Collateral   

Vincent: Tom Cruise

Max: Jamie Foxx

Fanning: Mark Ruffalo

Annie: Jada Pinkett Smith

Directed by Michael Mann

Written by Stuart Beattie

There are three main characters in Collateral: Vincent (Tom Cruise), Max (Jamie Foxx), and the city of Los Angeles as seen through the eyes of director Michael Mann.  All three have subtle flaws that don't initially appear at first glance.  But Mann does an excellent job of shading all his characters in, and their shortcomings only gradually become apparent.  Unfortunately, the same can be said for his movie.  Collateral is an accomplished, but flawed, character study that, eventually, falls apart in the end.  

Collateral takes place over one night as Vincent, a hit man hired to take out witnesses in a high-profile drug case, hails a cab driven by Max to take him around to the five different potential victims.  Vincent's first murder goes wrong in a way that enables Max to discover the reason for Vincent's trips.  The association between these two then becomes the basis for the movie as the night continues and more about each other is revealed.   

For those familiar with Michael Mann's brilliant but short-lived television series Robbery Homicide Division, Collateral takes place on the same gritty and flashy streets of Los Angeles.  Mann presents L.A. to us as we imagine he sees it.  The crowded clubs catering only to specific races.  The lonely jazz hall where fine music is no longer appreciated.  The long networks of highways and roads that seem to go on forever, offering 3 or 4 different ways of getting somewhere.  And wild animals crossing the same streets people use everyday.

None of these images are particularly stellar slices of Los Angeles life, but it certainly serves as an effective backdrop for the story, as L.A. is presented as the cause of its moral frailty, not an innocent bystander of its denizens. 

The acting in Collateral is superb, and it had to be in order to give both of these main characters the intriguing complexities required to drive the movie.  Cruise is always reliable, and proves that he is capable of playing the bad guy here.  He gives Vincent just enough of a likableness, which lends more weight to the things he says and does.  He turns Vincent into more than just the steely-eyed villain.  

It is also an outstanding performance by Foxx, who is starting to prove his acting chops.  Max is a cabbie with grandiose dreams of something that has taken him too long to achieve.  He's either biding his time, or simply making excuses for himself because he's too afraid of failure or disappointment.  It's a convincing performance of a man still unsure of himself.     

Collateral was a great movie right up until the end, when everything falls into place a little too perfectly, and driving the plot home becomes more important than staying with these characters through to a more logical and fulfilling conclusion.  It quickly turns from a wonderful character study into a typical thriller that panders to the audience with its improbable final scenes.