i am actually looking forward to "collateral"

I can't imagine what sort of French people Denby hangs out with, because this cosmic description of 'the French' excludes virtually every French filmmaker, critic, and filmgoer I know--many of whom are even more delighted by 'the philistine exuberance of American entertainment' than Denby is."

The coyotes were a brief, nice touch -- Cruise's hair was the exact same color.

Michael Mann Loves His Work
By A. O. SCOTT

ICHAEL MANN'S new movie, "Collateral," which opened on Friday, is about two men, Max and Vincent, trying to get through a hard night's work. Max, played by Jamie Foxx, is a Los Angeles cabdriver, while Vincent (Tom Cruise) follows the more esoteric vocation of hit man. Arriving from out of town with the assignment of killing five people by morning, Vincent recruits Max — kidnaps might be another word for it — to drive him from victim to victim, a journey across Los Angeles that turns into a long noir nightmare. The two men's jobs and their contrasting temperaments place them at fatal and obvious cross-purposes: Max, who has been "temporarily" driving his taxi for 12 years while deferring his dream of starting his own limousine company, is timid and indecisive, character traits that the steely, self-confident Vincent readily exploits to turn Max into his helpless accomplice.

If Vincent were simply the domineering bad guy and Max his innocent hostage, the movie would be a dull and sadistic exercise in violation and payback. But Mr. Cruise and Mr. Foxx are as immersed in their work as Vincent and Max are in theirs, and it is this instinctive, obsessive absorption that binds the two characters together and gives their encounter a shiver of genuine and unpredictable drama. Taking account of Max's spotless, orderly Crown Victoria, and noting his authoritative command of the city's geography and traffic patterns, Vincent understands he is in the presence of a kindred spirit, a professional whose drive to be good at what he does is less an ambition than a reflex. Much later, as "Collateral" regresses to the generic mean with a predictable climactic standoff, Vincent points his gun at Max and barks, with marvelous exasperation, "I do this for a living."

And the movie is, at root, passionately, even morbidly concerned with what people — men, mostly — do for a living and what it means to them to do it. Which may just be another way of saying that it's a Michael Mann picture. Though he is by no means a prolific director, having made five films since 1992 and only eight features in all, his characters seem to be perpetually busy. In "Collateral" 's after-hours world of blinking headlights and bleary neon, nearly everyone is at work: not only Vincent and Max, but also the lawyer who was Max's earlier fare (Jada Pinkett Smith), the detective who stumbles upon the scene of Vincent's first murder (Mark Ruffalo) and the various drug kingpins, nightclub owners and F.B.I. surveillance operatives who round out the movie's nocturnal population. (The only people who seem to be at home or out on the town are Vincent's designated targets.)

"Collateral" is, above all, a study in professionalism, an idea that registers not only in its meticulously composed frames and disciplined performances but also in the psychological grounding of its story. Max and Vincent's accidental partnership suggests a diabolical variation on a classic buddy-movie conceit, but the fact that it comes about while they are both at work somehow gives their relationship its jarring, fascinating complexity. Their strained chats — grim riffs on the kind of idle palaver that occupies urban cabbies and their clients — gather nuances and shadows in the grainy darkness, overtones of rivalry, collaboration, aggression and sympathy. What Max and Vincent are to each other does not quite have a name: not friends, obviously, but not entirely enemies either. If they are, at the beginning, perfect strangers linked by a passing transaction, they somehow end up understanding each other better than anyone else does. Are they soul mates? Sublimated lovers? Or just, in the end, improbable colleagues?

These questions might just as well be asked about Lowell Bergman and Jeffrey Wigand, the real-life characters whose crusade against big tobacco was the subject of Mr. Mann's tense and prickly 1999 movie, "The Insider." They could also apply to William Petersen's F.B.I. man and Brian Cox as the first Hannibal Lecter in "Manhunter" (also known as "Red Dragon"), Mr. Mann's 1986 adaptation of Robert Harris's novel (pointlessly remade by Brett Ratner two years ago). Shot in high-definition digital video with a story strictly limited in space and time, "Collateral" lacks the sprawl of "Ali," the operatic grandeur of "Heat" or the thematic depth of "The Insider." But for all its modesty of means and narrowness of focus, it demonstrates that Mr. Mann has not shed his characteristic preoccupations.

He cut his teeth on television police shows, notably "Starsky and Hutch," and he has returned to the form, as a producer, periodically since his heyday in the 80's with "Miami Vice" and "Crime Story." Cop dramas may have a lot to say about our ideas of crime and punishment, but they have even more to say about our fears and fantasies regarding work — its deadening routines, and also its moments of terror and inspiration.

Mr. Mann's work shows a particular concern for the tensions and pleasures of collaboration. Most of the urban crime fighters of the 1970's were maverick loners, like Kojak and Baretta, whose big-screen patron saint was the incorrigibly solitary Dirty Harry Callahan. Starsky and Hutch were a maverick pair, their overheated and cooled-out personalities shaken together like oil and vinegar. Crockett and Tubbs, in "Miami Vice," were a smoother mix, and Don Johnson with his stubble and pushed-up sleeves eventually overshadowed the less tormented double-breasted suavity of Philip Michael Thomas. But their partnership was nonetheless the emotional center of the show.

