Dir. Michael Mann, 2004, USA
Cast:
Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo
Having conceptualised, written or co-written every feature film he has directed, Michael Mann comes to Collateral as a gun-for-hire with a stylistic toolbox of considerable gravitas. His experienced directorial eye has guided his previous feature film efforts with an assuredness and intelligence that has earned him respect and kudos amongst filmmakers and fans alike. While still maintaining an ever-present influence in television production (Crime Story, Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel & the recent Robbery Homicide) he has successfully traversed both the film and television mediums, all the while developing a style and tone influenced equally by the aesthetics of European cinema and the hard nosed bombast and machismo of US filmmaking.
Beginning his feature film career in 1982 with the little seen Thief starring James Caan, Mann displayed an innate consciousness of what an audience expects and responds to, and went on to develop a signature style that is very much aware of the particular fashions of the time and place in which it is made. With the pervasive influence and changing fashions of television always in the forefront of his mind, Mann has applied these aesthetic flourishes to his films, with varying degrees of success. Thief's highly evocative and sonically turbocharged city nightscapes were a forerunner to Mann's epic, elegiac crime masterpiece Heat. 1986's Manhunter, Mann's version of Thomas Harris's book Red Dragon was very much an off-shoot of the pastel-overkill stylistics and gritty drama of the groundbreaking TV cop series Miami Vice, for which Mann served as series executive producer. His nose for the truthful depiction of police procedure, three dimensional characterisations and the stark violence of the criminal underworld, coupled with weighty cinematic sentiments has carved the way for the current glut of TV cop dramas.
His big screen sensibilities and stylistic verve have seeped their way into the collective filmmaking unconscious and have indirectly (or directly) influenced western (Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark & Strange Days, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 21 Grams and Amores Perros) and eastern (Andrew Lau's Infernal Affairs, and the work of Wong Kar Wai & Chan-Wook Park) filmmakers alike.
As a producer, Mann's body of work is considerable yet as a feature film director he is far less prolific, helming only eight films in over 20 years and displaying an admirable ability to experiment, take risks, adapt, learn and progress as an artist. His latest feature film Collateral is a high-concept, high-octane addition to the operatic, slow burn drama that his oeuvre has predominantly consisted of until now. It sees Mann at the top of his form, working with the most popular, powerful and highly paid actor in the world: Tom Cruise.
The film opens with sharply dressed, sociopath hit-man Vincent (Cruise) receiving the details for his latest series of 'jobs' in a coordinated brush-past with an unknown associate (Statham) at LA airport. At the same time, mild mannered cabdriver Max (Jamie Foxx) goes about his daily routine, meditating on his pipe-dream business plan of owning his own limo company as he drops off his first customer of the day. Looking to hail a cab, Vincent moves along the first cab rank he finds and arbitrarily chooses Max's cab - at first Max ignores Vincent, lost in his own dreams of self employment. In an act of cruel cosmic fate Vincent walks to another cab and Max calls him back. Vincent gets in the back seat and turns on his charms (and THAT smile) waving $600 and convincing Max to drive him around LA for a series of 'real estate deals' that he has to make before flying out from LAX in the morning. Max reluctantly agrees and soon the pair embark on the evening's journey. Eventually Vincent's true line of work becomes grotesquely apparent as one of Vincent's quarry nosedives onto the hood of Max's parked cab. Vacillating between terrified and rational, Max is forced to ferry Vincent as he delivers chaos and death across the city.
Simultaneously, LA Police Detective Fanning (the excellent Mark Ruffalo) sniffs the scent of a hired killer as he investigates the bloodshed in the wake of Vincent's 'work'. As the night progresses, Max becomes uncharacteristically confrontational and combined with the ongoing police scrutiny, Vincent's meticulous plans slowly begin to unravel.
As a Tom Cruise vehicle, Collateral is superlative, providing all the thrills, twists, turns and solid screenwriting that audiences have come to expect from his output. Under Mann's direction Cruise gives one of his most polished performances, revelling in his character's sociopathic tendencies, much as he did as Frank TJ Mackey in PT Anderson's Magnolia, a film Mann cited as one of his favourite Cruise performances.
As a Michael Mann film however, Collateral is something altogether different. A hybrid of sorts: 'Mann-Lite'. The ultra high-concept plot and hyper real-time story force the pace and allow precious little time for the sonic overtures, cityscapes and pervasive ambient electronica that we've come to expect from Mann. Although these Mann-ism's are glimpsed (including a surreal fever-dream-slow-drive through deserted city streets with Audioslave's Shadow on the Sun ramping up the atmosphere) they do not cohere into a finished piece comparable to the sheer operatic expansiveness of Heat or the moving power of The Insider. This is mainly due to the intimate nature of the story and its central relationship of Vincent and Max and that Mann usually lays these portraits of 'men obsessed' against larger stories and sprawling backdrops which lends additional weight and emotional power.
It's more than likely that had Mann been involved at the film's inception it would have played out on a much larger canvas and relied less on high concept plot mechanisms to facilitate the story. Despite this, Mann succeeds in making the film very much his own and there is much to enjoy here, such as an incredible nightclub shoot-out that rivals Heat's legendary bank robbery gunfight for eardrum perforating aural punishment, and a simply astonishing scene involving a trigger happy Vincent, a jazz trumpeter and a Miles Davis anecdote, which is one of the best sequences Mann has committed to film. Ruffalo and Peter Berg are solid as the pursuant police detectives in their relatively miniature roles, the smouldering Bardem is a joy in his single scene as a cartel-connected crime boss, and Jada Pinkett Smith succeeds in making the best of a role that amounts to what is essentially an over-developed plot device.
The aesthetics of the film are also a standout, the digital cinematography mixes well with the conventional film sequences lending an otherworldly quality to the sodium lit streets and the night skyline of LA, which as Mann himself says, "is a city that is best seen when driving through it at night".
When all is said and done Collateral is simply a cleverly plotted, superbly directed and acted, high-concept thriller. Somewhere this or the other side of Phone Booth, Cellular and their ilk, it offers a freshness that shows all other filmmakers how this genre should be handled. It also casts new light on Cruise, who for the first time plays firmly against type and uses his positive attributes to play a character that is murderously amoral yet cannot help but engage. It also offers audiences an opportunity to (for once) see a blockbuster crafted with uncommon grace and vision by one of the best US filmmakers working today.
Jarrod Walker
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