CS Daily Archive > Weekend Read > 08/06/04

A Little Bit of Night Music… and Thunder

By jeff goldsmith

Bullets, blood, and blaring music -- yes, folks, Michael Mann is back! But let's not forget that it's Stuart Beattie's thrilling tale got him here. Audiences will be on the edge of their seats as a cabbie is forced into a grim, night-long adventure by his latest (and possibly last) fare: a cold-hearted hitman.

Collateral

Stuart Beattie

Max (Jamie Foxx) has lived the mundane life of a cab driver for 12 years. The faces have come and gone from his rearview mirror… until tonight, when contract killer Vincent (Tom Cruise) hops into Max's cab and changes his life forever. Vincent forces Max to become his driver on a journey through L.A.'s sprawl in search of the five unlucky souls on Vincent's hit list. The obstacles that our everyman hero must face range from hiding bodies to evading the police and FBI to dodging mob bullets -- and maybe trying to save a life or two in the process. Including, of course, his own.

Collateral so exceeds the action genre's expectations that there truly is something in there for everyone. Sure, director Michael Mann hits the mark with his action and his beautiful views of Los Angeles -- a town Max loves, so much more than Vincent -- but screenwriter Stuart Beattie provides richer characters than the genre usually affords. In fact, the film begins with a near-six-minute sequence in which Max drives attorney Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) from the airport to downtown while the two share backstory in a casual way. We're meeting them as they meet each other, and while it's not something that we're accustomed to seeing in action films, it comes off in as both interesting and natural. Collateral is a film imbued with rich characters who deliver great conversational monologues, rather than the usual screaming rants we've come to expect.

It's this balance of characterization, action, and suspense that quietly shows Beattie's virtuoso writing and Mann intelligent direction. As Beattie told Creative Screenwriting Magazine in our current issue, "The action version of this film would be to simply watch the hit man go from hit to hit… and do his job. What I like about Collateral is that it isn't about that; it's about the relationship the hit man has with the cab driver as they drive around. That brings it down to a much smaller level where you can get intimate with the characters."

Beattie originally set his script in New York, but the locale changed to Los Angeles the minute Mann showed up. With that change came some structural shifts to Beattie's script, and there are definitely a few inconsistencies that creep into the film. They just appear as light snafus, brief breaks in logic, and the kind of stuff that might pop into your mind on your way home from the movie. But none of these bits of narrative dropout ever invalidate the entertaining experience of watching this accomplished film. Beattie breathes some great visuals into his script -- the best of which -- a phone call, one of the most difficult things to pull off onscreen -- works as an homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, while at the same time remaining original enough to stand on its own.

Even the film's climactic shift of tone works well, and is in sync with the character dynamic of who and what Max and Vincent are, and who they will become. While Collateral begins as a character-driven piece, the audience's true reward comes in the finale when these characters we care so much about are thrown into 15 minutes of suspenseful, heart-pounding action.

Collateral really is that movie you're expecting to see when you buy your ticket -- which, for the action film genre, is a rarity. Writer Stuart Beattie, director Michael Mann, and stars Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise work hard, adding all the proper flourishes to make sure that Collateral delivers all that you expected -- and more.

Collateral
DreamWorks
Rated R; 120 min.

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Jeff Goldsmith is a regular columnist for Creative Screenwriting magazine and serves as the Los Angeles Events Coordinator in charge of the Creative Screenwriting screening series.
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