Admittedly, it is slightly troublesome that the silver-grey suit and matching quiff that Cruise models on this occasion recall Charlie Higson’s Swiss Toni, but you have to put that out of your mind and focus on the facts of the case. Cruise’s character gives his name as Vincent, and we soon learn that he is a contract killer. He had been hoping to keep this from Max (Jamie Foxx), a cabbie hired at random to ferry him through a night’s worth of assignments in Los Angeles, but when his first victim’s body falls from a high window onto the bonnet of Max’s cab, Vincent’s cover is blown. Max must continue to do his passenger’s bidding, but he now knows he is the prisoner of a hitman who has a sociopathically deformed sense of right and wrong. When charged by Max with having killed that first victim, Vincent blithely argues: “I shot him. The bullets and the fall killed him.”
From hereon in, the question is whether Max can escape with his life, and the movie certainly gets us rooting for him. Cruise’s Vincent may be fun to watch, but he never upsets the film’s moral compass. When Mann first discussed the film with Cruise, he reckoned without the star’s desire to try something a bit different, and instead imagined that Max — a flawed but decent guy who never gives up — would be the Cruise role. In the finished movie, the character remains a properly fleshed-out hero. Foxx (who had supporting parts in Any Given Sunday and Mann’s Muhammad Ali biopic) doesn’t get his face on Collateral’s posters, but he has lots of screen time and fills it with a strong and subtle performance.
In this way, the film elicits from the viewer that touch of emotional involvement that helps make a good thriller. And for much of its running time, it gets everything else right, too. The situations into which Vincent drags Max, and Max’s occasional attempts to get the better of his captor, are dynamically staged and tensely unpredictable. What’s more, every frame looks fantastic. Sleek shots of cities (especially Los Angeles) by night have always been a Mann trademark, but where he has previously worked mainly in blues and greys, here he uses top-of-the-range digital cameras to broaden his palette. The lemon-yellow shade bestowed by street lighting is exactly caught, and the orange-red haze of LA’s smoggy sky appears as something Turner might have come up with if he had ever been introduced to spray cans. The film’s visual art is immersive: I’m not sure that any other Los Angeles movie has better evoked the city’s humidity.
Here, then, we have Mann doing what he did in Heat: enriching a generic plot through cinematic verve and fuller than average characterisation. There is a limit, though, to what can be done even by a stylist of his calibre to save a plot that goes from generic to plain weak. Collateral’s last act begins with a violent car crash, from which everyone emerges in surprisingly good shape. Then comes an incredibly unlikely coincidence, quickly followed by a scene in which Max is stymied at a crucial moment by the fading of his mobile phone’s battery. Everything looks great, but as far as the events are concerned, you could be watching a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. The application of Mann’s glorious, painstaking skill to such a clapped-out narrative comes close to seeming comical.
Ten minutes later, Collateral has been patly wrapped up and you’re staring at the credits, feeling a bit disappointed. It’s an enjoyable film in lots of ways, but the overall experience is like savouring a fine main course, then being kicked out of the restaurant when you had been looking forward to dessert.
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Collateral 15, 120 mins, Three stars