Collateral (Widescreen Two-Disc Edition)

Rating:
Summary: good movie
Review: Watching Tom Cruise in this movie was like watching Denzel Washington in Training Day, you never would suspect them to be so good as villians b/c for years they have always been heros. Tom Cruise proves he is still on top of his game in this one as Vincent. The movie starts off with Max (Jamie Foxx) as the taxi driver who begins flirting with Annie (Jada Pinkett-Smith) about their occupations and arguing over which route is the quickest to reach Anne's destination. Things go from good to ugly when Vincent approaches Max's Taxi. Vincent, a cold-hearted brutual assassin is on the hunt for suspects who are witnesses for a trial that will prosecute Vincent. Max soon realizes this when he takes Vincent to his first stop and a man falls a few stories high and lands on top of the cab. Max is in total panic as his cab is damaged, LAPD are on their trial, dead bodies are in the trunk of the cab, his boss threating to make him pay for the cab damages and trying desperately to get away from Vincent and his evil deeds. Although Vincent is a dangerous man, he becomes somewhat of a generous man as he takes Max out to eat and pays for the meal and even bought flowers for Max's sick mother. So he has the sweet charm while having evil intentions which makes him that much more dangerous. The tension b/w Max and Vincent begin to unravel as Max runs out while Vincent is talking to his mother and destroys his breifcase which contains dirty money and a computer which has a database containing the information needed to find out who the suspects are and locations. Vincent makes him pay as he must not only continue taking him to the rest of his needed stops but makes him false his identity as being Vincent or risk having both he and his mother killed. LAPD were able to track down the real Vincent but could not capture him and he brutually murders everyone that came near his path. After more and more heated arguments b/w the two, Max decides to take matters into his hands as he intentionally wrecks the cab. Unfortunaely, Vincent was able to escape and Max soon discovers that Anne is the next victim and it is up to him to save her (she is the lawyer for the case). Max is in a real bind as he tries to call anne and guide her on Vincent's whereabouts and try to run in the building and rescue her before it's too late. Max luckily was able to rescue her and now the two of them try to runaway from Vincent. In the end, the two guys have a shoot off on the train which kills Vincent and Anne and Max quietly walk off. The story line behind the movie was good, but the reason I took a star off was for the ending. I think they could have done more work. I was expecting to see more confrontation b/w the two main characters as I thought Vincent would've survived the shootout and still be on the hunt for them, but the ending doesn't really ruin the movie. I truly do admire an actor who plays a role that is the total opposite of what he or she is used to playing and still make a great movie and Tom Cruise certainly does that. His character who's sporting a silver suit with gray hair despite his evil ways was a generous and helpful guy as he might have helped turned Max's life around and encourage him to work harder at better himself and acheiving his dream which was to own a limo company. Jamie Foxx who has become a multi-talented success proves that his acting career is starting to reach it's peak as well. Can't wait to see how well he does in Ray. Highly Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Tom is equal to his talented self - Quality entertainment
Review: When I get a Tom Cruise movie, I expected it to be well acted, to have a good story, and to be flawlessly made. I got my money's worth with Collateral.

Cruise is a great villain, ruthless and human in the space of the same second. The interaction between him and Foxx is worth seeing as they ride around in a taxi, unseen and unremembered. To top it off, the ending is the crème de la crème; don't miss it.

An upcoming actor who is worth seeing is Mark Ruffalo. He started as Jennifer Garner's boyfriend in 13 Going on 30, and then he tried his hand-and succeeded-in unrated territory with In the Cut, to be back in the role of the tough, good-hearted cop in Collateral.