Collateral

At the beginning of Collateral we are introduced to Max, a smart and sensitive LA cabbie who is somehow failing to live up to his full potential. Yet his luck suddenly seems to be in. A beautiful Federal Prosecutor climbs into his cab and by the end of the ride has been so charmed by the efforts of her soft-spoken driver to establish his character, that she can't help but slip him her business card through the window after settling the fare. Max must be thinking "that was a smooth ride to a first date"! The rest of the film is all about how wrong he is.

It's almost surprising that it has taken so long to bring together in one plot those two great American noirish character types, the hired assassin and the taxi-driver. This project must have had legs from the moment screenwriter Stuart Beattie said "it's about a cabbie with a philosophising hitman doing the night-shift in the back of his cab". The story could practically write itself and that maybe part of the reason this movie is ultimately only great for what it is.

Surfer and I both had the sense that there's a more interesting story trapped under layers of Hollywood convention here. Collateral ticks all the boxes of Hollywood script structure and pacing and in so doing delivers stylish entertainment that does a disservice to some of the movie's more interesting underlying themes. Such as, what good can come out of an encounter between a somewhat un-happening man with a great deal of soul and another that has vitality, wit and wisdom, but long ago parted company with his own immortal alter-ego?

There does seem to be some excellent dialogue, but it is often quite hard to follow, partly because it runs against the tension-building flow of the action. There is one short, incongrous moment involving a dog crossing the street next to the taxi. Otherwise the symbolism follows a strict set of formulaic genre guidelines.

Even when the screenplay tries to surprise us, such as the moment when Mark Ruffalo's cop character Fanning is unexpectedly removed from the storyline, it's really just a scheduled plot watershed moment. In this case the kick-off point for the last act in which Max will have to save the girl and deal with his client without any outside assistance. The earlier shock when the first body lands on Max's taxi is another one of those watershed moments where the opening act gives way to the middle section. Inevitably Max and Vincent are drawn into each other's worlds and bond to a point where only a girl can come between them. The last act, essentially a conventional chase sequence, therefore feels like a bit of a let down after the earlier set-up.

Javier Bardem has a good turn as a Mexican kingpin. Shortly after this there's the inevitable night-club scene, one of many 80s motifs that Michael Mann brings to the movie. Surfer and I saw echoes not just of Miami Vice, but also of Blade Runner and After Hours. At the beginning at least Mann also treats us to some of those slow helicopter shots taken from just above the downtown skyscrapers looking down. I seem to recall this was a technique used by Andrew Davis in The Fugitive. By the end of the film the neon-soaked streets of LA are eerily deserted.