Title: Collateral
Rating: 4 Stars
I’m know that I’m not the only one, but I wonder what happened to Tom Cruise. Obviously, he’s had a huge career. After all, according to Steven Spielberg, he’s the man that, by making, starring, and releasing Top Gun Maverick, saved Hollywood.
It’s just that, for the last ten years, he hasn’t taken any artistic risks with his career. If you look at those films, you see a bunch of creatively safe films. You see the Mission Impossible films. You see a couple of possible franchise films that didn’t really pay off that well (a couple of Reacher films and The Mummy). You see a couple of high concept sci-fi films (Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow).
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed several of those films. I even enjoyed his Reacher films, even if he is probably a foot too short to play Jack Reacher. Edge of Tomorrow is one of my favorite all time films. The Mission Impossible series are great popcorn films.
It’s just that Tom Cruise is capable of and has been in much more interesting films. He took on weighty roles that the Academy recognized with nominations. Just look at his work as Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July or as Jerry McGuire. He even held his own against Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.
He has demonstrated a knack for comedy. Look no further than Les Grossman in Tropic of Thunder.
Earlier in his career, he took amazing risks. I’m thinking of the bizarre Vanilla Sky. One of the world’s most recognizable actors spends most of his screen time hiding behind a mask. Even more crazy, there’s his role as a washed out rock star in the musical Rock of Ages. If you haven’t seen him sing Rock You Like A Hurricane, you should immediately go over to youTube and watch it. I’m not saying it’s great, but holy crap, he went for it. Let’s not forget his role in Kubrick’s very strange Eyes Wide Shut.
For some reason, he decided to stop taking risks. I would think, as an actor, that such parts would be way more interesting than playing Ethan Hunt for the eighth time. I can’t imagine, at this point, that he needs more money.
So, I wonder what happened. One theory is that he got scared off when he went public with his Scientology beliefs. The backlash against him was so swift that he immediately decided just to make blockbuster hits that he knew his fanbase would enjoy. I don’t really buy this argument. The Scientology controversy started in 2004 or so. He continued to make interesting films for several years after that.
The second reason makes more sense. If you take a look at his films for a five or six year period starting around 2007, you’ll see that he was in several films that were not huge hits. I’m talking about films like Lion for Lambs, Valkyrie, and Knight and Day. Could it be that his own idea of self is so wrapped as being a blockbuster movie star that this run of films scared him away from artistic risks? Is he replacing the artistic risks that he used to take with the actual physical risks of doing his own increasingly dangerous stunts?
Regardless, 2004’s Collateral is another example of the direction that Cruise’s career was heading in before the course correction. In it, Cruise plays Vincent, a relentless, ruthless hit man. Jamie Foxx plays Max, a mild mannered cab driver with dreams of one day running his own limo company. Their paths cross when Vincent catches Max’s cab. Unbeknownst to Max, Vincent has a list of five victims that he has been contracted to kill and is planning to use Max to drive him to all of the victims.
Max is in for a rude awakening when Vincent’s first victim comes crashing down on his cab. For the rest of the night, Vincent threatens and coerces Max to continue giving him rides to his next victim while Max tries to figure out how to escape. Meanwhile, government agents are trying to stop their trial witnesses from being murdered and LA cops are trying to find the executioner that is wreaking havoc throughout their city.
First of all, it’s not really a great film. For the film to absolutely work, you need to buy into Max’s problem. It just didn’t seem believable to me. Max had so many opportunities to escape that honestly I had trouble suspending belief for the film.
The film rests upon the relationship between Max and Vincent. Foxx does good work as the everyday nice guy that’s been put into an impossible relationship.
However, the film is Cruise’s. Cruise plays Vincent as an implacable Terminator. Impeccably dressed, coldly handsome, and with dead eyes, Vincent is a force.
I’m not really even sure if Cruise is technically a good actor. One thing that I can say is that he brings purpose and energy to every role that I’ve seen him in. Here, that purposeful drive serves the role of Vincent to perfection.
This proves to me that Cruise, if he had so desired, could have also had a successful film career playing villains. The inexorable purpose that he brings to every role would have led quite naturally to any number of villainous turns.
Cruise is going to finish up the Mission Impossible series with the next installment. I can only hope that he finds himself up taking on more interesting, challenging roles. However, since one of his next projects appears to be taking place in actual outer space, I don’t have a lot of confidence.
dorkenstein 