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COLLATERAL by Tom McCurrie
Can a movie work even though its premise doesn't quite make sense? Yes, especially if that movie is named COLLATERAL.
(Warning: Spoilers Ahead!)
Written by Stuart Beattie, COLLATERAL is about a contract killer (Tom Cruise) who comes to L.A. to knock off five victims in one night. Rather than do the micro-managing thing, he delegates a little authority to a cabbie (Jamie Foxx) by forcing him to drive him to each of the hits.
Now there's a lot to like in this flick, and it all doesn't have to do with the screenplay. The big question everybody asked when COLLATERAL came out was whether Tom Cruise could play a convincing villain (emphasis on convincing here, since he played a pretty unconvincing villain in Neil Jordan's INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE). With his steel-gray hair, tailor-made suit and coiled-snake attitude, Cruise convinced the hell out of me. And he's matched scene for scene by Foxx, giving a quietly intense performance as a guy with more inner strength than he himself realizes. Michael Mann's direction is both taut and striking, the off-kilter framing keeping our eyes glued to the Panavision screen. Mann also delivers the action, the hard-hitting kind that literally blows us out of our seat, whether it's a short and sweet alleyway execution or an apocalyptic shootout at a Korean nightclub.
Beneath it all, however, lies COLLATERAL's foundation -- Beattie's nifty script. Unlike most Hollywood suspense-thrillers, COLLATERAL has some actual characterization. This is especially true of Foxx's cabbie, who's given a strong dramatic arc: from passive wimp to man of action, from dreamer to achiever. It's the script's most delicious irony, of course, that Foxx has the villain to thank for his transformation. When Cruise destroys his old life, Foxx is forced to grab the new.
The script is full of scenes that twist in unexpected ways, providing much pleasure to a viewer jaded by Hollywood formulas and clich?s: the scene where a "random" visit to a jazz club turns into a pre-meditated hit, the scene where wimpy Foxx escapes a threatening crime boss by threatening him back, and especially the scene where cold-blooded Cruise comes to Foxx's aid when the latter's boss bullies him. One "twist" we do guess is that Foxx's first passenger of the evening, Jada Pinkett Smith, will eventually be one of Cruise's targets. Why else would a name like that be in the movie? Certainly not to show up in the first ten minutes and disappear.
In a previous review, I said that a successful premise needs to be fresh, commercial and pitchable. COLLATERAL's premise is all three. So why does it not quite work, keeping the film from being a true classic? For me, it's an issue of believability. Why would Cruise bring a third-party on his hits, when something could so easily go wrong (as it does), forcing him to deal with a guy that could betray/flip out on him at any time? Even though Foxx knows his way around L.A. better than Cruise, and Cruise wants to use Foxx as his fall guy, the negatives seem to outweigh the positives. It makes more sense for Cruise to rent his own car and drive himself to the hits. Cruise implies he has been to L.A. before, so he's not that unfamiliar with the city's highways and byways. And with a fake ID and change in hair color/style, Cruise could still keep his anonymity with the rental place.
Speaking of plausibility, the writer should have made it more believable that Foxx would stay with Cruise after he discovered the latter was a murderer. There were too many instances where Foxx could've simply bolted. Beattie should have introduced Foxx's sick mother earlier on. Once that character is introduced near the mid-point, and Cruise threatens her life, it makes perfect sense that Foxx would do anything Cruise wants (i.e., stay with him). As soon as the first vic is killed, Cruise should've found out Foxx's mother was at a certain hospital, and threatened to snuff her if Foxx tried to escape.
But you can't have everything. And it seems petty to complain that you don't when it comes to this season's mediocre movies. After all, in the cinematic desert that is SUSPECT ZERO and SUPERBABIES: BABY GENIUSES 2, COLLATERAL stands out like an oasis.
Responses, comments and general two-cents worth can be E-mailed to gillis662000@yahoo.com.
(Note: For all those who missed my past reviews, they're archived on Hollywoodlitsales.com. Just click the link on the main page and it'll take you to the Inner Sanctum. Love them or Hate them at your leisure!)
A graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television, Tom McCurrie has worked as a development executive and a story analyst. He is currently a screenwriter living in Los Angeles.
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