Collateral (Two-Disc Special Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Collateral (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Movie Review: Excellent, well-crafted thriller
Summary: 5 Stars
Collateral is a truly excellent and intelligent thriller. One of the most captivating movies I have seen since the start of the new Millennium. I am not a Tom Cruise fan, on the contrary I would say, but in his role of contract hitman Vincent he is very convincing. Jamie Foxx is impressive. I agree with a remark that I read somewhere that the city of Los Angeles plays the third leading role in this movie. Director Michael Mann creates a fascinating athmosphere. The photography is breathtaking. I was unable to focus on the action and found myself wandering away and simply gawking at the images of nighttime L.A. a couple of times. The brutal and for some characters fatal events seem small and unimportant and isolated when played out against the backdrop of this huge antheap of a city. This is surely a movie that you'll want to see more often than once. The violence is very brutal and explicit, but mercifully short and well spread out over the story. It is also very realistic and functional violence, not the bizarre and completely over-the-top superhero stuff that you see in too many movies nowadays, where the opponents constantly smash, stab and shoot each other into a bloody pulp and still manage to keep on fighting. Collateral therefore is not your typical run-of-the-mill action movie, but instead a well-crafted psychological thriller and police-movie. I absolutely recommend it.
Movie Review: Decent action, terrible story
Summary: 2 Stars
First of all, I don't know who Michael Mann is. I've gotta look him up.
Second of all, I'm writing because I'm surprised by the positive reviews for this movies. I finished this movie in half the time. It was just corny, predictable, and all in all pretty lame. 2.5 stars, mostly for the action scenes. The characters, while not wholly one-dimensional, are too easily read. There is no complexity, which makes it a subpar drama. It's also a lame action movie because of the ill-disguised attempts to put artificial depth into the characters. I find most of the dialog agonizing to sit through.
But at least I finished the movie.
Movie Review: Collat-a-kick-ass
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie is awesome, Tom Cruise's best! The special features disk is equally as interesting. Amazon shipped my order lickety split!Movie Review: Cool Man
Summary: 3 Stars
This film was very cool. The plot was a little far fetched, but I really loved it. The acting wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. Tom Cruise wasn't as annoying as he can be and Jamie Fox was decent.
As far as the filming of the moive. They choose to film the movie in HD rather then Film. A reasoning (rumor) was Mr. Mann thought that HD could pick up better images in the dark then film could. It's either the compression on the disc or it's the HD camera they used but I thought the film looked very grainy and dull. This might have also been a stylistic choice.
There were also many errors in the making of the film such as seeing the camera man in the reflections and stuff like that, but that doesn't really take away from the fact that it is a entertaining movie.
Overall I enjoyed the plot and action,but I did not enjoy the look. It's fun and not to be taken very seriously.
Movie Review: Phone Booth in a cab
Summary: 4 Stars
This is largely a conversational movie between two people and to Stuart Beatie's credit the dialog here is as impeccable as they come. It's sharp, witty and gives you hints as to who the characters really are deep down inside. Vincent has this "s**t happens" attitude towards everything he does and that can be reflected through the way he talks. If he kills someone that he didn't mean to kill he just brushes it off as just another person dying in the world. That demeanor fits him perfectly since he can't afford to have too much emotion for his line of work. Max however on the other hand is completely opposite and just can't brush off a dead guy as just another casualty which leads to the two having some really interesting conversations in their ride through L.A. We find out about Vince' past and what a crappy childhood he had which I guess is one of the reasons why he is in the business that he is in. He is very calculated and never leaves anything to chance so when he shoots someone he has to make sure that they're dead by shooting them more than once. We also find out some details about Max and what his plans for the future are which really make you root for the guy.
-What keeps the movie from being a classic like "Heat" for me is the open ending and whiles I love open endings as much as the next guy it was really huge letdown. There were lots of questions that needed to be answered that we have to somehow now guess as to what is suppose to happen. It does in it's own odd way fit the opening of the movie because the movie starts off almost like the 2nd act of a movie instead of the first and ends with what feels like the 3rd act instead of feeling like the end but all in all a better ending would have been nice.
-Fully utilizing the capabilities of the HD camera for all its worth is what the two DP's on the movie did and they by far have made one of the best looking movies I've seen in a while. You get to see colors that you didn't even know that a motion picture were capable of producing with the odd lighting in the train station scene being a great example of that. Since HD can shoot in very low lights it gives the movie chance to play with shadows and lights like we've never seen before. The scene in the office when Vincent is going after Annie is a great use of shadows and lights because we see Vincent moving around in the darkness slowly searching for her and the whole time we can still make him out in the darkness. I don't owe an HD set so naturally I can't see this movie like the way it was meant to seen but the image that my CRT set produces is really something to behold. I hope the great ones like Spielberg and Cameron jump on the bandwagon because they could do wonders with it.
-One thing that put a big smile on my pretty face was when listening to the commentary track I heard Mann talk about how the fierce percussion that was heard in the chase sequence at the end was done using African drums and the players of those drums were Ghanaian drummers which just makes me proud beyond belief. Ghanaian musicians aside the score by James Newton Howard is very well done and has that dream like eighth note feel to the whole movie. Technically speaking we don't get to hear any actual score till a lot of time has passed but once it starts it's very pleasing to the ears. For the conversations in the car he does this off key dream like stuff that makes you feel like you're in a trance and for the action stuff at the end he throws in some drums so intense you'd think your woofers were about to blow out. It's a nice well rounded score all around that should keep my fellow film music geeks extremely happy.
-2004 was a very good year for Foxx with this movie and "Ray" helping him reach the status of fame that he has today. Whiles he was great in "Ray" I strongly believe that he was a lot better in this movie. In "Ray" he was merely doing an imitation where as in this movie he gave birth to an original character. With great direction from legendary filmmaker Michael Mann he is just amazing as Max and plays him as normal as a normal being can be. When he drives his cab he does so with an ease that makes you feel like he's being doing it forever and when he's peril you just marvel at the way he manages to get himself out of a jam. Equally great is Tom Cruise in one of his best roles yet. I really love the way he played Vincent because even though he's the villain of the movie he never plays the character that way but instead plays him as a guy that's just doing his job. To my knowledge Tom Cruise has never killed a man before but in this movie he does it with such amazing precision that you get the sense that he's one of the best in the business. I wonder if he got trained by the same guy that trained Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill"
-A tightly wound story, excellent acting and a great way to end the summer movie season.