Movie: Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004)
Collateral came out only four years before Iron Man, but the two feel like belonging to two completely different eras. The rise of superhero blockbusters has largely removed stylish star-driven 'Ordinary Joe' action movies out of the cinemas. That's a shame, cause these films kick ass and can be a gateway to further film exploration. Collateral is one of my favorites of this century, in part because it was one of the first films that made me realilse that the cinematography of a film can not only convey just as much information as the screenplay and the performances, but can also communicate things that the screenplay and performances can't. It's a film that makes it extremely obvious that the way in which a director arranges and presents sounds and images is just as important as which sounds and images are presented. At my first watch, the coyote scene was the most striking example of this. The lit up eyes of the coyote; how the second coyote strolls in rhythm with the music; the way in which the city streets surrounding Foxx and Cruise are lit up and framed in relation to them and the cab; It was evident that all these elements don't primarily serve a narrative purpose and that the unusal way in which they are filmed may well be the main reason for us seeing them. I found this cool as shit, in part because it was clear that there was more going on here beyond the unusualness. Mann was expressing certain ideas about Max (Jamie Foxx) and Vincent (Tom Cruise), the relationship between them, and their relationship to the city that couldn't be expresed through dialogue alone. At the same time, while presenting LA in a more stylised way than most filmmakers, he also made the city feel more tangible and immersive than more 'realistic' films. At certain moments it really evoked the feeling of being out at night in a brightly lit city.
This film may have ruined Michael Mann for me. I've seen The Insider and Heat and like them both, but feel they can't quite measure up. No film in which the De Niro/Pacino showdown is only the third best scene (I prefer the bank shoot out and Ashley Judd warning Val Kilmer) can be bad, but it never gives me the same immediate-yet-dreamy feeling of being part of the city as Collateral does. It also feels much more forced, trying way too hard to be the Big Action Epic. Yet, there is no scene as tense as the one where Max is standing on a parking lot looking across at Annie's (Jada Pankiett Smith) apartment building, as Vincent is hunting for her on the wrong apartment floor. As a bonus, Collateral also has one of the great nightclub shooutout scenes, though I understand Mann may have surpassed himself in that regard in Miami Vice. Meanwhile, it's not just Mann who is on the top of his game here. Cruise and Foxx are now so committted to respectively playing infallible heroes and cool badasses that it's almost surprising to see them be so good as a cold-blooded villain and an vulnerable everyman. Cruise in particular has a couple of scenes in which he is so direct in his aggressiveness that he becomes genuinely scary.
There were some very concrete plans to shoot this film in New York, with even Robert De Niro in the Jamie Foxx role. I am very glad this didn't happen. The film deserves to stand fully on its own and not be in the shadow of Taxi Driver. More importantly, Los Angeles and its huge sprawl is really key to what makes Collateral special. The film makes you constantly aware of life in the city going on around Cruise and Foxx, with many shots allowing us to see far beyond the space occupied by the characters. We are being made aware of the many millions of people who are unaware of the predicament Cruise and Foxx have found themselves in and vice versa. They are just one story among many other potential ones.
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