Collateral (film)
| Collateral | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Theatrical poster | |
| Directed by | Michael Mann |
| Written by | Stuart Beattie Michael Mann Frank Darabont |
| Produced by | Michael Mann Julie Richardson Associate producer: Michael Doven |
| Starring | Tom Cruise Jamie Foxx Jada Pinkett Smith Mark Ruffalo Peter Berg Bruce McGill |
| Cinematography | Dion Beebe |
| Edited by | Jim Miller Paul Rubell |
| Music by | James Newton Howard |
| Distributed by | DreamWorks (US) Paramount Pictures (non-US) |
Release date |
|
Running time | 120 minutes |
| Country | Template:Film US |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $65 million |
| Box office | $217,764,291[1] |
Collateral is a 2004 American crime thriller film starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx about a taxi driver who finds himself the hostage of a contract killer and attempts to save both himself and a victim. It was directed by Michael Mann and written by Stuart Beattie.
The film is set in Los Angeles, California. In an HBO movie review, director Michael Mann stated that the film takes place on the night of January 24 to 25, 2004 from 6:30 PM to 5:40 AM. Foxx was widely praised for his performance and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Plot
Cab driver Max Durocher (Jamie Foxx) drives U.S. Justice Department prosecutor Annie Farrell (Jada Pinkett Smith) to her office where she prepares for a drug indictment case. Annie takes a liking to Max, leaving him her business card. Vincent (Tom Cruise) enters the cab next, giving Max $600 for chauffeuring him to five appointments. As Max waits at the first stop, Vincent enters an apartment complex and shoots drug dealer Ramone Ayala. Ayala unexpectedly falls out of the window directly onto the cab, forcing Vincent to reveal himself as a hitman. He coerces Max to hide the body in the trunk, clean up the car and continue with their arrangement. However Max is pulled over by police due to damage from Ayala's impact, but just before the officers can investigate, they are summoned to a higher priority call. Vincent then leaves Max tied to the steering wheel in an alley as he murders attorney Sylvester Clarke. Max calls for help from a group passing by, who proceed to rob him and Vincent's briefcase, but Vincent returns and kills them.
Vincent then brings Max to a jazz club to drink with club owner Daniel Baker (Barry Shabaka Henley) after it closes. Max witnesses Vincent execute Baker when he incorrectly answers a question about Miles Davis and suffers a panic attack. Vincent then insists Max visit his mother Ida (Irma P. Hall) in the hospital to avoid breaking routine. He pretends to be Max's colleague and develops a rapport with Ida, which upsets Max, who then runs out with the briefcase and tosses it off a bridge onto the freeway. With his target list destroyed, Vincent forces Max to meet drug lord Felix Reyes-Torrena (Javier Bardem), threatening to murder Max's mother otherwise. Posing as Vincent, Max meets with Felix and successfully acquires a USB flash drive listing the last two targets. Felix orders his men to follow Max and eliminate him should he fail. Plugging the flash drive into the cab's computer Vincent and Max acquire the details of the next target, Korean gangster Peter Lim, who is at a nightclub.
Meanwhile, LAPD Detective Ray Fanning (Mark Ruffalo) uncovers the connection between the three victims and reports his finding to FBI Special Agent Frank Pedrosa (Bruce McGill), who identifies the targets as witnesses for the pending indictment case against Felix. Pedrosa assembles a force to secure witness Lim and converges on the crowded nightclub simultaneously with Vincent, who in turn is being followed by Felix's men. Vincent manages to execute all of Lim's guards, Felix's hitmen and Lim himself, before slipping out of the club amid the chaos. Fanning rescues Max and smuggles him outside, but is killed by Vincent, who beckons Max back into the cab. Following their getaway, the two get into an argument over their lives. Max snaps, speeds through the empty streets and deliberately crashes the cab. Vincent takes off on foot before a police officer arrives at the wreck and notices the corpse in the trunk.
Max spots Annie's profile on the cab computer and realizes she is Vincent's final target. He overpowers the officer and takes Vincent's gun before running to Annie's building and her office. He tries to phone her as the signal cuts off, but manages to get into her office and saves her by shooting Vincent, allowing them to escape. Max and Annie board a metro rail train with Vincent in pursuit. Boxed in and left with no other option, Max makes his last stand. Firing blindly as the train lights flicker, Max mortally wounds Vincent in a shootout while emerging unscathed. Vincent slumps into a seat and dies as he repeats an anecdote heard earlier about a man who died on a train and went unnoticed for six hours. Max and Annie then get off at the next station, in the dawn of a new day.
