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Collateral - Single Disc Edition [2004]


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

Collateral offers a change of pace for Tom Cruise as a ruthless contract killer, but that's just one of many reasons to recommend this well-crafted thriller. It's from Michael Mann, after all, and the director's stellar track record with crime thrillers (Thief, Manhunter, and especially Heat) guarantees a rich combination of intelligent plotting, well-drawn characters, and escalating tension, beginning here when icy hit-man Vincent (Cruise) recruits cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him through a nocturnal tour of Los Angeles, during which he will execute five people in a 10-hour spree. While Stuart Beattie's screenplay deftly combines intimate character study with raw bursts of action (in keeping with Mann's directorial trademark), Foxx does the best work of his career to date (between his excellent performance in Ali and his title-role showcase in Ray), and Cruise is fiercely convincing as an ultra-disciplined sociopath. Jada Pinkett-Smith rises above the limitations of a supporting role, and Mann directs with the confidence of a master, turning L.A. into a third major character (much as it was in the Mann-produced TV series Robbery Homicide Division). Collateral is a bit slow at first, but as it develops subtle themes of elusive dreams and lives on the edge, it shifts into overdrive and races, with breathtaking precision, toward a nail-biting climax. --Jeff Shannon


The psychological twist keeps it noir
Review date: 2008-09-28 Rating: 8 out of 10

This film is not particularly rich as for the content. A professional killer has been hired to eliminate all the witnesses and even the cops and other prosecution personnel in some criminal case. Banal. He does not want to drive his own car and he does not want to hire a car and an accomplice to drive him around. So he comes at night and just hires a taxi and its driver. That makes him difficult to trace. But that creates some problems because the taxi-driver is not really willing to do the job. And then the two are like mutual prisoners or custodians. One cannot work without the other and one cannot escape from the other. Yet the taxi-driver, after a long series of killings, finds the courage to cause an accident which means the arrival of the cops, but that also means the discovery of the first body that had been put in the trunk and the taxi driver's discovery that the next and last target is the woman he had transported just before this embarrassing and invading client. He decides to escape from the cop who is trying to arrest him, and who was alone on his car patrol, and to prevent the killing of the girl. He will even go slightly further. But that's not the main interest of the film. We could have predicted all that from the very start. Then it's only details. The interest is the rhythm and the twists in the fabric of the tale. In fact it is economical in blood and even bullets because it centers on the psychological profile of the taxi-driver and the relation he establishes with his customer. Strangely enough it is more psychological than we could have expected and that saves the film from banality.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines


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Reviews


Not quite as amazing as I was expecting but still a very good film.
Review date: 2008-06-08 Rating: 8 out of 10

Thriller about a taxi driver picking up a hit man and being forced to drive him around Los Angeles as he carries out several hits during one long night. Tom Cruise is excellent as the hit man and Jamie Foxx also puts in a fine performance as the hapless taxi driver whom Tom Cruise 'hires' for the night. Watch out for the scene in the night club where Tom Cruise's hit man shows just how lethal he is, as well as the tense finale on a subway train. A well put together film which although not quite reaching the heights I was expecting is nonetheless an excellent way to pass a couple of hours.

very good
Review date: 2008-06-07 Rating: 8 out of 10

very good film with a great performance from tom cruise.as always with michael mann the film is visually impressive its got a great soundtrack and the action is well staged

Well acted, but yawn inducing and wildly improbable
Review date: 2008-03-11 Rating: 2 out of 10

I really can't see why all the reviews seem so positive.

The plot was, when you strip it down, pretty basic, and pretty improbable. It was fleshed out with some fairly vain and transparent bulking up, in the form of the background story about the honest taxi driver drawn unwittingly into the killer's night's work, and the killer's cod philosophy.

But that actually just made the whole thing worse, by making what would have been a fairly average action film into a very drawn out, boring and pretentious one.

Still, the acting was good. But so what?

Slightly far-fetched
Review date: 2008-02-29 Rating: 10 out of 10

Michael Mann is the greatest living Amerian director alive today and COLLATERAL only serves to confirm his stature. After HEAT (which frames a classic confrontation between DeNiro and Pacino in a movie that was a symphony of violence and introspection- best thriller of the 1990's), Mann takes two more exceptional actors in Cruise and Foxx, and sets them against each other in the confines of a taxicab. The driver Max (Foxx), a loser who dreams of paradise, is the hostage of existentialist contract killer Vincent (Cruise), who first tricks and then forces Max into chauffering him around LA as he executes his bloody tasks. Full of Mann's prototypical and wry observations, and beautifully photographed, edited and scored, the movie grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. Probably Tom Cruise's finest performance ever, as he reaches inside to extract a psychotic darkness and animal intelligence that redefines him as an actor.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Jada Pinkett Smith
Peter Berg
Tom Cruise
Mark Ruffalo
Jamie Foxx

Creators:
Tom Cruise (Primary Contributor)
Jamie Foxx (Primary Contributor)
Bryan H. Carroll (Producer)
Chuck Russell (Producer)
Frank Darabont (Producer)
Gusmano Cesaretti (Producer)
Julie Herrin (Producer)
Julie Richardson (Producer)
Stuart Beattie (Writer)

Director(s):

Recording label: Paramount Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Paramount Home Entertainment
EAN: 5014437862037
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen,
Release date: 2005-01-17
Number of discs: 1
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 115 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2004-08-06
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: Spanish (Original Language)
Language: English (Subtitles For The Hearing Impaired)
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: Arabic (Subtitled)
Language: Bulgarian (Subtitled)
Language: Czech (Subtitled)
Language: Danish (Subtitled)
Language: Dutch (Subtitled)
Language: Finnish (Subtitled)
Language: French (Subtitled)
Language: German (Subtitled)
Language: Hungarian (Subtitled)
Language: Icelandic (Subtitled)
Language: Norwegian (Subtitled)
Language: Polish (Subtitled)
Language: Romanian (Subtitled)
Language: Swedish (Subtitled)
Language: Turkish (Subtitled)

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