Contrived and Colossally boring!. Review on Collateral Movie

What happens when Tom Cruise tries to do a John Travolta?

What happens when Jamie Foxx tries to do a Samuel Jackson? (oh well, the last one isn’t even the right one ;-))

You get a colossally contrived and corny film called collateral.

Frankly speaking, when missing out on the tickets to “The Village”, we should have turned back – alas! The movie buffs that we are, we decided to prey on and watch Collateral which opened to good reviews all around. A very decisive review in fact dissected the movie saying the first 2/3rd of the movie being better than last 1/3rd of the movie! Sadly, by the end of it , I ended up liking only 1/6th of the movie and hating the other 5/6th of the bull it forced on screen.

So what’s the deal on the movie then?

A philosophical cleanliness obsessed cabbie drives on street of LA, takes a lady for a ride, challenges her on who-can-win-the-shortest-path-algorithm contest, wins it, alleviates her hectic life, mumbles some philosophical jumbo, gets a contact card in return for graceful service and decides to ponder a bit on his exciting life, when a stranger decides to disturb from his ephemeral fantasy. This stranger is none other than super-cool right on business customer named Vincent, who as it appears loves taking things in a rather stylish manner.

So the driver and the passenger head to the first stop, where Vincent-da-cool man makes a brief stop to kill a person. Sigh, simplicity in life rules – one wonders, why Vincent was chosen for the job, when the jobs in question themselves look so easy! The shocking discovery makes the driver pee in his pants, but the cool dude is not about let him go before he topples another 4 on his list.

What happens during the night is the gist of the story – in between killings, driver and passenger, or rather Vincent exchange theories on how to lead a practical life, love, Darwin’s theory of evolution (okay, I made that up!), and how to live a philosophically practical (is that possible?) life. So while when Vincent is not killing, he is either giving his expertise on life to cabbie, or cajoling him to call his last customer who gave her card. In between, the cab has bouts of hysteria, fright, bravery, foolishness and stupidity all rolled into one.

To make matters worse, the last person Vincent needs to shoot in this much-longer-than-necessary enterprise, the cabbie discovers that his last target is sigh – the woman whom he gave a lift before the new customer came up. So then, should I bother explaining the rest of this clichéd-as-it-comes movie?

Tom Cruise is hopelessly miscast as a super-cool-killer on streets of L.A. He neither possesses the style or suave of a smooth criminal, nor does he possess the killing dialogue delivery of John Travolta – such roles are tailor made for John Travolta or Nicholas Cage who can ooze loads of style and yet make their authoritative statements when it comes to action. Tom Cruise doesn’t do both – from the first frame to last, he is as bad as it comes.

Jamie Foxx as the cabbie is immensely irritating. He is not just irritating; his presence itself is a dread, which is sadly the whole movie. The lesser said about him the better.

Michael Mann clearly tries to enthuse Tarantino’s style of humor in an action movie, but falls flat on his bum. His dialogues not only lack that satirical touch of Tarantino, but they don’t even succeed in making you stretch your lips a little. At places, the infused humor simply kills the intensity of the scene reducing it to a corny spectacle going no where. Given his (mis)-casting, things were not going to be any simpler for him.

Everything else about the movie is just about average and really nothing worthy to speak about. The overall look of the film looks straight out of the movie Traffic, and does nothing to justify its predecessor. The film is way too long, and because its long, its boring and its slow!

All in all, a very ordinary movie which deserves to go to bin. Don’t waste your time watching this one – I can collateral you on that!