Collateral

Plot

Max Durocher is a Los Angeles cab driver trying to save his earnings and start his own limousine business. One of the evening's fares is federal prosecutor Annie Farrell, who works for the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. They strike up a conversation and Annie gives Max her business card. Max's next fare is Vincent, who tells Max that he is in Los Angeles for one night to complete a real estate deal and engages Max for the night to drive him to a series of meetings. As Max waits at the first stop, a corpse falls onto his car. Vincent reveals himself to be a hitman. He forces Max to hide the body in the trunk and continue driving. LAPD Detective Ray Fanning arrives where Vincent made the kill, revealing the victim to be a police informant.

At the second stop, Vincent restrains Max's hands to the steering wheel. While Vincent is away, Max tries to use the horn to signal for help. Four men come around to the car to rob him and seize Vincent's briefcase. Vincent returns, shoots two of them dead and retrieves the briefcase.

Vincent orders Max to a jazz club to find his third target, Daniel, who is set to testify against Vincent's client. Max pleads with Vincent to let Daniel go and Vincent claims he will if Daniel can answer one question about Miles Davis. Despite Daniel giving a seemingly correct answer, Vincent is dissatisfied with it and shoots Daniel in the head.

Learning of Max's nightly visits to the hospital to see his mother, Vincent insists that Max proceed with the visit. At the hospital, Ida proudly tells Vincent that Max has his own limousine company, revealing Max has been lying to her for her approval.

Overwhelmed, Max steals Vincent's briefcase, which contains prep information on Vincent's targets, and runs, eventually hurling it onto a freeway where it is destroyed. Fanning arrives at the hospital morgue to see the bodies of criminal lawyer Sylvester Clark, Vincent's second target, and the two dead robbers, and realizes that it is the work of a hitman. Vincent coerces Max to meet drug lord Felix Reyes-Torrena to re-obtain the information on his final two targets. Max, posing as Vincent, acquires the information and leaves. Reyes-Torrena orders his men to kill "Vincent" if he does not complete the job.

Production

Development

When he was 17 years old, 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 conversing with him, trusting his passenger implicitly. Beattie drafted his idea into a two-page treatment titled "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 final film has limited resemblance to the original treatment.

Beattie was waiting tables when he came in to contact with Julie Richardson, whom he had met on a UCLA Screenwriting Extension course. Richardson had become a producer and was searching for projects for Frank Darabont, Rob Fried and Chuck Russell's company, Edge City, which was created to make low budget genre films for HBO. Beattie later pitched her his idea of "The Last Domino". Richardson pitched the idea to 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. Haimes immediately contacted Richardson, read the script overnight, and DreamWorks put in an offer the following day. Early drafts of Collateral's script set the film in New York City. Later revisions of the script moved the film's setting to Los Angeles. Darabont, Fried and Russell would remain on as executive producers.

Pre-production

Mimi Leder and cinematographer Janusz Kamiński were attached to the project at one point as the director. Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles had initially agreed to direct, but eventually decided to exit as the production would require him to relocate to Los Angeles for eight months. Meirelles described his vision for the film as being that of a comedy, and looked at telling it in a way similar to Martin Scorsese's After Hours.

Upon Russell Crowe expressing interest in playing the role of Vincent, development on the film moved forward. Crowe got his The Insider director Michael Mann involved, but after constant delays, Crowe departed the project. Mann explained that the confined time frame and smaller scale of the film in comparison to previous efforts like The Last of the Mohicans and Heat were what drew him to the project. Mann then approached Tom Cruise with the idea of him playing Vincent. Adam Sandler was considered for the role of Max, but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with Spanglish. Cuba Gooding Jr. revealed in a 2018 interview he had turned down a part in the film due to concerns he would be miscast. 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. The studio refused, insisting on a younger actor for the role.

To prepare for the role of Vincent, Cruise watched a few movies about professional killers such as Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï (starring Alain Delon), with Cruise describing his fascination with the "solitary and melancholic charisma in carrying out his cruel affairs." Cruise prepared his character's clothing and hair in accordance with Mann's directives to have a perfect exterior mask the dark interior. In the weeks leading up to filming, Cruise worked covertly as a FedEx deliveryman. Mann stated the goal was for Cruise to not be recognized. Mann had Cruise train in firearm use and hand-to-hand combat with a retired SAS soldier. Mann and Cruise also created a full backstory for the character, including the death of Vincent's parents, his violent upbringing in foster homes, and his professional history, which is never mentioned verbally in the film.

