a good shot; creating Mann’s second-best movie, Heat, almost thirty years later, it’s still his best.
