Collateral (2004)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Vincent	Tom Cruise
Max	Jamie Foxx	½
Annie	Jada Pinkett Smith	½
Fanning	Mark Ruffalo
Richard Weidner	Peter Berg
Felix	Javier Bardem

Review

Michael Mann directs this thriller with a fairly effective, brooding stylization. Unfortunately, the story, characters and dialogue is painfully run of the mill. Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx are both cast against type, which is a potentially fresh approach, but Cruise's role and performance are both way too shallow to keep the level of interest high. Jamie Foxx is emphatic in the lead, but his character's motivation won't do well with too much analysis. Sure, the film has its fair share of suspense, but it raids the vault of clichés on its way there. And when it tries to get under the skin of its characters, there just isn't much there. Too bad, because the Cruise/Foxx-relation has a lot of potential. Mann tries to make it a cat and mouse game (the scene in the nightclub is the only really effective in that matter), but can't elevate the effort to come off like anything else than an average TV-series. Luckily, his next film will be a remake of Miami Vice.