Fri, September 10, 2004
Collateral in 25 words or more—10:45 AM
I missed going to see Collateral with lots of friends opening weekend because of a prior engagement, and as a result there was a better than average chance I would just see it on DVD. Fortunately Arksie (goaded on by the oppressive heat wave) volunteered to see it a second time, and be my chaperone. I'm super-glad he did.
I like Tom Cruise a lot, but I'm no fan of Michael Mann. The Insider I was sort of neither-here-nor-there on, Ali I didn't see, and Heat I hate like poison. I think mostly for the fact that I'm expected to be excited about Pacino and De Niro sharing the screen and I just don't think De Niro is that good. Also, there's a twenty-minute standoff on some airport runway at the end that just made me want to kill myself to get it overwith.
However, I really really liked Collateral. I thought Cruise was excellent (he nearly always is) and I forgot that Jamie Foxx was Jamie Foxx for most of the movie. (Which is key.) Also, Jada Pinkett Smith, who I like okay as a person but have not been impressed with on screen, not even particularly in The Matrix: Reloaded, was great. Mark Ruffalo and Peter Berg came out of nowhere and were cool. And I just adore Bruce McGill, who is great here. (Arksie has made the point that using Jason Statham for an early walk-on role is a stroke of casting genius, and he's dead-on right about that. This is the benefit of being a Michael Mann movie – people are willing to be in it even in small, microscopic parts, and that makes it more interesting. Hell, even a painstakingly uncredited Marc Maron shows up as a guy whose cell phone gets stolen from him.) Great cast. Amazing performances.
Particularly Cruise, who makes you actually end up rooting for the bad guy. (Not a spoiler: Cruise is the bad guy.) He's just great. And you start to think (or at least I did), "Hey, he's this precise and effective about what he does, even if it's illegal and immoral, he should just be allowed to practice his art." I never felt that way about Ralph Fiennes in Red Dragon.
And there's a fight scene in a nightclub which is quite possibly the most compelling and well crafted movie scene I've seen in years. Go enjoy Collateral, people. You'll be glad you did.
