Post by Vercetti on Nov 26, 2005 17:19:32 GMT
Collateral
Director: Michael Mann
2004 USA
“Six hours he's riding the subway before anybody notices his corpse doing laps around L.A., people on and off sitting next to him. Nobody notices.”
Michael Mann seems to have a talent in making a villainous character seem more human to the audience. In “Heat” most people ended up sympathizing for Neil and wanting him to succeed, despite being a thief. He now brings us this film. Max (Jamie Fox) is a taxi driver who has dreams of owning an Island Limo service. He has procrastinated so long that his “temporary” job has gone on for twelve years. He has a mother he wishes he could make proud, and lives a generally unsatisfying life. He escapes between fares with a small photo of paradise looking islands. His talents include being able to calculate the time it’ll take to get somewhere. He doesn’t mind if you time him.
Vincent is a character who is more mysterious for a longer time. We see him in LAX suspiciously bump into someone. Did they switch luggage? After a wonderful exchange in dialogue between Max and a beautiful young lawyer (Jada Pinkett Smith), Max gives her his island photo, and when he thinks she’s leaving she doubles back to give him her card, “In case you want to argue cab routes.” The next passenger is Vincent, who was scoping out the law building Annie just walked into. Max doesn’t find anything odd with him. He offers to use the cab for five stops, offering several crisp, new hundred dollar bills. He reluctantly agrees. Max waits, and soon enough a body falls on the cab and Vincent is forced to go into plan B, to use Max as his driver using force.
The beauty behind this thriller is Michael Mann’s excellent direction. It’s presented as a wonderfully crafted Neo-Noir. The film is full of blue and gray palettes. Tom Cruise is given gray hair and a gray suit, a human wolf in his look, a predator of the night. Mann’s visually great style is also amplified by his choice in music. In one memorable scene, Max stops the cab in the middle of the road. All sound is gone in a mute-esque feeling. As coyotes run across the road Audioslave’s “Shadow on the Sun” begins to play. Miles Davis’ “Spanish Key” is played in the Jazz club scene, which is almost like a film within a film, like the coyote scene, involving a nostalgic club owner. In the final scene, the extreme loneliness is supported brilliantly by Antonio Pinto’s “Requiem.” There's also a very well choreographed gunfight in a Korean club with a Korean version of "Ready, Steady, Go."
The dialogue is also a highlight. The scenes that mostly give this film the depth it has is the scenes in which Vincent and Max talk. Vincent constantly gives him advice, even though it probably doesn’t mean much since he probably plans on killing him after his five contracts. At the same time he is forming a relationship of respect with him, Stockholm Syndrome in a taxi. He tells him to be more assertive, to have a stomach while at the same time defending his own actions. Vincent believes nothing is significant. He’s an indifferent pawn in the universe. “There’s no good reason or bad reason to live or to die.” He thinks it’s ridiculous to complain about one dead man when no one shows as much emotion towards genocides. In one pivotal scene Max patronizes Vincent as being one of those “institutionalized raised guys.” Vincent, whose life consisted of lacking a mother and having an abusive father, can only retaliate in an excellent piece of dialogue.
“Look in the mirror. Paper towels, clean cab, limo company someday—how much you got saved? (Max says its not his business) Someday? Someday my dream will come? One night you’ll wake up and discover it never happened. It’s all turned around on you. It never will. Suddenly you are old. Didn’t happen, and it never will because you were never gonna do it anyway. You’ll push it into memory then zone out in your Barcalounger being hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life. Don’t you talk to me about murder. All it ever took was a down payment on a Lincoln Town Car. Or that girl, you can’t even call that girl. What the fuck are you still doing driving a cab?”
Vincent’s psychological flaws are reasoned by character development, presented in those cab talks. As I said we learn Vincent’s mother died during childbirth. We can connect the dots through other talks that he had an abusive father, and developed a horrible life over years. He has some moral behavior though, as he demonstrates when he and Max go to the hospital to visit Max’s mother and when Max won’t buy flowers, he does as he says “She carried you in her womb for nine months.”
Overall “Collateral” is a great film that shows crime thrillers can still be given depth. Michael Mann’s wonderful L.A. cinematography is given more dimensions with the digital photography, keeping the whole atmosphere in focus. Both lead actors give great performances. Cruise should’ve been given Foxx’s Supp. Actor nomination. This is one of his best roles. The same can be said for Foxx, who steps up a notch, which will lead to his big performance in “Ray.” This is a wonderfully crafted film that could’ve been a masterpiece had it not been for a lean to mainstream in the rising action. It still comes out as one of the best of 2004 and succeeds in allowing the audience to connect to both Max and Vincent. Everything is tapped into and we finally have another intelligent thriller that doesn’t have badasses, but two lonely men on the MTA in L.A.
