August 7, 2004 [Collateral]

Collateral is a digital movie down to its murder-countdown, the hit man's targets lined up on a night that's long but not long enough as Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx do slick-movie-star shtick as precise as 1s and 0s streaming from life to video to computer to screen.  Michael Mann is L.A.'s colorist, the city smudged green and as shiny as chrome, as teeth bearing down on an In-N-Out burger at midnight wolfed down before the next burst of self-assured gunfire sends them further down the line.

Tom Cruise as Vincent has never looked so blandly perfect—and good for him: His eyes and mouth are still a boy's, and he knows it; he works on them like a master jeweler cracking a diamond.  He reminds me of Cary Grant in North by Northwest: confident that he looks like himself, a famous guy showing up all of a sudden in a train or the back of a cab—Jamie Foxx's, also deep in his own motion picture groove, both of them as cool as the jazz Vincent loves.  Mann once more presses his case for the crime picture, and together the three of them just about close it.