The Cool Confidence of Collateral

directed by Michael Mann
written by Stuart Beattie
starring  Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith,
              Mark Ruffalo

       Collateral is a movie about projecting cool confidence. Vincent (Cruise), the film’s anti-hero, is how I expect a lot of hit men to be: cool with a slightly transparent attitude based on artifice. Where most cinematic mercenaries are portrayed with innate composure and either glowering style or urbane stealth, Vincent is a man, smart and proficient all the same, with some underlying awkwardness about him. His expensive gray suit and matching hair befits Tom Cruise (and in turn the role) as much as the short sleeve shirt and crew cut on Michael Douglas in Falling Down. Some of his speech sounds plagiarized and/or rehearsed. He makes excuses that sound intelligently nonsensical like, “No, I shot him. The bullets and the fall killed him,” and, “There are no reasons, only why.” But he’s convincing enough to indicate power and for the most part he gets the job done.
        Max (Foxx) is the shy cab driver compulsorily commissioned by Vincent one night for a series of hits around Los Angeles. The opposite of his passenger, Max has sincerity but lacks self-assurance and is obvious enough that Vincent picks up on his inability to call a beautiful woman or admit his professional inadequacies to his mother. Over the course of the night, Max learns to project his own confidence through the overbearing actions of his fare. At one point Max stands up to his boss at Vincent’s armed insistence. Later he must evoke the hit man’s demeanor in order to survive and in doing so discovers how such attitude is predominantly simulation.
        Stuart Beattie’s pointed script preludes with Max’s hire by a beautiful woman (Pinkett Smith). The dialogue flows so naturally and, I might add, with certain contrast to a similar meeting of strangers in The Manchurian Candidate. Max and the woman converse, almost flirtatiously though believably constrained and then presumptuous without conceit. It is a beautiful battle of to and fro common in today’s careful mating rituals. Max eventually triumphs with a bet on the quicker of two routes, impressing the woman enough to acquire her number without having the nerve to request it.
          Next passenger is Vincent and while the two trip through L.A., a cop (Ruffalo) investigates the series of murders, linking them to a narcotics sting too considerable for police concern. His first appearance is momentarily and imperturbably deceiving; arriving undercover to a minor criminal’s apartment he goes through noticeable transition upon the discovery that the residence is vacant. Throughout he represents the token detective with more knowledge and valid intuition than his superiors while gradually descending toward unconventional levels of empathy.
        With the two major roles, music becomes an underlying analogy. Max listens to soul music early on and shortly thereafter Vincent shows appreciation for jazz with a particular familiarity with Miles Davis, generally regarded as synonymous with the word ‘cool’. The designation is more effective than any time Spike Lee, John Singleton or anyone else has used musical classification with more generalized prejudice. 
        Michael Mann has voiced the attraction of Collateral being partly in its omission of the first two acts. With slight concurrence, one cannot ignore that within the denouement there is still some contrived wrapping up with Vincent chasing Max through a subway train. In the course of the film’s fluent and dexterous style, though, inevitability is distinguished from predictability with enough clarity to ignore the few clichés. One such trite genre rule, for instance, has any cops pulling over a guilty vehicle with no possible abscondence coincidentally called away to more pressing matters.
          Despite the long night’s journey to a sort of vain courage, the general moral in the end seems to be that Max does best by being himself. Sure he gains assurance, but he doesn’t do so with much pretense. You could watch up until Jada Pinkett Smith’s exeunt in the prelude to get a feeling for his character’s promise but then you’d miss the year’s most satisfying action, which unlike Spider-Man 2 is wonderfully staged as well as executed. Collateral is a film that keeps film cynics optimistic.