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So does the movie.
Give Cruise his due for playing a sociopath with nary a trace of the scene-gobbling bravado that befalls most superstars who try to show their range -- but from the opening frames, Collateral belongs to its brilliant director Michael Mann.
Returning to the same Los Angeles streets he explored with such voluptuous detail in his 1995 magna opus Heat, Mann keeps his foot on the gas of this taut tale of urban intrigue without ever losing control.
The result is a white-knuckler so well-realized that it nearly defies the limitations of its action-thriller genre -- nearly, I say, because the final act descends into an extended chase that admittedly stretches the long arm of disbelief.
But such a snafu in plausibility is hardly enough to derail this slick, stylish film about Max, a cabbie (Jamie Foxx) who unwittingly becomes a hostage and chauffeur to Vincent, a contract killer (Cruise) with five people to whack during a night in L.A.
From the first scenes, Mann makes his ambition evident. Even as Cruise's killer receives his assignment at LAX, our introduction to Max is far more subdued.
During the film that follows, Mann allows for disarming moments of introspection and even glimpses of profundity, while he methodically ratchets up the suspense.
As icy and confident as Vincent is, Foxx's Max -- who's unfortunate enough to be the one Vincent approaches to drive him around town for the night while he closes "a real-estate deal" -- is tentative and unsatisfied (he considers his current job "temporary" despite the fact he's been doing it for 12 years).
After an initial connection with the night's previous fare, played by Jada Pinkett Smith, Max agrees to give Vincent a night-long ride for $600 -- more than double his usual rate. Max doesn't realize his passenger is, in fact, a cold-blooded contract killer until Vincent's first victim plunges out of his apartment window and lands -- bloodied and bullet-ridden -- on top of Max's taxi.
In discovering the truth about Vincent, Max becomes "collateral" -- expendable once Vincent has finished work. With a different director, Cruise may have been tempted to make Vincent larger than life, but Mann keeps the superstar at a simmer -- allowing Hollywood's top gun to deliver a skilled, intense performance that ranks among his finest.
All he's missing is a dorsal fin.
If there are echoes of Mann's Heat here, they are probably found in the spartan natures -- both physically and emotionally -- of the films' antagonists: Robert DeNiro's master criminal in the former, Cruise's narcissistic, detached murderer in the latter. (It's no coincidence then that the two meticulous characters appear to share the same natty wardrobe.)
If Cruise's performance is a welcome surprise, it's Foxx's turn as Max, the quiet everyman, that is the film's revelation. Foxx effortlessly shifts emotional gears from scene to scene -- following Max's journey from fear to anger to despair to defiance.
It all unfolds in a nocturnal world that looks alien and unreal; incredibly, Mann has taken what is arguably the most filmed city in cinematic history and makes it feel new and undiscovered. From the sprawl of desolate buildings to Korean nightclubs to scenes of wild coyotes crossing Max's path, Mann turns the City of Angels into a neon-bathed purgatory.
Mann's dreamscape -- shot mostly with a digital camera that allows the audience to "see" much further into the night than film would allow -- provides a perfect arena for the psychological gamemanship that ensues between Vincent and Max, as each probes for vulnerabilities in what becomes an exhaustive and exhausting struggle for survival -- for both the characters on-screen and the audiences pinned to their theatre seats.
(This film is rated 14-A)