Let us now praise COLLATERAL a movie that just flat does it. The bad? First ten minutes are very slow as it shows the boring boring life of the cabbie. A boring life that is ripped apart when hit man Cruise picks that perticular cab and the movie goes off the launch pad for a ride into the LA night and the subconscious. The pre-ending is Hollywood Summer movies. But in between this is crackling stuff. Two characters, a hit man who talks like an art critic and a cabbie (Foxx) who has fantasies instead of dreams, riding through the LA night that Mann paints in ever changing shades using street lights, headlights, and neon signs in every foreign language you can imagine. It's an LA where a dead man can ride a train for six hours before anyone notices he's dead and not sleeping. We experience the cold as ice hit man Cruise taking down his targets while the terrified cabbie has his fantasy life held before him to examine. Their dialogue is right out of Sartre and Kierkegaard; William Falkner and Raymond Chandler when all were at their very best. The questions in this bizarre drive through the night of reality and subconscience revolve around "Who are you, really? I mean who the fuck are you? Why are you on this earth? You didn't get sick when 6,000 people died in Rawanda last year so how can you be upset over one death of one guy you don't even know?" And that is just for starters. This is a must see movie. director/writer Michael Mann and Tom Cruise at the tops of their great games, and Jamie Foxx is simply marvelous. See this movie if you don't see another one this summer. BTW in a typical existential ending the question of "Who are you, really?" is answered. Or is it? Wow. This is talent on display.

BTW there is only one other movie I can recall that deals with the "who are you, really?" in a violence metaphor like this. It's a very old movie you cannot find anywhere called "Hard Contract" (1969) with Lee Remick, James Coburn, and Sterling Hayden which is not available in stores but only for sale on the web. Written and directed by Lee Pogostin it made no money, but again uses a hit man and an innocent (the knockout Lee Remick) to spin a great yarn. Lost its ass because it didn't have the Summer Movie ending. A great rental if you can find it but it is very talky so you have to be into that.