Review of Collateral (2004) by Abdullah A — 09 Jul 2015

This is a pretty great thriller that gets better and better as it progresses until it reaches this ultimate level of you being immersed into it.

The best thing about this film is its awesome tension filled thriller moments. Something that really added to these scenes was that they were things that you didn't really see before or things that you didn't expect or things that you kinda expected to happen and then when it happens you're like "holy !@#$". And the reason there are scenes like that is because they really explored very well the things that could happen if you were Max and stuck in his situation, and I really love that about this film and is my favorite part of it. And from me to you, one of the scenes has got to be my one of my favorite scenes in action movie history, and it involves Tom Cruise's character Vincent and two thugs who stole his suitcase. Now that was amazing.

Another one of the great things about this film is its dialogue and discussions between the characters. Action movies usually have trouble with the transitions between action scenes, and end up putting some irrelevant filler scenes to attempt to fill the gap and it never really works well. This film had dialogue, and it is done really well, and personally, I absolutely love it when movies have great dialogue. And what I mean by that is dialogue that when you listen to it, it makes you reflect back on your life and your actions and leaves you pondering on for a while. And when the dialogue isn't that, it's developing the characters in a way that makes you attached to them, and makes you understand them, and makes them all the more believable.

I have to appreciate this film's cinematography and editing, not that it was absolutely stunning or special, but in it that there were so many moments where they could've easily gone for shaky cam or quick-cut blind cover-up editing, but it wasn't like that, and they did it well, and that is very refreshing. There were just one or two moments were I wish they'd done wider shots, but really, that's just me and my inner amateur talking and won't apply to everyone.

The performances of Jamie Fox and Tom Cruise were really good. Jamie Fox really works as this regular guy cab driver. And Tom Cruise - I didn't see him as the usual hero Tom Cruise, but instead, as this "badass sociopath" that Vincent is. I saw the character instead of the actor, which is always a great compliment for an actor playing a role. Then there's Mark Ruffalo's character. He was definitely useful in adding tension to certain scenes and added to the plot, but I felt like they either should have went all the way with his character, or toned him down more, because there are certain scenes that seemed a bit unnecessary because they weren't really relevant to the two main characters.

However, I'm definitely gonna say that there were some problems with the movie's execution. In the beginning, there's this piano music in the background and it accomplishes nothing but getting you feeling sleepy and distracting you from the great dialogue. I think it should've been completely silent and you just heard the voices of the characters. There are also times in the film where they attempt to transition between one scene and another with some song and views of the city, but they really feel out of place, and I wonder why they didn't just get straight to the point and skip the transition. I'm guessing this was done in order to cool down the audience after an intense sequence, but that's already done well with the good dialogue and the transitions just cool you down too much.

And there were two scenes that I felt could've been done a bit better, although it's probably nitpicking from me at this point. ..................SPOILER ALERT!!!...................... The scene when the police officers pull over Max and Vincent in the taxi was very interesting, but I felt that it ended kind of anti-climactically. Like I was thinking Vincent might've actually killed the police officers by something Max messed up in his improvisation and that would've been crazy good. The second scene was the ending, and though this is a really small thing, I wished that Max also died with Vincent. I feel like it would've been more impactful and realistic, given that Vincent shot through his entire set of bullets from the pistol - I'm not saying all of them should've hit, cuz he did get shot, but at least one or two. But anyways, other than that, as I already stated, the ending was really good and it actually touched me Vincent's last words................. SPOILER DONE .......................

Overall, really great film and I'd definitely recommend you watch it.