TextualIntercourse

Maru: So I recently (read an hour or so ago) watched a great movie called Collateral with my bud Probe. And we both loved it.

Probe: Sup.

Maru: Man, what really got me in Collateral was how well Tom Cruise played the villain. They had all kinds of creepy close up shots of his face in here.

Probe: Like I said while we were watching the movie, Tom Cruise always has a perpetual stone-cold sociopath face going on, this movie just finally decided to take advantage of that with long close up shots.

This was my second viewing of this movie, my first was when it just hit dvd in 2004. I went in only half remembering it, but liking what I remembered. This time around I noticed so much more, for better and worse.

Want to start going through the plot and give our thoughts as we go Maru?

Maru: Yeah, this was my second time watching it as well. First time on DVD though. But the synopsis sounds like as good a start as any. It starts out simple enough, a taxi driver in L.A. named Max, played by Jamie Foxx, picks up a lawyer going in to work on a case for the next day. They flirt, and she gives him her number. This is where he picks up Vincent, played by Tom Cruise.

And this, as they say, is where the fun starts.

Probe: The first thing I noticed this time around were the aerial shots. There’s a long sequence at the very beginning which introduces our three main players with very little dialogue all while showing as much of L.A. as possible. For a movie that’s more or less about driving, they sure went out of their way to create not only a sense of atmosphere with the setting, but to create a sense of understanding and familiarity with the audience. All of the driving sequences in this movie are cinematic joy.

But yes, we see our two main characters, Max Foxx), and Vincent (Cruise) start their day in L.A. Max walks through his routine with a clear familiarity and ease while Vincent is shown as uncomfortable and gawky. After that, Max gives a ride to Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) and here we see Max’s taxi-cab-confessional style of interaction established. It was a cute sequence where Max gets Pinkett’s character to open up about her job and insecurities, but compared to the other two stars batting for the fence, Pinkett’s character seems a little flat and expected, but that’s just as much to do with the script as it does the performance.

Before we move on: how weird was that bit with Jason Statham showing up for no reason?

Maru: It was weird one way, and in another it was kind of cool, a very Jason Statham role, even though he didn’t do much in the movie. Speaking of those aerial shots, not only do they give a sense of atmosphere, they’re also a way for the audience to get a general sense of what time certain scenes take place at. As the movie goes on, the streets start to get emptier and emptier, until Max’s cab is pretty much alone on the streets.

But anyways, more plot. Vincent convinced Max to drive him around all night, saying that he’s in town to finish some business and talk to a few friends. This story falls apart once a dead guy, shot by Vincent and pushed out a second floor window, lands on Max’s cab. It turns out that Vincent is a hired killer, and his whole plan was to have Max drive him to wherever his targets were, and then kill them, and at the end, kill Max.

I gotta say, Vincent and Max’s conversations are pretty gold in this movie, before and after Max learns Vincent is a killer. There’s no specific lines that jump out at you as quotable or memorable, but every conversation leave me with a sense of enjoyment from their by-play. Vincent, despite being a hired killer isn’t like a lot of other movie hired killers, not loudly self assured or anything. Vincent’s self assuredness is a lot quieter, and seems to actually like the guy he’s gonna kill at the end.

Probe: The conversations make this movie, the actual plot is more or less a vehicle to carry on the dialogue between the two. These men who are opposites in so many ways, in terms of morals, success, and how they view themselves. They’re not just talking heads either, thanks to the fact that the cab is the main setting, most of the conversation is had during driving, and it’s shot with so much attention to detail. The part of this movie that impressed me the most was that while Vincent was talking at one point you heard the faint music of a car outside, and it blended perfectly.

After the first murder, the movie runs at a murder-conversation-murder pace for a little while with Vincent also killing a well dressed man and the owner of a Jazz club. All the while the police are starting to sniff around and piece things together, headed by Detective Fanning an undercover cop that dealt with the first victim. Fanning is one step of the other cops in his line of thinking, but he’s constantly worried about other cops or the FBI taking the case out of his hands and causing more damage than is necessary (man it was so hard not to make a title drop there). What I did not realize for the entire length of the movie was that Fanning was played by Mark Ruffalo, I mean christ, I did not recognize him at all.

