Collateral

They don’t make thrillers like they did in the 90s and early 2000s anymore  💔 There’s something weirdly hypnotic about Collateral. It’s not loud or overly dramatic, it just unfolds, slowly tightening around you until you realize there’s no way out of it. What got me most isn’t even the plot (though it’s great), it’s the feeling. The way LA at night feels almost empty but not safe, like anything could happen and no one would notice. The whole movie lives in that tension. Tom Cruise as Vincent is honestly terrifying, but not in an obvious way. He’s calm, controlled, almost philosophical, which somehow makes everything worse. He doesn’t feel like chaos, he feels like inevitability, like he was always going to show up in Max’s life no matter what. But there are these cracks in that exterior, brief moments that feel like humanity slipping through, like when he stands up for Max to his boss or pushes him to call the girl instead of staying stuck in his routine. I found myself almost rooting for him at times, or hoping for some kind of redemption or connection between him and Max, which made it even more unsettling. Really great performance by him.  And Max… I think that’s what makes the movie hit. He’s not a hero, just someone stuck. Stuck in routine, stuck in excuses, stuck in a life he keeps insisting is temporary but never changes. Vincent forcing him through the night feels less like a hostage situation and more like a confrontation with everything he’s been avoiding. It’s a quiet kind of existential dread. Like the scariest thing isn’t Vincent, it’s the idea of waking up years later and realizing you never really lived at all. Also that wolf scene?? Random but weirdly beautiful. The film has moments like that, brief poetic pauses in the middle of something dark. I don’t know why they did that to Tom Cruise’s hair though lmao