Cast
- Tom Cruise as Vincent, a former special operator and professional hitman hired by middlemen to terminate four witnesses and a prosecutor.
- Jamie Foxx as Max Durocher, a taxi driver whom Vincent employs to drive him to the locations of the hits.
- Jada Pinkett Smith as Annie Farrell, the lawyer prosecuting Felix Reyes-Torrena. She is Vincent's last hit, but is saved by Max.
- Mark Ruffalo as Ray Fanning, an LAPD detective on the tail of Vincent and Max.
- Peter Berg as Richard Weidner, Fanning's partner
- Bruce McGill as Frank Pedrosa, an FBI agent staking out El Rodeo, Felix Reyes-Torrena's club.
- Irma P. Hall as Ida Durocher, Max's mother
- Barry Shabaka Henley as Daniel Baker, a jazz club owner. He is the third witness to be killed.
- Richard T. Jones as Traffic Cop #1
- Klea Scott as Zee, one of Pedrosa's team members
- Bodhi Elfman as Young Professional Man
- Debi Mazar as Young Professional Woman
- Javier Bardem as Felix Reyes-Torrena
- Emilio Rivera as Paco, one of Felix's bodyguards and hitmen
- Jamie McBride as Traffic Cop #2
- Thomas Rosales, Jr. as Ramon Ayala, a low-level player in the exotic substances business. He is the first witness to be killed.
- Inmo as Peter Lim, the owner of the club Fever. He is the fourth witness to be killed.
- Jason Statham as Airport Man
- Angelo Tiffe as Sylvester Clarke, a former criminal attorney who represented Ramone. He is the second witness to be killed.
Production
When he was 17, Australian writer Stuart Beattie took a cab home from Sydney airport, and had the idea of a homicidal maniac sitting in the back of a cab with the driver nonchalantly entering into conversation with him, trusting his passenger implicitly. Beattie drafted his idea into a two-page treatment entitled "The Last Domino", then later began writing the screenplay. The original story centered around an African-American female cop who witnesses a hit, and the romance between the cab driver and his then librarian girlfriend. The film has limited resemblance to the original treatment.
Beattie was waiting tables when he ran into friend Julie Richardson, whom he had met on a UCLA Screenwriting Extension course. Richardson had become a producer, and was searching for projects for Edge City, Frank Darabont, Rob Fried and Chuck Russell's company created to make low budget genre movies for HBO. Beattie later pitched her his idea of "The Last Domino". Richardson pitched the idea to Frank Darabont, who brought the team in for a meeting, including Beattie, and set up the project under Edge City. After two drafts, HBO passed on the project. At a general meeting at DreamWorks with executive Marc Haimes, Beattie mentioned the script. Marc Haimes immediately contacted Richardson, read the script overnight, and DreamWorks put in an offer the following day.
Collateral sat on DreamWorks' development books for three years. Mimi Leder was initially attached to direct, it then passed on to Janusz Kamiński. It was not until Russell Crowe became interested in playing Vincent that the project started generating any heat. Crowe brought Michael Mann on board, but the constant delays meant that Crowe left the project. Mann immediately went to Tom Cruise with the idea of him playing the hitman and Adam Sandler as the cabbie.
Beattie wanted the studio to cast Robert De Niro as Max (once again making him a taxi driver, though the exact opposite of Travis Bickle). However, the studio refused, insisting they wanted a younger actor in the role.
Michael Mann chose to use the Viper FilmStream High-Definition Camera to film many of the scenes of Collateral, the first such use in a major motion picture. There are many scenes in the movie where the use of a digital camera is evident, in particular, scenes where the Los Angeles skyline or landscape is visible in the background. One event of note was the filming of the coyotes running across the road; the low-light capability allowed Mann to spontaneously film the animals that just happened to pass, without having to set up lighting for the shot. Mann had previously used the format for portions of Ali and for his CBS drama Robbery Homicide Division and would later employ the same camera for the filming of Miami Vice.[2]
The sequence in the nightclub was shot in 35mm.
The film was co-produced by DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures. The former studio would handle North American rights, while the latter held international rights. Upon Paramount's purchase of DreamWorks in 2006, they also acquired the US/Canadian rights. Paramount Home Entertainment released the film on Blu-ray on March 30, 2010 (the first Region 1 video release that they distributed, previous releases were distributed by Universal Studios).