Have any thoughts on the first three hits or Detective Ruffalo Maru?

Maru: I think the most interesting hit was the jazz player. It was the only time we learned something about someone Vincent was going to kill, other than a main character. The jazz man tells stories about playing in his club when he was a kid, playing with Miles Davis and how cool he was. Not bad, not good, but cool. Max figures out that the jazz man is another of Vincent’s targets, and tries to get Vincent to let him go. He agrees to let the jazz man live and disappear if he can answer a question about Miles Davis. The jazz man answers the question correctly, but it wasn’t the whole answer, so Vincent kills him. He was probably going to kill him no matter what though.

Speaking of Miles Davis and jazz, the music in this movie is very eclectic, going from blues, to jazz to just about every other genre you can think of. And it all fits with the scenes perfectly. It really makes it feel like you’re in the car with them, cause I know I’m always listening to music while I’m driving somewhere.

As for Detective Ruffalo, I have nothing to say other than this dude likes playing detectives. Collateral, Shutter Island…

Got anything to say about Vincent’s other targets Probe, or how they were killed?

Probe: The second one was basically a nobody, there to hammer home the scenario.
Jazz man however was pretty cool, and his hit surprised me by being the best part of that scene. His story began to trail off into irrelevance, but keeps it close enough to the vest that i didn’t roll my eyes.

After the Jazz club, the taxi dispatcher informs Max that his Mother has been calling because he missed his visit with her at the hospital, so Vincent forces Max to go pay her a visit, under the pretense that if he starts missing his commitments, people might come looking for him.

At the hospital they run into Detective Fanning in the elevator, in a move that I thought was too cute for its own good (and what hospital has its morgue on the top floor?).

Care to tackle the hospital scene and its result Maru?

Maru: Right-o. So, the cabbie dispatcher calls up Max, and tells him his mom has been calling all night long wondering where he was. Apparently, every night Max visits his mother in the hospital, makes sure she’s alright, and then goes on with the job. Well, since he’s been driving Vincent around, he hasn’t really had time to visit his mom, not to mention wanting to keep Vincent the hell away from her. Which, really, if I had an assassin riding around the back of my car killing people, I wouldn’t want them anywhere near my mom either. But anyways, Vincent forces Max to go to the hospital, cause if he didn’t, it would be breaking routine, and thus, would be suspicious. After Max, Vincent and Max’s mom talk, Max steals the briefcase with all the information about the targets. After a chase, Max ends up on an over pass, and he tosses the briefcase onto the highway, where it is promptly run over by a truck.

Of course, instead of being totally pissed off, Vincent is more amused than anything. He points out to Max that, yeah, destroying his stuff was an inconvenience, but there are back ups out there. So, he has Max go into a nightclub called Fever to retrieve them, threatening to kill Max’s mom on his way out of town if he’s not successful.

This scene is one of the best ones in the movie. It’s the where Max decides that he can’t keep being pushed around by Vincent and the situation he’s gotten himself into. He doesn’t know exactly how to get out of it, or stop it yet, but here, right here, he’s decided he has to do something other than let Vincent drag him around town on a killing spree ending with his own death.

Probe, any thoughts on the Fever scene? Different interpretation, or do you think I got it just about right?

Probe: Fever is actually the name of the club in the NEXT scene, I’m not sure if the club where Max meets Vincent’s boss was ever named.

But yeah, that scene. The boss starts telling a long-winded story about Santa Clause, and this is the point where the movie got too cute with the dialogue. The Jazz scene was pushing it, but this just went beyond the attempted realism the film was shooting for, right to being full of itself.

Outside of the monologue, the thing to really pay attention to in this scene is how Max is aping all of Vincent’s tics and repeating things that Vincent has said. We’ve seen little hints at this before, but this is the first time the movie made it clear that Max is slowly taking on what Vincent is selling. The threatening power and exclusionary attitude are real alluring things.

