Collateral (film)

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Collateral

Collateral Theatrical Poster
Directed by Michael Mann
Produced by Michael Mann
Julie Richardson
Written by Stuart Beattie
Michael Mann (uncredited)
Frank Darabont (uncredited)
Starring Tom Cruise
Jamie Foxx
Mark Ruffalo
Jada Pinkett Smith
Music by James Newton Howard
Cinematography Dion Beebe
Editing by Jim Miller
Paul Rubell
Distributed by - USA -
DreamWorks SKG
- non-USA -
Paramount Pictures
Release date(s) August 6, 2004
Running time 119 minutes
Country USA USA
Language English
Spanish
Budget -Production-
  65 million USD
-Marketing-
  40 million USD
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Collateral is a 2004 crime/thriller film starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. It was directed by Michael Mann and written by Stuart Beattie.

The film is notable for the rare villainous role that Tom Cruise plays. There was substantial praise for the performance of Jamie Foxx, including a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination.

The movie takes place in Los Angeles though the original screenplay set the story in New York City. Collateral is also the first major motion picture to be shot with the Viper FilmStream High-Definition Camera. In an HBO movie review, director Michael Mann stated that the movie takes place on the night of January 24th to 25th, 2004 from 6:30 PM to 5:40 AM.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

Vincent (Tom Cruise) disembarks from his flight and exchanges briefcases with a stranger (Jason Statham, in a cameo) in the Los Angeles International Airport terminal. Across town, Los Angeles taxi cab driver Max Durocher (Jamie Foxx) drives U.S. Justice Department prosecutor Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) through Los Angeles. Striking up conversation during the trip, Annie talks about an upcoming case she's prosecuting. As Max arrives at the Justice Department building, Annie offers him her business card and departs. Moments later, Max picks up Vincent and drives him to a tenement building in Los Angeles where Vincent, impressed with Max's efficiency, offers to hire Max as a personal chauffeur for double his normal nightly profit. Max reluctantly agrees, and Vincent instructs him to park in an adjacent alley while Vincent speaks with a client. Minutes later, a body smashes onto Max's cab, shattering the windshield and propelling him from his seat. Max discovers that Vincent was responsible. Before he can escape, Vincent takes him hostage and together they hide the body in Max's trunk.

Vincent reveals that he is a hitman, in the city to murder five people in one night. Originally hoping to keep his occupation a secret, Vincent forces Max to drive him to two other areas destinations to kill two more targets. Before locating the fourth victim, Max visits his hospitalized mother Ida, who has been inquiring about him with the taxi dispatch. Vincent accompanies Max to the visit and pleasantly converses with Ida, allowing Max to steal his briefcase and hurl it onto the nearby freeway, destroying Vincent's intelligence. Instead of killing Max, Vincent sends him into a Mexican club owned by Felix, the man who hired Vincent, ordering Max to impersonate Vincent and acquire a backup flash drive containing the information for the last two targets.

Max meets Felix and in a pivotal moment, overcomes his fear and acts out a supremely confident, formidable, well-spoken hitman, acquiring the flash drive. Meanwhile, Los Angeles Police Detective Fanning (Mark Ruffalo) discovers a connection between the Vincent's three victims, reporting this information to the FBI agents surveiling Felix's nightclub, who identify the deceased as witnesses for a major investigation against Felix. Determined to rescue the remaining witnesses, the FBI assembles a SWAT team and travels to a Korean night club, where Vincent and Max sneak inside. The FBI and Vincent converge on the witness simultaneously, igniting a fierce gunfight that throws the club into a panic, allowing Vincent to kill the fourth witness and disappear. Detective Fanning, who followed the team into the nightclub, rescues Max and drags him outside before being shot by Vincent, who beckons Max back into his cab.

Following their hasty getaway, Max and Vincent get into a heated argument, with Max calling Vincent a demented sociopath and Vincent retaliating with stinging comments about Max's lack of initiative. Max, seething with rage, deliberately crashes and flips the cab in the middle of the street. With distant police sirens approaching, Vincent abandons Max and flees into the city. The arriving officer discovers the first victim in Max’s trunk and prepares to arrest Max, who complies until he notices Annie's picture on Vincent's open laptop, identifying her as the fifth target. Max overpowers the policeman, restraining him and taking his gun and runs to Annie's office building. He reaches Annie on a stolen cell phone and warns her about Vincent's approach. Max reaches Annie's office and stops the assassination attempt by shooting Vincent in the face with the police officer's gun, wounding him, then fleeing with Annie to a nearby subway station. Vincent follows and corners them in a subway car. Vincent and Max abruptly fire at one another through a closed door, with Max escaping injury while fatally wounding Vincent. Dropping his gun and slouching against a subway seat, Vincent dies, Max and Annie silently looking on. The two disembark the train at the next station, leaving Vincent's body to ride the subway. Moments before Vincent died he asked Max that if he dies in the subway will anybody notice, echoing an earlier story of Vincent's about a man who died on the subway and laid undiscovered by commuters for some time.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Cameos

In the beginning of the film, upon leaving the airport, Vincent (Tom Cruise) receives the briefcase containing his files from an Englishman, played by Jason Statham.

