High Collateral

Who cares if some stranger dies, the assassin asks. What's the difference between hundreds being slaughtered in Rwanda as the world idly watches and a drug dealer being shot on the street? We're all just specks on a piece of rock hurtling through space, and it's all meaningless in the grand picture. The assassin, Vincent, asks this of his cabdriver for the night, Max, a man so consumed with his effect on the world (and how the world will in turn affect him) that he's been paralyzed in life, jailed in a taxi for 12 years. By night's end, the two won't have traded places, but they will have rubbed off on one another, the assassin catching a glimpse of humanity while the driver is pushed to act.

Such is the world of Michael Mann's Collateral, a new thriller starring Tom Cruise as cold-eyed killer and Jamie Foxx as professional slacker.

It's been too long since we've seen Mann, and since Mann's allowed us to see the world through his eyes. Cool and stylish, Collateral takes place over the course of a single Los Angeles night. We first meet Foxx as Max at the beginning of his night shift, driving a cab in a city where cars outnumber people. He meticulously runs through his checklist, the same actions he's taken every day for more than a decade: wiping off the dashboard and steering wheel, checking his turn signals, strapping his prized photo of a tropical island to the visor. A slave to habit, Max won't pull out until everything is perfect. It's the same attitude that keeps him from ever starting his dream limousine company which he describes to his first passenger, Annie, a Department of Justice lawyer, played by Jada Pinkett Smith.

Striking a connection with Annie, he drops her off downtown and they trade cards: her business for his island. So enamored by the possibility of a relationship which he knows he'll never take the chance on, he nearly misses his next fare. Cruise, doing his best William L. Petersen impersonation right down to the salt-and-pepper whiskers, is Vincent, ex-special forces and current hit man. In town to kill five witnesses and lawyers involved with an impending drug trial, he hires Max to chauffeur him around town for the night, paying Max double his normal take to overcome his reluctance to break the rules.

The rest of the story is pretty much by the numbers. We know that Max will quickly discover that Vincent is not the real estate developer he claims to be, that Max will be forced to enter Vincent's world, that the police will get involved despite all precautions, and that Annie will be the last stop of the night. But Collateral isn't so much about the tensions of cops and robbers—though Mann does a fine job of keeping us entertained in that regard—as it is a character study, and as such it's only partially successful.

Cruise has never been a strong actor, his best performance by far in my book being back in 1981's Taps. Since then, he's traded on his good looks, pearly whites and grab bag of mannerisms. He's not so much an actor as a matinee idol, and he excels at that. Under Mann's direction, he comes closest to losing himself in a character: restrained, focused, dealing out death with as much exisential angst as is involved with popping a stick of chewing gum into your mouth.

But for as much as Cruise does a good job, Jamie Foxx shows astonishing chops. While Vincent is brutally honest about his work, despite hiding his life, Max lies about his work and hides from life. Going through the greatest changes in the course of the night, every blush of shame, tinge of fear and spark of hope plays across Foxx's features in captivating subtlty. When he finally snaps, in the film's silly and ill-fitting last third, it's with a riveting believability. While Cruise shows that he can kinda-sorta play something other than corn-fed heroes, Foxx turns in a performance that will launch his career into an entirely new realm.