After the scene finishes and Max gets the rest of the names for Vincent, we see that the cops and the FBI have started to piece things together, except that the feds think Max is Vincent and plan on killing him on sight and only Mark Ruffalo thinks that someone is pulling Max’s strings

Which is another thing I didn’t like: the Feds were cartoonishly ignorant and incompetent. They were a helicopter away from being the Feds in Die Hard, and while I love Die Hard, like seriously, I think Die Hard is still the best straight action movie ever made, this is not Die Hard. Die Hard did not strive for realism, nor character study, which is what this movie is all about, and having the FBI act that trigger happy and dumb rang hollow and took me out of the movie.

Anyway, on to the next hit, which takes place at the club called Fever, Maru?

Maru: I’m not so sure Max is actually believing what Vincent believes, because…

Well, we’ll get there soon enough. So, we know that Vincent is a killer. But up until this point the only evidence that Vincent is Dangerous with a capital D was when he was going up against the three idiot muggers in the alley that I’m not sure we mentioned, and the jazz man, both of whom he took mostly by surprise. But Fever is where the movie says “This is how fucking Dangerous Vincent is.” Up until this point, Vincent has made sure to get his targets alone, with as few witnesses around as he could, waiting for the waitress to walk into the back room at the jazz club, his first target being alone in his apartment, etc. But the fourth target is in a club, surrounded by bodyguards, security, and bouncers, and Vincent calmly and methodically wipes them, and the target, out.  I’m not gonna lie, as Probe pointed out, this really isn’t much of an action movie. But this scene really is action-y.

Of course, Max is in the club as well, used to distract any cops or FBI agents. Thing is, Detective Ruffalo is convinced that Max isn’t Vincent, and that he’s innocent in all of this. Ruffalo says he believes that Max is innocent, and uses the shoot out between Vincent and the guards to escape from the club. He takes too long, and by the time they exit, Vincent is waiting for them. And, in typical Vincent behavior, he shoots Detective Ruffalo, and forces Max back into the cab.

I won’t lie. I like to gush. I like a lot of scenes in this movie, but the next taxi ride is probably my favorite scene. But first, Probe would like to say a few words.

Probe: Oh, I don’t think Max ever really buys what Vincent is selling, but he does start taking on characteristics, right up until that last cab scene.

As far as action goes, for a movie that’s so interestingly shot, I suppose it might be considered odd that the one with the most action would be the one that’s the most visually boring. It’s not bad, it takes the movie from point A to point B, and the death of the Detective was necessary as it breaks any illusions Max had about Vincent, but the action scene inside the club is just kinda there.

The last cab scene however, while not my favorite scene, it is definitely a highlight, and I have a lot to say about it, but I’ll let Maru tackle the summary.

Maru: Gotcha. So, like Probe said, at this point Max has lost any hope of getting out of this alive. He and Vincent talk, and Max actually starts to argue with Vincent instead of just allowing himself to be pushed around. And this is where things get interesting. Vincent posits that what he does, it doesn’t actually matter. “There’s no reason. There’s no good reason, there’s no bad reason to live or to die.” “Then what are you?” “I’m indifferent.” and then he goes into how small we are compared to the universe, and how we really don’t matter. What happens next is Max using that against Vincent. He begins speeding up, running red lights, taking sharp corners at high speeds, all the while Vincent holds a gun to his head and tells him to slow down. He refuses, and keeps speeding up. Keeps repeating the same things Vincent just said. “What does it matter? We’re all so little out here.”

And this is why its my favorite scene in the movie. Max just gives a great big “Fuck you” to Vincent’s philosophy, and the crashes his car, hoping to stop Vincent from getting to his last target. This conversation, to me, is one of those “If nothing matters, why bother?” versus “If nothing matters, why not?” arguments, and Max comes out squarely on the side of Why Not. It just speaks to something in me that hopes that people, deep down, are good and decent, even in a world where everything seems dirty and unclear. Kind of ties back to Vincent’s feelings about how every time he goes to L.A. he feels dirty and wants to be out of here as soon as possible. I dunno, maybe that’s just the superhero fan in me talking.

Probe? Any thoughts?

