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<-buy this poster
Collateral - 8/6/04 - R - 120m
Tom Cruise - Vincent
Jamie Foxx - Max
Jada Pinkett Smith - Annie
Director: Michael Mann
Written by: Stuart Beattie
Studio: Dreamworks
Official
Website
LYN
Nutshell: Vincent (Tom Cruise) is a hit man. He flies into LA to uh…to do his hit man stuff. He needs a ride to make his appointed rounds, and renting or stealing a car would draw too much unneeded attention, so he hires a cab instead. Max (Jamie Foxx) is the unwitting driver of the cab for hire. Vincent tells Max he needs to make several stops due to real estate deals he is making, and basically hires Max to be his driver for the evening. Max agrees. Until of course after Vincent’s first stop, a body falls out of a window on top of Max’s cab. Ouch! This of course brings Max a little deeper than he had anticipated into the evening’s events.
collateral - col·lat·er·al - adj.
1. Situated or running side-by-side; parallel.
2. Coinciding in tendency or effect; concomitant or accompanying.
3. Serving to support or corroborate: collateral evidence.
4. Of a secondary nature; subordinate: collateral target damage from a bombing run.
5. Of, relating to, or guaranteed by a security pledged against the performance of an obligation: a collateral loan.
6. Having an ancestor in common but descended from a different line.
“ The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.”
Why the definition? Perhaps because I didn’t get it, I thought maybe if I got a proper definition of the word, it would help me make sense of this boorish and somewhat thinly veiled suspense thriller? But that doesn’t really help either.
Anyway, I don’t know what I was expecting from this product of ‘Miami Vice’ director “Michael Mann”, maybe another episode of ‘Miami Vice’ (which I was a big fan of back in the day…sorry to say)? Actually I was expecting to see a film with ‘Tom Cruise’ as a bad guy (something in which he hasn’t done before…not unless you count ‘Lestat’, but you know what I mean) and instead I see his flat performance in a ‘Jamie Foxx’ movie. What? It was supposed to be a ‘Tom Cruise’ movie? Really? When? Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with ‘Jamie Foxx’ or his performance in the movie. But, that’s all I have, and one person’s performance cannot save a film. The plot was believable, but how they achieved the ends to their means was a little hazy, and predictable in the end…blah, blah, blah…and you know, that’s enough…next film, please.
Lyn
