Collateral Analysis

Collateral

 

On January 24, 2004, a cab driver Max Durocher (Jamie Foxx) is a man who is doing the job to earn enough to purchase his own limousine business company, and is currently driving a U.S. Justice Department prosecutor Annie Farrell (Jada Pinkett Smith) to her office where she prepares for a drug indictment case. Even though she wants to tip him for driving safe and fast and being nice, he refuses and tells her to keep the money "to buy herself something special". She takes a liking to Max and gives him her business card.
A businessman named Vincent (Tom Cruise) enters the cab next, giving Max $600 for chauffeuring him to five appointments and wait for him after each appointment. As Max waits at the first stop, Vincent enters an apartment complex and shoots drug dealer Ramón Ayala. Ayala unexpectedly falls out of the window directly onto the cab, forcing Vincent to reveal himself as a hitman. He coerces Max to hide the body in the trunk, clean up the car and continue with their arrangement. However, Max is pulled over by police due to damage from Ayala's impact, but just before the officers can investigate, they are summoned to a higher priority call.
Vincent, concerned about Max, then leaves Max tied to the steering wheel in an alley, as he murders a defense attorney named Sylvester Clarke. Max calls for help from a large group of teenagers passing by, but instead of trying to help him, they take all of his cash and also take Vincent's briefcase but Vincent returns and kills them, much to Max's horror.
Vincent then brings Max to a jazz club to drink with club owner Daniel Baker (Barry Shabaka Henley) after it closes. Max witnesses Vincent execute Baker when he incorrectly answers a question about Miles Davis and suffers a panic attack. Vincent then insists Max visit his mother Ida (Irma P. Hall) in the hospital to avoid breaking routine. He pretends to be Max's colleague and develops a rapport with Ida, which upsets Max, who then runs out with the briefcase and tosses it onto the freeway. With his target list destroyed, Vincent forces Max to meet drug lord Felix Reyes-Torrena (Javier Bardem), threatening to murder Max's mother otherwise. Posing as Vincent, Max meets with Felix and successfully acquires a USB flash drive listing the last two targets. Plugging the flash drive into the cab's computer, Vincent and Max acquire the details of the next target, Korean gangster Peter Lim, who is at a nightclub. Meanwhile, LAPD detective Ray Fanning (Mark Ruffalo) uncovers the connection between the three victims and reports his finding to FBI special agent Frank Pedrosa (Bruce McGill), who identifies the targets as witnesses in a federal grand jury indicting Felix tomorrow. In retaliation, Felix has hired Vincent to kill all five key witnesses. Pedrosa assembles a force to secure witness Lim and converges on the crowded nightclub simultaneously with Vincent, who in turn is being followed by Felix's men. Vincent manages to execute all of Lim's guards, Felix's hitmen and Lim himself, before exiting the club amidst the chaos. Fanning rescues Max and smuggles him outside, but is shot and killed by Vincent, who beckons Max back into the cab.
Following their getaway, the two get into a bitter argument over their lives and Fanning's murder by Vincent. Max openly calls out Vincent for being a sociopath, while Vincent derides Max for being too passive with his life and following his routine. Max finally snaps, refusing to listen at Vincent's orders, and then speeds through the empty streets, daring Vincent to shoot him, and deliberately crashes the cab. Vincent takes off on foot before a policeman arrives at the wreck and notices the corpse in the trunk.
Max spots Annie's profile on the cab computer and realizes she is Vincent's final target. He overpowers the policeman and takes Vincent's gun before running to Annie's building and her office. He tries to phone her using her business card but the signal cuts off, but manages to get into her office and saves her by shooting Vincent, allowing them to escape. Max and Annie board a metro rail train with Vincent in pursuit, cornering them in the train.
Boxed in and left with no other option, Max makes his last stand. Firing blindly as the train lights flicker, Max mortally wounds Vincent in a shootout while emerging unscathed. Vincent slumps into a seat and dies as he repeats an anecdote heard earlier about a man who died on a train and went unnoticed for six hours. Max and Annie then get off at the next station, in the dawn of a new day, with the rampage over.

 
Cast

• Tom Cruise as Vincent, a former special operator and professional hitman hired by middlemen to kill four witnesses and a prosecutor. Russell Crowe was considered for the role.
• Jamie Foxx as Max Durocher, a taxi driver whom Vincent employs to drive him to the locations of the hits. Adam Sandler was considered for the role.
• Jada Pinkett Smith as Annie Farrell, the lawyer prosecuting Felix Reyes-Torrena.

 
Critical Responce
 
The film received positive reviews, with particular praise going to Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx's performances. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 226 reviews. The critical consensus states that "Driven by director Michael Mann's trademark visuals and a lean, villainous performance from Tom Cruise, Collateral is a stylish and compelling noir thriller." On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 71 out of 100, based on 41 reviews. Tom Cruise went on to garner critical acclaim, while Foxx received several award nominations. Richard Roeper placed Collateral as his 10th favorite film of 2004. The film was voted as the 9th best film set in Los Angeles in the last 25 years by a group of Los Angeles Times writers and editors with two criteria: "The movie had to communicate some inherent truth about the L.A. experience, and only one film per director was allowed on the list".

Box Office
 
The film opened on August 6, 2004, in 3,188 theaters in the United States and Canada and grossed approximately $24.7 million on its opening weekend, ranking #1 at the box office. It remained in theaters for 14 weeks and eventually grossed $101,005,703 in the U.S. and Canada. In other countries it grossed a total of $116,758,588 for a total worldwide gross of $217,764,291.
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