Nicholas Thurkettle

Originally published 8/17/04

Collateral
Director: Michael Mann
Writer: Stuart Beattie
Producers: Michael Mann, Julie Richardson
Stars: Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo, Bruce McGill

Nobody shoots Los Angeles like director Michael Mann (Thief, Heat). The skyscrapers look like Monument Valley in steel and glass. The freeways, shot from directly overhead, look like blood veins pulsing life around a mutated organism.

Vincent (Tom Cruise) doesn’t like it. He thinks it’s too spread out, too disconnected. Of course, what he disdains about it is also what makes it an ideal work environment for him. He can shoot two people dead in an alleyway and, with a quick look around, confirm that no one’s running to call the police.

He considers himself a professional doing a job; nothing more, nothing less. But he’s in denial of his true nature. He’s a virus, injected on this night into the body of Los Angeles to transform and/or destroy anyone he comes in contact with, until he triumphs or is eradicated.
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