Reception
The film received positive reviews, with particular praise going to Tom Cruise's and Jamie Foxx's performance. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 224 reviews.[3] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 71 out of 100, based on 41 reviews. Tom Cruise went on to garner critical acclaim, while Foxx got several award nominations.[4]
The film opened August 6, 2004 in 3,188 theaters in the United States and Canada and grossed $24.7 million its opening weekend, ranking number 1 at the box office.[5] It remained in theaters for 14 weeks and eventually grossed $101,005,703 in the United States and Canada. In other countries it grossed a total of $116,758,588 for a total worldwide gross of $217,764,291.[1]
Richard Roeper placed Collateral as his 10th favorite movie of 2004. The film was voted as the 9th best film set in Los Angeles in the last 25 years by a group of Los Angeles Times writers and editors with two criteria: "The movie had to communicate some inherent truth about the L.A. experience, and only one film per director was allowed on the list".[6]
Awards and nominations
2005 ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards
- Won - Top Box Office Film — James Newton Howard, Antonio Pinto
2005 Academy Awards (Oscars)
- Nominated - Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role — Jamie Foxx
- Nominated - Best Editing — Jim Miller, Paul Rubell
2005 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (Saturn Awards)
- Nominated - Best Actor (Film) — Tom Cruise
- Nominated - Best Director — Michael Mann
- Nominated - Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film
- Nominated - Best Writing — Stuart Beattie
2005 American Society of Cinematographers
- Nominated - Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases — Dion Beebe, Paul Cameron
2005 Art Directors Guild
- Nominated - Feature Film - Contemporary Film — David Wasco, Daniel T. Dorrance, Aran Mann, Gerald Sullivan, Christopher Tandon
2005 BAFTA Film Awards
- Won - Best Cinematography — Dion Beebe, Paul Cameron
- Nominated - Best Actor in a Supporting Role — Jamie Foxx
- Nominated - David Lean Award for Direction — Michael Mann
- Nominated - Best Editing — Jim Miller, Paul Rubell
- Nominated - Best Screenplay (Original) — Stuart Beattie
- Nominated - Best Sound — Elliott Koretz, Lee Orloff, Michael Minkler, Myron Nettinga
2005 Black Reel Awards
- Won - Best Supporting Actor — Jamie Foxx
- Nominated - Best Supporting Actress — Jada Pinkett Smith
2005 Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards
- Nominated - Best Supporting Actor — Jamie Foxx
- Nominated - Best Picture
2005 Golden Globe Awards
- Nominated - Best Supporting Actor - Jamie Foxx
2005 MTV Movie Award
- Nominated - Best Villain - Tom Cruise
Soundtrack
The Collateral soundtrack was released on August 3, 2004 by Hip-O Records.
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Briefcase" | Tom Rothrock | 2:07 |
| 2. | "The Seed (2.0)" (Extended Radio Edit) | The Roots, Cody Chesnutt | 4:13 |
| 3. | "Hands of Time" | Groove Armada | 4:19 |
| 4. | "Guero Canelo" | Calexico | 3:00 |
| 5. | "Rollin' Crumblin'" | Tom Rothrock | 2:21 |
| 6. | "Max Steals Briefcase" | James Newton Howard | 1:48 |
| 7. | "Destino De Abril" | Green Car Motel | 5:15 |
| 8. | "Shadow on the Sun" | Audioslave | 5:43 |
| 9. | "Island Limos" | James Newton Howard | 1:33 |
| 10. | "Spanish Key" | Miles Davis | 2:25 |
| 11. | "Air" | Klazz Brothers & Cuba Percussion | 5:46 |
| 12. | "Ready Steady Go (Korean Style)" | Paul Oakenfold | 4:48 |
| 13. | "Car Crash" | Antonio Pinto | 2:19 |
| 14. | "Vincent Hops Train" | Howard | 2:02 |
| 15. | "Finale" | Howard | 2:18 |
| 16. | "Requiem" | Pinto | 1:56 |
| Total length: | 51:53 | ||
References
- ^ a b "Collateral (2004)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved October 10, 2009.
- ^ "Miami Vice in HD". Retrieved October 10, 2009.
- ^ "Collateral - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved October 10, 2009.
- ^ "Collateral (2004): Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved October 10, 2009.
- ^ "Collateral (2004) - Weekend Box Office". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved October 10, 2009.
- ^ Boucher, Geoff (August 31, 2008). "The 25 best L.A. films of the last 25 years". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 10, 2009.
External links
