“Collateral” — Read Along
Tom Cruise at his unlikeable best.
At the time of writing, Thomas Cruise Mapother IV has 46 official big screen outings to his historic cinematic name and I’ve seen a frankly embarrassing 33 of them. Listen, we all have our roles to play in this surreal upside down existence we call life and Tom Cruise plays the part of “Movie Star” to absolute perfection. He’s a movie star! Forever in the “News”, his life a moving feast for public consumption, his devotion to Scientology ripe for amateur scribes to ridicule, a friend of English Royalty, the carrier of the flame for Mission: Impossible, Tom Cruise is a movie star.
Difficult as it may be to picture your humble narrator, a cantankerous old soul forever biting back at a world he’ll always bitterly resent and never understand, being a fan of the razzmatazz that is Tom Cruise, but I am. Sometimes you just have to believe or indeed disbelieve what you’re seeing. Switch off. Down tools. Cuddle up with a loved one and banish all swirling thoughts from a wicked world. Watch a Tom Cruise movie!
Watch a movie star playing his part.
In between going to the cinema as a bribe from my dear old Mum to get my hair cut (stop laughing!) and watching The Exorcist: Believer with my beautiful son a month or so ago, I must confess to watching 33 Tom Cruise movies, many more than once with Magnolia watched once a month “just to keep my hand in”, and I have a further 13 films in his storied career to watch and intend on avoiding every single one them. There’s only so far I’m prepared to go in a lifetime’s worth of fandom! So I won’t be returning to 1981 and Endless Love and nor will I break my habit of not watching either Risky Business or All The Right Moves, apparently the Cruiser’s breakthrough roles. I jumped aboard the Tom Cruise bandwagon in the magical English summer of 1986 and Top Gun, the first of an incredible movie streak of seven blockbuster events in a row, from hustling pool with Paul Newman in The Color of Money through to promising Robert Duvall he wouldn’t make a fool out of him for guiding him around a racetrack in Days of Thunder.
Far and Away has remained far and indeed far away from my watching radar, but please consider this “run” of movies from Tom Cruise and a movie decade almost without equal (if you delete Far and Away):
(1992) A Few Good Men
(1993) The Firm
(1994) Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
(1996) Mission: Impossible
(1996) Jerry Maguire
(1999) Eyes Wide Shut
(1999) Magnolia
From a fresh faced basketball spinning rapscallion trying to best Jack Nicholson in a court-room drama full of lies through to a long haired and horribly repulsive sex guru who despises himself almost as much as the radiance and love he falsely projects. “Show me the money!” to working with the master on the master’s final performance for the world and a horribly creepy descent into the secretive underworld of a world we pretend doesn’t exist as we’re clouded and distracted by our own existential thoughts on our own place and purpose in our own lives. Maybe I’m more than a little biased but these are two separate “runs” of cinema blockbuster one after the other, summer after sunshine filled summer.
I’ll never watch Tropic Thunder, Knight and Day or Rock of Ages but instead return once a month to Magnolia and his ridiculous performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s master work, swoon as “Everything in its Right Place” by Radiohead accompanies our movie star in an eerily empty Times Square and watch his every ridiculous stunt as he saves the world with a ragtag crew of misfits and the “Impossible Mission Force” he leads.
I’m a Tom Cruise fan and because of the stunts that proliferate his world saving adventures as Ethan Hunt, so is my son. He has a long way to go to catch me but as he’s grown into a more age appropriate audience so I’ve slowly introduced him to the earlier works of Quentin Tarantino, the more offbeat comedies of the Coen Brothers and dare I say the more cerebral of Christopher Nolan’s roll call of incredible films? I’ve nagged him with tales as to Cruise playing horribly against his shiny Hollywood type in Collateral for a long time, as well as dropping in conversation that Jason Statham plays a “blink and you’ll miss him” cameo, and finally he relented last evening and in need of a film, we went to the movies with a movie star.
My son gave Collateral a 10/10 rating but this was to be expected. He’s a “chip off the old block” with his mother’s grace and beauty and his father’s ability to be bloody annoying. He’s a film fan and he knows a Tom Cruise film when he sees one and although my waxing lyrical of the film’s director Michael Mann went over his head (“Just look at the way the director uses mirrors and reflections, kid”) I have pleasure in knowing I still have to introduce him to the likes of Heat, Ali, The Insider and The Last of the Mohicans from the directing stable of Michael Mann. He has many more Tom Cruise movies to catch up on too and one of his biggest fan’s to watch them with over a bowl of popcorn or three.
Here’s a snippet from my original review of Collateral penned and published over a decade ago:
“It’s abundantly clear just minutes into the film that this is a Michael Mann production, with trademark quick editing, constant mixes of long and close up zooms and particularly long and well used overhead crane shots. It’s stylised, glossy and typical Mann, using the bright lights of the city as a backdrop wherever possible and continually focusing on these via reflections in the taxi windows. Two Directors of Photography were used on this film and both deserve credit for their achievements, as when within the confines of Max’s taxi, their work is expertly shown. Take a bow Messrs Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron! Adding to the stylised feel is a fantastic musical score from James Newton Howard. Naturally.
Foxx as Max dominates the opening fifteen minutes, often staring at his postcard of a Maldives beach and taking a few seconds before driving to his next pick up. With two dashboard cameras, one directly on the face of Max and one on Max and the back seat customer, you are immediately immersed in his world and of his reactions to his customers telephone conversations and observations. Picking up “Annie” (Jada Pinkett Smith), Max visibly softens and their interplay builds to a gentle teasing and flirting, backed by the brilliant “Hands of Time” by Groove Armada, and as Annie departs, Max hands her the postcard of the beach and receives her telephone number in exchange.
The gorgeous beginning of the film continues to the strains of Bach’s “Air on a G String” as Vincent now enters the taxi and through their awkward inter play it becomes apparent their world’s could not be any further apart. Vincent, prone to speaking in bursts of statements and so called truths, whilst a now more melancholic Max is quieter and more reflective. This perfectly crafted opening twenty minutes comes to a conclusion with a simple, if pressured, offering from Vincent. Several hundred dollars if Max will be his unofficial chauffeur for the evening whilst he visits five friends in the city, with an extra bonus if he makes his early return flight.
Reluctantly accepted, the beautiful and gentle beginning is shattered as Vincent’s first victim of the evening crashes on top of the taxi.
A stunning and sublime Michael Mann masterpiece has begun”.
So now dear reader you have a choice: You can either
(a) Read my entire review of this film via the first link below
(b) Then read my opus blog article on the films of Michael Mann
(c) Watch either of my Youtube or Rumble channel videos of my reading of my own review of Collateral, hence the “Read Along” moniker.
or (d) Treat yourself to any combination of the above or even (e) disappear to pastures new within our collective electrical Matrix.
Oh, and (f) There’s a link to Volume 1 (of 7) in my e-book and Kindle series of “Essential Film Reviews Collection”. All free to read if you have an Amazon Kindle “Unlimited” package.
Bless you for reading.
"Collateral" - Original Review
"Michael Mann and 9 films for your delectation"
"Collateral" - My Youtube video
"Collateral" - My Rumble video
"The Essential Film Reviews Collection" - Vol.1
Thanks for reading. Here are three recent editions to my “Read Along” series for your delectation:
"The Killing of a Sacred Deer" - Read Along