Max (Jamie Foxx) is a cab driver in LA, who dreams of bigger and better things but has been stuck in this crappy job for 12 years. One night, he taxis an attorney, Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) over to her office, and the two have a conversation during the drive and they take an immediate liking to each other, Annie leaving her buisness card and phone number. Right after dropping her off, a real estate agent named Vincent (Tom Cruise) hops in, explaining he is here for the night to close some buisness deals, and telling Max that he will need to make five stops over the course of the night, bribing him with $600, plus perhaps an extra $100.
All goes well so far on the first stop, Max dropping off Vincent at a building and then waiting in the cab for Vincent's return to proceed on. That's when Vincent shoots a drug dealer on the top of the building and he collapses onto Max's car, revealing Vincent as a hitman...and a good one to. Max takes Vincent to his hit stops over the night, both men probbing each other's mind's and history of their lives, Max trying to overcome stress and Vincent casually making his kills while remembering his own earlier times. Meanwhile, the cops start tracking them down, believing Max to be the killer.
In all other movies before this, Cruise has always been the good-looking, cocky, young rookie who always saves the day. In Collateral, he's a smooth talking, greying, expierenced hit killer. Cruise trained hard for the role, practicing with pistols on the range for hours on end for days, having previously no pistol expierence with live ammuniton. Vincent's one cool guy on the outside, if you ask me. But a strict killer on the inside. Jamie Foxx's performance earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Foxx is so believeable and convincing, his character of Max being the near polar opposite of Vincent's character. These two men alone deliver standout performance that has been nearly unequaled in any other action movies.
The shootouts in the film are all made with the utmost profession, and Collateral is superbly paced, well scripted and so well directed. There are just two problems with it, both of which are somewhat noticeable: the sideplot about the cops trying to track down Max and Vincent gets absolutely nowhere, and Collateral alsoisn't especially innovative, or in better words, not that ambitious in any way. Meaning that although Collateral superbly restablishes the action/thriller genre without effort, it fails to bring anything that new to the subject.
That aside, Collateral is hands down one of the most exciting and intense action thrillers you are likely to see. It's a stylish action movie made with profession, and one that ascends either the action or the thriller genre, probably both, to a whole new level.
**** ½ /5
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