Collateral (7/10)
On a purely technical level I can barely find fault with Michael Mann's directing here. None of Miami Vice's pointless plot diversions or the occasional sags found in Heat. Jamie Foxx is also (predictably) perfect. The obvious problem (equally predictably) is Tom Cruise (who I've made no secret in the past of really liking). He just doesn't work here, at all. The film needed someone weightier, less boyish - weird for a guy approaching middle age. It's maybe not so much a problem with Cruise so much as the current crop of eligible Hollywood actors. It's lacking someone like a James Caan (whose performance in Thief would've been
perfect for a film like Collateral). The only person available right now who I think would've pulled it off is Daniel Craig, but he's now too tied up with the whole Bond thing, I guess. As it stands, Cruise does OK, atleast until the film's climax on the train, when he seems to transform into a kind of midget T-1000.
As an aside, can I be the only one who thinks the people behind Bond have really missed a trick in not recruiting Michael Mann for one of their pictures? He's absolutely perfect for the franchise, especially with Craig currently in the Bond role.
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Originally Posted by Dr. Eugene Felikson
oh an the brunette (Tanya Roberts?) is such a babe!
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Tanya Roberts is great. The B-movie Marilyn Monroe. Easily beautiful enough for the A-list it just never seemed to happen for her. Her filmography is quite depressing; made up largely of straight to video erotic thrillers, low budget horrors, sub Conan fantasy stuff and some tv sitcom slots. She was briefly a Bond girl but that's about as big as she got. It'd be nice to see someone like Tarantino recruit her for something, so he can do for her what he did for say Pam Grier.