Probe: Yeah like I’ve been saying, Max has been struggling reconciling Vincent’s statements with how he has lived his own life and where it has landed him, and here he is at the high point of the film, rejecting both Vincent’s views and his own failure to act by wrecking his cab. It really brings the moment together.

It was the big climax of the film, unfortunately we still have more than 20 minutes left. While the remaining scenes are not bad by any means, you do get a sense that the movie is now limping to a forgone conclusion. The winner of the thematic battle has been determined, now we’re just waiting for the text to catch up to the subtext.

But we can’t stop here, so after the crash, both men walk away (rather miraculously) without much injury. Vincent slinks off after his last kill and Max lays down is resignation. After a police officer arrives at the scene to help, the officer find the body in the trunk from the beginning of the movie and arrests Max, who goes along with a relieved resignation. But then, just as he’s being read his rights, he sees the name of Vincent’s next hit in the wreckage of the cab. It’s Jada Pinkett Smith’s character. So naturally, instead of convincing the cop to get protection for the attorney whose lead witnesses have all been murdered tonight, he beats up the cop up, handcufsf him to the cab, and then runs after Vincent.

We’ve got one more scene to go Maru!

Maru: and of course you leave it to me. Well, like Probe says, we’re nearing the ending. The reason, by the way, the cop was trying to arrest Max was because the cop found the body of Target #1 in his trunk. So, Max picks up the gun that was being held to his head, and chases after Vincent. On the way, he picks up a cellphone (read: mugs a guy for it) in order to call Anne, Jada Pinkett Smith’s character, and warn her that Vincent was coming after her. After a bit of “Is this a joke?” “No, it really isn’t”, Max is able to convince her that Vincent is in the building, and is coming to kill her. First he tells her to get out, then, when he’s about to tell her to hide, the phone’s battery dies on him. Max goes rushing off to save Anne. Which leads to a kind of amusing scene when Max tries to break the door using a trash can, and it just bounces back at him. It kind of shows that, yeah, Max is trying to be a hero, but he’s still a cabbie in over his head. Eventually he gets in, finds Anne, and manages to shoot Vincent and escape.

Like Probe said, its kind of a straight shoot to the end from here on out. But, eventually Max and Anne are able to escape onto a train, and Vincent follows them. Max and Anne reach the front of the train, with Vincent hot on their trail. Eventually, it turns into a shoot out between Max and Vincent, both emptying their guns at each other. Vincent goes to reload when he notices that he’s been shot. He brings up a comment he said at the beginning of the movie, something like “A man died on a train here in L.A. Took them 6 hours to notice he was gone.” Vincent wonders how long it will take people to notice he’s gone as well.

Anything I’ve missed Probe? Final thoughts time?

Probe: You got the gist of it.

I appreciated the touches to at least attempt to keep the relatability they were attempting before we started scenes that looked like a deleted scene from John Woo’s Hard Boiled. The trashcan bouncing back off the glass, Max’s unfamiliarity with guns, and seeing him screw up the same headshot that we’ve seen Vincent do about 4 or 5 times now, so that Vincent ends up with only a bloody ear? All good ways to keep a suspenseful chase sequence lively but grounded.

Even the first time I watched it, I could predict how the film would end once they got down into the subway, and it was overly clever, but the imagery still managed to work.

All in all, I loved this movie. I nitpicked it a lot, but it is still a beautifully shot movie, with amazing care for detail and production, so if you’re into that, then you’re good.

If not, it’s still a strong and clever suspense movie, with two stars at the absolute top of their game. The dialogue is engaging, but with all of the callbacks to earlier conversations in the film, without strong performances, the movie could have easily come off as trite, but Cruise and Foxx blew it out of the water.

Jesus Christ we’ve been talking about this movie for a long time. Which I guess is the mark of either a great or a terrible movie. But I tend to think this one falls into the former category.

Maru: Agreed. This movie was great stuff. Clever dialogue, great shots to establish location, and actors that were created to play these roles, at least in Tom Cruise’s position.

Christ we have been talking about this movie for a while. Welp, if you’ve made it this far, congratulations, and thanks for reading. See you boys and girls next time!