In the history of cop dramas, "Miami Vice" remains an intriguing anomaly, a sleek postmodernist detour on the genre's march toward ever more emphatic realism. Television police work in "N.Y.P.D. Blue" and in the "Law and Order" and "C.S.I." franchises has been relentlessly procedural, caught up in the often impersonal intricacies of weekly casework. "Miami Vice" was cavalierly unconcerned with such matters. At its best, it was not about the techniques of crime fighting so much as it was about its existential challenges. The series, which never much troubled itself with realism, was both vivid and abstract, like an Antonioni movie in prime time.

As a film director, Mr. Mann has developed a greater regard for naturalistic detail without sacrificing the hyperreal intensity — and unworldly beauty — of his visual compositions. His characters are much more attuned to the nuances of craft than Crockett and Tubbs. (It may help that they also tend to be played by better actors.) Daniel Day-Lewis's character in Mr. Mann's rousing, revisionist version of "The Last of the Mohicans" (1992) is, true to his literary roots in James Fenimore Cooper, a natural woodsman and warrior, which is to say a highly trained and disciplined tracker and marksman. But he practices his craft with a grace and concentration that are nearly unconscious, which makes him the ideal Michael Mann hero, linked both to James Caan's safecracker in "Thief" (1981) and to Will Smith's heavyweight champ in "Ali" (2001).

These men approach their work like artists, and the boundary between superior technique and genuine art traces a shadowy line through Mr. Mann's films. It is hard not to see some of his impulsive, perfectionist characters, twisting between joy and self-doubt, as his surrogates. They are trying — Ali may be the purest, headiest example — to transcend the distinction between getting the job done and reinventing it altogether. When they succeed, their flourishes of style and invention will look not only inspired but efficient. When Al Pacino's detective is asked by a subordinate, early in "Heat," if he recognizes the M.O. of the supercriminal who heisted millions of dollars in bearer bonds from an armored truck, he replies with a shrug. "His M.O. is, he's good." Good work, whether cabdriving or contract killing, explains itself.

The easiest knock against Mr. Mann has always been that his M.O. is a little too good. The style of his movies — his bravura tracking shots through crowded rooms, his juxtaposition of blurry background images with supersharp close-ups, his synesthetic sense of color and sound — has often seemed out of proportion to their stories or their subjects. "Heat" takes a story of Los Angeles cops and robbers and blows it up into Kurosawa or Shakespeare. "The Insider" is as nerve-rackingly suspenseful as any serial-killer picture, and yet it deals with broadcast journalism and scientific research, topics that in the unsupersaturated light of actual life are perhaps more mundane than the mise-en-scène allows.

But style in these movies serves more than a decorative function. It's a window into the souls of the heroes, whose perception of the world is abnormally bright, busy and dangerous. Most of the time, work is drudgery, compromise, frustration, but in Mr. Mann's films it carries a thrilling charge of sublimity, danger and grace. Whatever his heroes do for a living, they do as if it were a matter of life and death, which it often literally is. That may, in the end, be the only difference between them and the man whose work they inhabit.  

"Cop dramas may have a lot to say about our ideas of crime and punishment, but they have even more to say about our fears and fantasies regarding work — its deadening routines, and also its moments of terror and inspiration."

And you say you object to Law and Order "on principle"... what principle? It's a police procedural!

Looked incredible though. Made me proud to be a "Californian".

it's strange: usually when you have a director who is a bravado visual stylist, the complaint is that they shouldn't write their own scripts. but i hope mann writes his next film himself.

it was amazingly gorgeous. the effect of light shifts and fast movement on the dv was interesting. and yeah, l.a. has never looked better.

was he dozing off periodically? he gets a few important plot points awfully wrong. not that it matters terribly, but still.

I enjoyed the first thirty minutes - Mann always know how to open a film (Full disclosure:the first 5-10 minutes of Ali is possibly my favorite opening sequence ever), but my desire to enjoy this film was taken over by frustration, boredom, and ultimately, disappointment. It seems like a very odd film for him to make right now.

And Tom Cruise's suit was naggingly identical to De Niro's in Heat.

poss. SPOILERS...

the shots where smith & foxx were getting off the train, with the light of the dawn behind the electrical towers, were really beautiful. so were those gliding helicopter shots. oh and the most stunning shot of the whole movie: the bottom of the helicopter. do you remember that? wow.

I do remember that, and I thought, "Wow." It reminded me of Chicago's new bean sculpture.

the last 30-odd minutes were full of the kind of implausibilities and nonsense typical of thrillers

OTM. Possible spoilers here, too...

So he stops to take an axe to the lights in the building? What the hell for? And more importantly, why was he ordered to kill the person he's trying to kill? After the other targets are dead, there's no point in killing that character.

I like Edelstein's review:

http://www.slate.com/id/2104824/

Warwick Davis ..... Oberon

They didn't, but I didn't notice that until after the movie. As in, "You know, movies like that usually make we want a cigarette very badly, but that one had no smoking in it at all!" I appreciated it in retrospect.

Also, could have done without that Cliff Notes last line, spelling out the previous reference.

The shot of the marble floor as TC goes down the escalator is a beaut.

all 5 seconds of him?

what was that all about? he's the male gina gershon: he makes any scene instantly unbelieveable.

You're kidding me: he'd have been even worse in that role.

Ruffalo and Bardem too!