Collateral (film)

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Collateral
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Michael Mann
Produced by	Michael Mann Julie Richardson
Written by	Stuart Beattie Michael Mann Frank Darabont
Starring	Tom Cruise Jamie Foxx Mark Ruffalo Jada Pinkett Smith Javier Bardem
Music by	James Newton Howard
Cinematography	Dion Beebe
Editing by	Jim Miller Paul Rubell
Studio	DreamWorks Paramount Pictures
Distributed by	DreamWorks Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	August 6, 2004
Running time	119 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$65 million
Gross revenue	$217,764,291[1]

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 24 to 25, 2004 from 6:30 PM to 5:40 AM.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Production 3 Themes 4 Reception 4.1 Awards and nominations 5 Soundtrack 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Plot

Cab driver Max Durocher (Jamie Foxx) drives U.S. Justice Department prosecutor Annie Farrell (Jada Pinkett Smith) to work. During the drive, she tells him about an upcoming case she's prosecuting and he tells her about his dream of owning his own limousine service. When they arrive at the Justice Department building, Annie leaves him her business card. Moments later, Max picks up a man named Vincent (Tom Cruise), who was seen earlier exchanging a briefcase with a stranger (Jason Statham) at Los Angeles International Airport.

Vincent directs him to a tenement building, and impressed with Max's efficiency, asks him to be his personal chauffeur for his remaining stops. Max reluctantly agrees when Vincent offers to pay him double his normal nightly profit. Vincent instructs him to park in an adjacent alley while he enters the building. Minutes later, a body drops onto the cab, cracking the windshield and propelling Max out of the cab. He realizes Vincent killed the man. Unable to escape, he is forced to help Vincent put the body in the trunk of the cab.

Vincent reveals that he is a hitman, and that he is in Los Angeles to murder five people before departing in the morning. Originally hoping to keep his occupation a secret, Vincent forces Max to drive him to his other destinations. Upon reaching the second target, Vincent ties Max to the steering wheel of the cab in order to make sure he doesn't run away while Vincent makes the second kill. While alone, Max tries to arouse the attention of passers by in order to free him, but the people that walk up to the cab turn out to be street thugs, and steal Max's wallet and Vincent's briefcase. As they walk away, Vincent appears and asks for the briefcase back. The thugs refuse, and then attempt to rob Vincent, who promptly guns the thugs down without mercy. Vincent also warns Max that he would be unwise to draw attention to himself again, otherwise more innocent people will die.

The third victim is a jazz musician (Barry Shabaka Henley) who owns a jazz bar. Vincent tells Max that he has a few minutes, and that he's a jazz fan. At the bar he invites the owner for a drink with himself and Max. After the club closes and the last waitress is busy in the kitchen, Vincent reveals to the owner the purpose of his visit, but offers to spare his life if he can answer a question correctly: "where did Miles Davis learn music?" (after a previous anecdote from the owner about his experiences in his youth of playing with Miles). The owner replies with an answer he believes is correct, but Vincent shoots him three times in the head using a suppressed handgun, and gives a different answer to his question.

Before locating the fourth victim, Max receives a call on the taxi dispatch to visit his hospitalized mother, Ida (Irma P. Hall), who has been inquiring about him. His visits are routine and Vincent is anxious that he does not break them or it might raise questions. He accompanies Max to the visit and pleasantly converses with Ida, allowing Max the opportunity to steal Vincent's briefcase and hurl it onto the nearby freeway, destroying the details on Vincent's next hits. Instead of killing Max, Vincent sends him into a Mexican club owned by Felix (Javier Bardem), the man who hired Vincent, ordering Max to impersonate him and acquire a backup USB flash drive containing the information for the last two targets.

Max meets Felix and acquires the flash drive. Meanwhile, Los Angeles Police Detective Fanning (Mark Ruffalo) discovers a connection between Vincent's three victims, reporting this information to the FBI agents, lead by Pedrosa (Bruce McGill), doing surveillance on Felix's nightclub, who identify the deceased as witnesses for a trial against Felix beginning the next day. In an attempt 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 disables the SWAT team and throws the crowded club into a panic, allowing Vincent to kill the fourth witness and his bodyguards and disappear. Detective Fanning, who followed the team into the nightclub, rescues Max and drags him outside where he is shot by Vincent, who beckons Max back into his cab.

