Collateral
Director: Michael Mann
Year Released: 2004
Rating: 1.0
Jamie Foxx takes hit man Tom Cruise around the town to knock off various drug dealers and assorted slime bags; such an open-ended concept could have yielded unpredictable results, but is instead plagued by simply awful contrivances (the very existence of Jada Pinkett-Smith's character, for one), existential dialogue (why does every hit man have to be a philosopher?) and errors in real-world logic (anyone that's ever been in a car accident knows you can't run top-speed afterwards; anyone that's ever been in a club knows that when a SWAT Team comes in you stop dancing). This isn't to say that either Cruise or Foxx don't work together - they do, and a few (perhaps unintentionally) funny moments sneak through - but Mann is not in top form and even his custom mix CD of musical selections (modern rock, more tribal chanting) fail to enhance the picture.