Mann cast Foxx, with whom he worked with on Ali, in the role of Max due to Mann's perception of a similar performance quality with Cruise. "I saw that [quality of Tom's] in Jamie on In Living Color — his characters were so vivid. That's why I went after him for [cornerman] Bundini Brown in Ali. Jamie starts with mimicry, but then he talks about "putting it into the database", so he can access a character once he's got it down". Mann gave Foxx guidance on being a cab driver based on Mann's personal experience driving a cab as well a several of Mann's family members, including his father and grandfather. Mann also took Foxx on shifts with real cab drivers and facilitated face-to-face interviews to enhance Foxx's understanding of the profession. Foxx received race car driving lessons on a professional track to build up his driving skills.

Filming

After three weeks of filming, cinematographer Paul Cameron left the project due to creative differences with Mann. Dion Beebe was brought on to replace Cameron. Mann chose to use the Viper FilmStream High-Definition Camera to film many of Collateral's scenes, the first such use in a major motion picture, in order to capture the unique lighting effects present in Los Angeles's nightlife. Mann had previously used the format for portions of Ali and his CBS drama Robbery Homicide Division and would later employ the same camera for the filming of Miami Vice. The sequence in the nightclub was shot in 35 mm.

Filming took place throughout Los Angeles, with Los Angeles International Airport and Koreatown used for set pieces, and filming was also done in Pico Rivera, California.

Music

James Newton Howard composed the score for the film, with additional music by Antônio Pinto. As well as the Vangelis composition "Moxica and the Horse," which was composed for the film 1492 Conquest of Paradise. The piece features in Collateral as the FBI race to the Fever nightclub. The Collateral soundtrack was released on August 3, 2004, by Hip-O Records, one notable omission from the soundtrack release is Tom Rothrock's "LAX" which plays as several parties head to the nightclub. Howard estimated that only half of the music he composed was used in the final cut of the film.

Track listing

Reception

Box office

The film opened on August 6, 2004, in 3,188 theaters in the United States and Canada and grossed approximately $24.7 million on its opening weekend, ranking number one at the box office. It remained in theaters for 14 weeks and eventually grossed $101,005,703 in the U.S. and Canada. In other countries, it grossed $119,920,992 for a worldwide $220,926,695.

Critical response

Collateral received positive reviews. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 86% based on 238 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The critical consensus states that "Driven by director Michael Mann's trademark visuals and a lean, villainous performance from Tom Cruise, Collateral is a stylish and compelling noir thriller." On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 71 out of 100, based on 41 reviews, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post praised the film and Cruise's performance. He summarized the film as "the best kind of genre filmmaking: It plays by the rules, obeys the traditions and is both familiar and fresh at once". Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying Mann's direction and insightful dialogue elevated Collateral above its genre roots. He also praised the performances of Cruise and Foxx, calling Foxx's dramatic performance a "revelation" after establishing himself as a comedian. In addition to praising the performances of Cruise, Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo and Javier Bardem, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote of Foxx's performance: "Foxx can act. He's up to the role's demands, conveying fear, confusion and frustration, but more important the exhaustion and recklessness that can easily follow when someone's been scared for so long".

Desson Thomson gave similar praise to Foxx, finding the actor "quietly pries the movie from Cruise's big-marquee fingers". David Ansen of Newsweek praised the film, although he criticized its third act as "generic and farfetched". Placing the film on his best of the year list, Richard Schickel of Time magazine praised the acting in addition to Mann's direction and Beattie's screenplay, despite finding logical inconsistencies in the plot and that it "does not have quite enough completely compelling incidents to sustain its considerable length".

In a mixed review, Marrit Ingman of the Austin Chronicle gave positive remarks to Mann's film-making, but stated "There's not much substance lurking beneath all the style, though the plot digresses into several awkward scenes intended to flesh out the characters". David Edelstein of Slate magazine highlighted Foxx's performance as "terrific" and was favorable to the film's first act, but derided the rest of the film. "It's too bad that halfway through, Collateral turns into a series of loud, chaotic, over-the-top action set pieces in which the existentialist Mann proves he's lousy at action". Edelstein also criticized the performance of Cruise, referring to his performance as "robotic".