Following their hasty getaway, Max and Vincent get into a heated personal argument, with Max calling Vincent a sociopath and Vincent retaliating with comments about Max's lack of initiative. Max deliberately crashes and flips the cab in the middle of the street. With distant police sirens approaching, Vincent abandons Max and runs into the city. The arriving officer discovers the first victim in Max’s trunk and prepares to arrest Max, who complies until he notices the face of the fifth intended victim on his computer: it is Annie, the prosecutor he picked up earlier.

Spotting the handgun Vincent left behind, Max overpowers the policeman and cuffs him to the flipped cab before running toward Annie's office building, where he discovers the building security guard is dead and his handgun is missing. He reaches Annie on a stolen cell phone and warns her about Vincent's approach. Max enters the building and stops the assassination attempt by shooting at Vincent, grazing his face; he then flees with Annie to the Metrorail station under the building. With the guard's handgun, an angry Vincent follows and corners them in an empty rail car. Vincent and Max fire at each other through a closed door, with Max escaping injury by stepping to the side as the rail car's lights flicked off, and shooting through the glass, fatally wounding Vincent who had used his routine manner of killing and attempted to perform the Mozambique drill on Max through the door, missing. Dropping his gun and collapsing into a seat, Vincent waits for death as Max and Annie silently look on. Vincent sardonically asks Max if anybody will notice he has died, echoing an earlier story of Vincent's about a man who died on the MTA and sat undiscovered by LA commuters for hours. Max and Annie get off the train at the next station while the train continues toward Long Beach with dawn breaking, and with a now dead Vincent sitting slumped in his seat.

[edit] Production

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 in the movie where the use of a digital camera is evident, in particular, scenes where the Los Angeles skyline or landscape is visible in the background, which demonstrate digital photography's deeper depth of field. Also the many night time scenes demonstrate how a digital camera is more capable of filming in low-light conditions, bringing out more details in darkness. One event of note was the filming of the coyote running across the road. The low-light capability allowed Mann to spontaneously film the animal that just happened to pass, without having to set up lighting for the shot.

Mann would later employ the same camera for the filming of Miami Vice.^[2]

See also: Digital cinematography.

[edit] Themes

In the film's DVD commentary, Michael Mann said that the general theme of Collateral is the clashing of ideals behind the two main characters. Vincent lives his life by improvisation and living in the moment. He often mentions his reverence for constant change and making things up as he goes along. In contrast, Max has been driving cabs for twelve years because he believes that everything he does must be meticulously planned, especially the "Island Limos" company he wishes to set up.

[edit] Reception

The film received positive reviews. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 213 reviews.^[3] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 71 out of 100, based on 41 reviews.^[4]

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 number 1 at the box office.^[5] It remained in theaters for 14 weeks and eventually grossed $101,005,703 in the United States and Canada. In other countries it grossed a total of $116,758,588 million, for a total worldwide gross of $217,764,291 million.^[1]

Richard Roeper placed Collateral as his 10th favorite movie 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".^[6]

[edit] Awards and nominations

2005 ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards

• Won - Top Box Office Film — James Newton Howard, Antonio Pinto

2005 Academy Awards (Oscars)

• Nominated - Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role — Jamie Foxx
• Nominated - Best Editing — Jim Miller, Paul Rubell

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

• Nominated - Best Actor (Film) — Tom Cruise
• Nominated - Best Director — Michael Mann
• Nominated - Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film
• Nominated - Best Writing — Stuart Beattie

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

• Nominated - Best Supporting Actor — Jamie Foxx
• Nominated - Best Picture

2005 Golden Globe Awards

• Nominated - Best Supporting Actor - Jamie Foxx

[edit] Soundtrack

The Collateral soundtrack was released on August 3, 2004 by Hip-O Records.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Collateral

• Official website
• Collateral at the Internet Movie Database
• Collateral at Allmovie
• Collateral at Rotten Tomatoes
• Collateral at Metacritic
• Collateral at Box Office Mojo
• Sight and Sound interview with Mann

Preceded by The Village	Box office number-one films of 2004 (USA) August 8	Succeeded by Alien vs. Predator
Preceded by Open Water	Box office number-one films of 2004 (UK) September 19	Succeeded by Wimbledon

v • d • e Films directed by Michael Mann 1980s Thief (1981) • The Keep (1983) • Manhunter (1986) 1990s The Last of the Mohicans (1992) • Heat (1995) • The Insider (1999) 2000s Ali (2001) • Collateral (2004) • Miami Vice (2006) • Public Enemies (2009)