Collateral

“We’re into Plan B. Still breathing? Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment” Been a while since I’ve watched this one and got reminded how much this movie absolutely ROCKS. If you want a great crime thriller Michael Mann is your guy, many consider Heat to be his magnum opus but Collateral is not too far behind in my eyes. Tom Cruise is at his absolute best here and Vincent is one of the coolest hitmen in movie history with his whitish gray hair, his sick sun glasses, and his gray suit. The dialogue between Vincent and Jamie Foxx’s character Max is just fantastic, Max will witness Vincent commit the most heinous act and make a comment about it and Vincent starts talking about Max’s life choices and what’s led him to this point, just an absolutely amazing script and Tom Cruise’s line delivery as well as Jamie Foxx’s are simply fantastic. Having not watched this for quite a while I had pretty much forgotten that Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem are here as well, while both playing relatively minor roles (especially Bardem) I think they’re both great in their limited screen time. In the past few years there’s definitely been a lot of reasons thrown out there to NOT like Jada Pinkett Smith but she’s really good throughout her screen time here as Annie, and the ending leads me to believe that her and Max lived happily ever after (this might just be me being overly optimistic). One scene I will specifically mention is the coyote scene, a really brief scene but just so rich in symbolism and ways to interpret the coyotes crossing the empty LA street, whether it’s meant to represent Vincent realizing he’s no better than the coyotes, them both sharing a predatory nature, or if it’s meant to represent absolutely nothing and was just something Michael Mann wanted to add in to leave up to our interpretation, it just goes to show how much of a master of his craft Mann really is. Overall this movie just has so much sauce, it should be spoken about a lot more and it’s definitely a favorite of mine. 50 Favorites Movies I NEED to get on Blu Ray/4K