In the scene where Max enters the "El Rodeo" nightclub to meet with Felix, jazz guitarist, Luis Villegas, appears in the background as a member of the band playing in the club. Felix himself is played by Spanish actor Javier Bardem in a cameo role.

The Insider co-star Debi Mazar also makes a cameo appearance alongside Bodhi Elfman as a bickering couple in Max's cab.

[edit] Reception

The film received highly positive reviews. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 213 reviews.[1] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 71 out of 100, based on 41 reviews.[2]

The film opened August 6, 2004 in 3,188 theaters in the United States and Canada and grossed $24.7 million its opening weekend, ranking #1 at the box office.[3] It remained in theaters for 14 weeks and eventually grossed $101 million in the United States and Canada. In other countries it grossed a total of $116.7 million, and had a total worldwide gross of $217.7 million.[4]

Richard Roeper placed Collateral as his 10th favorite movie of 2004.

[edit] Awards and nominations

2005 ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards

2005 Academy Awards (Oscars)

2005 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (Saturn Awards)

2005 American Society of Cinematographers

  • Nominated - Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases — Dion Beebe, Paul Cameron

2005 Art Directors Guild

  • Nominated - Feature Film - Contemporary Film — David Wasco, Daniel T. Dorrance, Aran Mann, Gerald Sullivan, Christopher Tandon

2005 BAFTA Film Awards

  • Won - Best Cinematography — Dion Beebe, Paul Cameron
  • Nominated - Best Actor in a Supporting Role — Jamie Foxx
  • Nominated - David Lean Award for Direction — Michael Mann
  • Nominated - Best Editing — Jim Miller, Paul Rubell
  • Nominated - Best Screenplay (Original) — Stuart Beattie
  • Nominated - Best Sound — Elliott Koretz, Lee Orloff, Michael Minkler, Myron Nettinga

2005 Black Reel Awards

  • Won - Best Supporting Actor — Jamie Foxx
  • Nominated - Best Supporting Actress — Jada Pinkett Smith

2005 Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards

2005 Golden Globe Awards

  • Nominated - Best Supporting Actor - Jamie Foxx

[edit] Filming in high-definition

Michael Mann chose to use the Viper FilmStream High-Definition Camera to film many of the scenes of Collateral, the first such use in a major motion picture. There are many scenes of the movie where the use of the high-definition is evident - especially in scenes where the landscape or skyline of Los Angeles is visible in the background, but also during many of the nighttime scenes, where the high-definition is able to bring out more details in a dark, colorless scene. Mann would employ the same camera for the filming of Miami Vice.

[edit] Similarities to Heat

The film has several similarities with Mann's earlier work Heat. Both storylines are set in Los Angeles, with Heat starting in the the LA Metro and ending at LAX airport (this is reversed for Collateral). Both films share a central theme of contrasting the personalities of two main characters, both featuring a lead character named Vincent (as opposed to Heat, in Collateral Vincent is the antagonist). In addition, some of the methods and attributes of the films' criminal lead characters Neil and Vincent are similar, most notably the use of a particular appearance so as not to be memorable. To this end in preparation for the role of Vincent, Tom Cruise went to the lengths of making FedEx deliveries in a crowded market without being recognised, as seen in the DVD extras. Both Vincent and Neil demonstrate an amount of tactical training through certain shared dialogue phrases about avoidance of casualties in an engagement and by use of the Mozambique Drill.

[edit] Soundtrack

Collateral
Collateral cover
Soundtrack by James Newton Howard and Various Artists
Released August 3/August 6, 2004
Genre Soundtrack, Score[5]
Label Hip-O Records
  1. Tom Rothrock - "Briefcase"
  2. Cody Chesnutt - "The Seed (2.0)" (ft. The Roots) (extended radio edit)
  3. Groove Armada - "Hands of Time"
  4. Calexico - "Guero Canelo"
  5. Tom Rothrock - "Rollin' Crumblin'"
  6. James Newton Howard - "Max Steals Briefcase"
  7. Green Car Motel - "Destino De Abril"
  8. Audioslave - "Shadow on the Sun"
  9. James Newton Howard - "Island Limos"
  10. Miles Davis - "Spanish Key"
  11. Klazz Brothers - "Air" (ft. Cuba Percussion"
  12. Paul Oakenfold - "Ready Steady Go (Korean Style)"
  13. Antonio Pinto - "Car Crash"
  14. James Newton Howard - "Vincent Hops Train"
  15. James Newton Howard - "Finale"
  16. Antonio Pinto - "Requiem"
  • Alice In Chains' "Man In The Box" is featured (and is still currently featured) on the official flash site of the film, despite not being on the soundtrack.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Collateral - Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
  2. ^ Collateral (2004): Reviews. Metacritic. Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
  3. ^ Collateral (2004) - Weekend Box Office. Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
  4. ^ Collateral (2004). Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
  5. ^ Collateral Soundtrack CD

[edit] External links

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Preceded by
The Village		 Box office number-one films of 2004 (USA)
August 8, 2004		 Succeeded by
Alien vs. Predator
v • d • e
Films directed by Michael Mann