Film review: Collateral.

The tagline for this movie goes as follows: "It started like any other night." This is a mistake. Don't get me wrong, it's a decent tagline, which conveys the feel of the film properly - but still, there's a better one. This is what the tagline should have read: "Come see Tom Cruise as the bad guy." Because this is what will draw most people to the cinema to see this film.

And what will they see? A very decent, if not downright good, actionfilm.

Short summary - Max, a man with a dream, is leading a rather mundane life as a cabby in LA. Vincent, on the other hand, leads anything but a mundane life - he is a hitman, a contract killer who happens to have a considerable job to do in, you guessed it, LA - and he needs someone to drive him around. The turn of events force Vincent to hijack Max's taxi, and as a result, Max becomes the titular collateral - an expendable person who was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time. As the LAPD and FBI race to intercept them, Max and Vincent's survival become dependent upon each other in ways neither could have imagined.

As I said above, the main attraction is mr. Cruise, who does a very good job playing the ruthless yet likable hitman Vincent. But semi-newcomer Jamie Foxx (Any Given Sunday), who plays Max, does a commendable job holding his own against Cruise's starpower.

But the real star of this film, in my opinion, is Michael Mann, the director. The director that also gave us the magnificent Heat provides us with camera-work which is simply mesmerising - and somehow he manages to make the city itself a character on its own in the film, through brilliantly atmospheric aerial shots of the slumbering metropolis - every single shot underlines Mann's love for LA. Mann's pacing of this 120-minute film is superb; never getting bogged down in unnecessary back-story, the sense of tension, which is well maintained throughout, constantly builds with the growing momentum. It's also to the veteran director's credit that he doesn't allow any sense of Hollywood-movie-contrivance to creep in.

Add to this excellent directing the good acting of the two leads, the superb score, and a blistering amount of action, and we end up with a very good night out.

An 86 out of 100.

Cheers