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| Tuesday, January 18, 2005 03:37 PM |
| Mann Movie |
 by Fëanor |
I finally got around to watching Collateral tonight, and I have to say, I was a little disappointed. Maybe I'd heard it talked up too many times by too many people, and I was just expecting too much. But I don't know.
My main problems with the film are that it is too transparent, and too unbelievable. It was unpredictable to me by being so surprisingly predictable. It shocked me with its lame, action movie cliches. Don't get me wrong, the movie is certainly better than most action movies, but I didn't think it was supposed to be an action movie--I thought it was supposed to be an artsy crime drama/character piece that happened to have some action.
From the very first scene, I felt like I was seeing far too clearly what the director was trying to do. When Max (Jamie Foxx), a cabdriver, picks up the beautiful lawyer Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith), he ends up impressing her with his skill, knowledge, and general good will. Inevitably they end up talking about themselves, making a connection. We learn about each of them, and they exchange what might be termed tokens of affection.
Ah, I said, this is the scene wherein Michael Mann is establishing our characters and introducing them to us, so that we may now proceed with the story. And just at that moment, coincidentally, Vincent (Tom Cruise) enters the scene, and starts the main action of the story in motion. We will learn in a few moments (or we already know, if we have seen the commercials) that Vincent is a hired killer and is looking for someone to drive him to all of his hits tonight. He almost passes up Max's cab when Max doesn't notice the new fare right away, but Max calls him back, thus sealing his fate. The movie is loaded with moments like this--moments of amazing coincidence and fateful near-misses. What if Max hadn't called Vincent back? What if he'd taken a different route and come too late to meet him?
I realize these coincidences and fateful incidents are part of the premise of the film--the stuff we have to swallow to enjoy it. One of the things it is about, after all, is meaning--is there any meaning in what we do; in how we live; in whether we live or die? But I had a hard time choking them all down. There are so many, and they get so ridiculous. The most ridiculous and fateful of these coincidences, which gets revealed as a big "surprise" at the end of the film, and which was less a surprise in and of itself, and more in the fact that a movie of this caliber would make use of such a lame plot device, is that Annie is one of the people Vincent has been sent to kill.
There are plenty of other unbelievable moments in the film. Vincent claims to be a professional killer, with six years of experience, adept at hiding his identity from his clients and from the world at large. But we see very little of his skill in this film. He makes a big mess of the first murder when his victim's body smashes the windshield of the cab, but despite the blood and broken glass, he insists on continuing to drive around in the car. Inevitably, the cops pull them over, and Vincent nearly has to kill them to get out of the situation. But he still keeps using the same car! It gets him into more trouble later on, when a vice squad cop picks out the car outside of a club, where it sticks out like a sore thumb. And then later on, after forcing Max to pose as him supposedly in order to maintain the secrecy of his identity, Vincent walks into a club and ends up viciously beating and shooting a couple dozen people in plain view of a huge crowd of people, many of them clearly police or federal agents.
Yeah, he's like as sneaky as a ninja here.
The movie spends a lot of time showing us that Max and Vincent are broken humans. The two characters psychoanalyze each other and figure out each other's weaknesses and problems. But after all that, by the end of the film, Vincent has devolved into a kind of Terminator, relentlessly chasing after Max and Annie, and even going so far as to jump onto the back of the train they've sneaked onto, like the lamest of action movie villains. But how did he even know they were on the train? How did he know they were heading for the trains? Why does he keep following their trail as if he's certain of where they're going, even though he sees no evidence of their passing? There is no explanation. It's like he became psychic somehow.
Maybe I'm just thinking about the movie too much. Maybe I should treat it like it's an action movie. Except, the thing is, it asks us to think about it; it asks us to consider it as more than an action movie. It presents Cruise's character as a twisted nihilist, amateur philosopher, and life coach. He tells Max that he should follow his dreams, start that limo company he's always wanted, call that pretty girl, tell his boss to shove it! And Max actually learns important life lessons from his teachings. Are you kidding me? Who is this guy Vincent, a psychopathic Dr. Phil? I almost expected the film to end with Max driving Annie around in a limo with "Vincent's Memorial Limo Service" written on the side or something. Maybe that's in the deleted scenes.
But all that aside...the movie certainly wasn't all bad. It's really well directed, shot, acted, and edited, and the cinematography is fantastic. It takes place over the course of one night in LA, and the entire film is painted with the pale, electric, multi-colored lights of the city, and shaded with the dark, dirty shadows of urban night. The story is engaging and fascinating. The characters, as ridiculous and disappointing as they end up being, are interesting and have their own little twists and turns. Vincent especially is a mesmerizing mystery of a man, thanks in large part to another fantastic performance from Cruise.
Of course, when I say "characters," I don't mean Annie. The movie doesn't spend much time with her, and by the end she's become merely the damsel in distress, the final victim over which Max and Vincent will have their climactic fight. This is because this is a Michael Mann film, and Michael Mann films are made about men and for men.
But the male characters do start out interesting. If only the story built around them were more believable, and did more interesting things with them. |
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