Director: Michael Mann
2004 USA
“Six hours he's riding the subway before anybody notices his corpse doing laps around L.A., people on and off sitting next to him. Nobody notices.”
Michael Mann seems to have a talent in making a villainous character seem more human to the audience. In “Heat” most people ended up sympathizing for Neil and wanting him to succeed, despite being a thief. He now brings us this film. Max (Jamie Fox) is a taxi driver who has dreams of owning an Island Limo service. He has procrastinated so long that his “temporary” job has gone on for twelve years. He has a mother he wishes he could make proud, and lives a generally unsatisfying life. He escapes between fares with a small photo of paradise looking islands. His talents include being able to calculate the time it’ll take to get somewhere. He doesn’t mind if you time him.
Vincent is a character who is more mysterious for a longer time. We see him in LAX suspiciously bump into someone. Did they switch luggage? After a wonderful exchange in dialogue between Max and a beautiful young lawyer (Jada Pinkett Smith), Max gives her his island photo, and when he thinks she’s leaving she doubles back to give him her card, “In case you want to argue cab routes.” The next passenger is Vincent, who was scoping out the law building Annie just walked into. Max doesn’t find anything odd with him. He offers to use the cab for five stops, offering several crisp, new hundred dollar bills. He reluctantly agrees. Max waits, and soon enough a body falls on the cab and Vincent is forced to go into plan B, to use Max as his driver using force.
The beauty behind this thriller is Michael Mann’s excellent direction. It’s presented as a wonderfully crafted Neo-Noir. The film is full of blue and gray palettes. Tom Cruise is given gray hair and a gray suit, a human wolf in his look, a predator of the night. Mann’s visually great style is also amplified by his choice in music. In one memorable scene, Max stops the cab in the middle of the road. All sound is gone in a mute-esque feeling. As coyotes run across the road Audioslave’s “Shadow on the Sun” begins to play. Miles Davis’ “Spanish Key” is played in the Jazz club scene, which is almost like a film within a film, like the coyote scene, involving a nostalgic club owner. In the final scene, the extreme loneliness is supported brilliantly by Antonio Pinto’s “Requiem.” There's also a very well choreographed gunfight in a Korean club with a Korean version of "Ready, Steady, Go."
The dialogue is also a highlight. The scenes that mostly give this film the depth it has is the scenes in which Vincent and Max talk. Vincent constantly gives him advice, even though it probably doesn’t mean much since he probably plans on killing him after his five contracts. At the same time he is forming a relationship of respect with him, Stockholm Syndrome in a taxi. He tells him to be more assertive, to have a stomach while at the same time defending his own actions. Vincent believes nothing is significant. He’s an indifferent pawn in the universe. “There’s no good reason or bad reason to live or to die.” He thinks it’s ridiculous to complain about one dead man when no one shows as much emotion towards genocides. In one pivotal scene Max patronizes Vincent as being one of those “institutionalized raised guys.” Vincent, whose life consisted of lacking a mother and having an abusive father, can only retaliate in an excellent piece of dialogue.
“Look in the mirror. Paper towels, clean cab, limo company someday—how much you got saved? (Max says its not his business) Someday? Someday my dream will come? One night you’ll wake up and discover it never happened. It’s all turned around on you. It never will. Suddenly you are old. Didn’t happen, and it never will because you were never gonna do it anyway. You’ll push it into memory then zone out in your Barcalounger being hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life. Don’t you talk to me about murder. All it ever took was a down payment on a Lincoln Town Car. Or that girl, you can’t even call that girl. What the fuck are you still doing driving a cab?”
Vincent’s psychological flaws are reasoned by character development, presented in those cab talks. As I said we learn Vincent’s mother died during childbirth. We can connect the dots through other talks that he had an abusive father, and developed a horrible life over years. He has some moral behavior though, as he demonstrates when he and Max go to the hospital to visit Max’s mother and when Max won’t buy flowers, he does as he says “She carried you in her womb for nine months.”
Overall “Collateral” is a great film that shows crime thrillers can still be given depth. Michael Mann’s wonderful L.A. cinematography is given more dimensions with the digital photography, keeping the whole atmosphere in focus. Both lead actors give great performances. Cruise should’ve been given Foxx’s Supp. Actor nomination. This is one of his best roles. The same can be said for Foxx, who steps up a notch, which will lead to his big performance in “Ray.” This is a wonderfully crafted film that could’ve been a masterpiece had it not been for a lean to mainstream in the rising action. It still comes out as one of the best of 2004 and succeeds in allowing the audience to connect to both Max and Vincent. Everything is tapped into and we finally have another intelligent thriller that doesn’t have badasses, but two lonely men on the MTA in L.A.