Collateral

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * *)

Collateral is a fine thriller, a cool character-driven dance of killing, kidnapping and Los Angeles at night.

Starring Cruise as a hitman in town on business overnight and Foxx as the mild but meticulous cabbie who is forced to do a deal with the devil in his back seat, it's the best LA crime flick since director Mann got Al Pacino and Robert De Niro to face-off in Heat.

There's a similar duel here, only it's Hollywood big gun Cruise against new guy Foxx. It's a win by a knock-out performance to Foxx, last seen in Mann's Ali and soon to be seen behind the shades in the Ray Charles biopic Ray.

Mann and his cinematographers have shot the film on modified digital, giving an eerie quality to the inside-cab close-ups while the city gets to show its true colours in the murk.

Shining, quite literally, through it is Cruise. He certainly looks and sounds the part of the stone-cold killer whose mission is to off five witnesses on the night before the drug trial. It takes some adjusting to reconcile his shock of grey hair above that famous face.

Complete with Sam the Eagle eyebrows, Vincent also wears sunglasses indoors at night. Yes, this is Los Angeles. And maybe a film star playing a killer who carries himself like a film star is a good disguise for a hired killer. But didn't Robert De Niro wear that same silvery-grey suit in Heat?

Still, as Vincent, Cruise looks quite the wolf and there is a brief encounter with local coyotes to reinforce that idea, as well as the one that the City of Angels isn't quite as civilised as it looks.

On the other hand, Foxx's Max is a great piece of acting, whether it's for his sheer believability and his ordinary-guy reaction to the violence to which he is an unwilling witness, or in seemingly outlandish scenes, as when he is forced to claim he is the killer and meet the cartel who put out the contract.

Of course, some suspension of disbelief is required in a couple of departments. That so many of Vincent's targets would be hanging out, unprotected, in cool LA clubs in the wee small hours before a trial is but one.

And having forced Max to be his accomplice, Vincent becomes something of an assertiveness training course for the meek driver throughout their adventure which is a very scriptwriter/movie spin on the Stockholm Syndrome.

But it helps make the movie a nerve-frayer all the way to its curiously conventional showdown - which is telegraphed in its opening act. We first meet Max picking up Annie (Pinkett Smith), a federal prosecutor who we know will figure later when the two have made an unlikely but affecting connection on the ride from LAX to downtown.

His next fare is Vincent, who offers him big bucks to be his personal chauffeur for the night. Problem is, Vincent's first stop results in a body in Max's trunk.

The cops, including Mark Ruffalo's narcotics detective, are soon pondering the night's mounting body count. But they remain many steps behind until a spectacular nightclub shoot-out which can make you wonder if that title is also a reference to the phrase that ends "damage".

But just as Max is Vincent's collateral, Foxx is also the movie's greatest asset.

CAST: Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith

DIRECTOR: Michael Mann

RUNNING TIME: 120 mins

RATING:R13 (violence)

SCREENING: Berkeley, Village cinemas