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Watch Collateral with a subscription on Paramount+, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

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Driven by director Michael Mann's trademark visuals and a lean, villainous performance from Tom Cruise, Collateral is a stylish and compelling noir thriller.

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"Collateral" opens with Tom Cruise exchanging briefcases with a stranger in an airport. Then, intriguingly, it seems to turn into another movie. We meet a cab driver named Max ( Jamie Foxx ), who picks up a ride named Annie ( Jada Pinkett Smith). She's all business. She rattles off the streets he should take to get her to downtown Los Angeles. He says he knows a faster route. They end up making a bet: The ride will be free if he doesn't get them downtown faster.

The scene continues. It's not about flirtation. Sometimes you only need to have a few words with a person to know you would like to have many more. They open up. She's a federal prosecutor who confesses she's so nervous the night before a big case that she cries. He says he plans to own his own limousine service. They like each other. He lets her get out of the cab and knows he should have asked for her number. Then she taps on the window and gives him her card.

This is a long scene to come at the beginning of a thriller, but a good one, establishing two important characters. It is also good on its own terms, like a self-contained short film. It allows us to learn things about Max we could not possibly learn in the scenes to follow, and adds a subtext after the next customer into his cab is Tom Cruise.

Cruise plays a man named Vincent, who seems certain, centered, and nice. He needs a driver to spend all night with him, driving to five destinations, and offers him six crisp $100 bills as persuasion. First stop, an apartment building. No parking in front. Vincent tells Max to wait for him in the alley. If you know nothing about the film, save this review until after.

A body lands on top of the cab. "You threw him out of the window and killed him?" Max asks incredulously. No, says Vincent, the bullets killed him. Then he went out the window. So now we know more about Vincent. The movie is structured to make his occupation a surprise, but how much of a surprise can it be when the movie's Web site cheerfully blurts out: "Vincent is a contract killer." Never mind. The surprise about Vincent's occupation is the least of the movie's pleasures.

"Collateral" is essentially a long conversation between a killer and a man who fears for his life. Mann punctuates the conversation with what happens at each of the five stops, where he uses detailed character roles and convincing dialogue by writer Stuart Beattie to create, essentially, more short films that could be free-standing. Look at the heartbreaking scene where Vincent takes Max along with him into a nightclub, where they have a late-night talk with Daniel ( Barry Shabaka Henley ), the owner. Daniel remembers a night Miles Davis came into the club, recalling it with such warmth and wonder, such regret for his own missed opportunities as a musician, that we're looking into the window of his life.

Mann is working in a genre with "Collateral," as he was in " Heat " (1995), but he deepens genre through the kind of specific detail that would grace a straight drama. Consider a scene where Vincent asks (or orders) Max to take him to the hospital where Max's mother is a patient. The mother is played by Irma P. Hall (the old lady in the Coens' "The Lady-Killers"), and she makes an instant impression, as a woman who looks at this man with her son, and intuits that everything might not be right, and keeps that to herself.

These scenes are so much more interesting than the standard approach of the shifty club owner or the comic-relief Big Mama. Mann allows dialogue into the kind of movie that many directors now approach as wall-to-wall action. Action gains a lot when it happens to convincing individuals, instead of to off-the-shelf action figures.

What's particularly interesting is the way he, and Cruise, modulate the development of Vincent as a character. Vincent is not what he seems, but his secret is not that he's a killer; that's merely his occupation. His secret is his hidden psychological life going back to childhood, and in the way he thinks all the time about what life means, even as he takes it. When Max tells him the taxi job is "temporary" and talks about his business plans, Vincent finds out how long he's been driving a cab (12 years) and quotes John Lennon : "Life is what happens while you're making other plans." Max tells Vincent something, too: "You lack standard parts that are supposed to be there in most people."

I would have preferred for the movie to end in something other than a chase scene, particularly one involving a subway train, since I've seen about six of those already this summer, but Mann directs it well. And he sets it up with a cat-and-mouse situation in a darkened office, which is very effective; it opens with a touch of " Rear Window " as Max watches what's happening on different floors of an office building.

Cruise and the filmmakers bring a great deal more to his character than we expect in a thriller. What he reveals about Vincent, deliberately and unintentionally, leads up to a final line that is worthy of one of those nihilistic French crime movies from the 1950s. Jamie Foxx's work is a revelation. I've thought of him in terms of comedy (" Booty Call ," "Breakin' all the Rules"), but here he steps into a dramatic lead and is always convincing and involving. Now I'm looking forward to his playing Ray Charles ; before, I wasn't so sure. And observe the way Jada Pinkett Smith sidesteps the conventions of the Meet Cute and brings everyday plausibility to every moment of Annie's first meeting with Max. This is a rare thriller that's as much character study as sound and fury.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Collateral (2004)

Rated R for violence and language

120 minutes

Barry Shabaka Henley as Daniel

Emilio Rivera as Paco

Jada Pinkett Smith as Annie

Tom Cruise as Vincent

Javier Bardem as Felix

Jamie Foxx as Max

Irma P. Hall as Max's mother

Directed by

Michael Mann
Stuart Beattie

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Collateral Is the Most Michael Mann Film of All Michael Mann Films

An underrated gritty return to form, the film includes the best seven minutes on his resume that don’t involve Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and a diner booth.

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In Michael Mann’s greatest movies, the good guys are never really all that different from the bad guys. And make no mistake, they are always guys. The heroes and antiheroes of his stylishly macho films are put through their cat-and-mouse paces in a decidedly grey moral world, rather than a black-and-white one. There’s no room for concepts like right and wrong, they are all lonely nocturnal ambiguity—modern-day Ronin sagas cloaked in a cool shades of gun-metal slate. Just think of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in 1995’s Heat , where these two acting heavyweights play two equally obsessive sides of the same coin. Watching their famous diner tete-a-tete with the sound off, you’d never know who was the cop and who was the criminal.

Heat is widely (and rightly) considered to be Mann’s masterpiece—the director’s grand meditation on all of his favorite pet themes: loyalty, honor, integrity, crime, compulsion, loneliness, and the point where good and evil bleed into one another until you’re no longer sure which side you’re meant to be rooting for. It’s a grab bag of leitmotifs that was there from the start in the director’s pair of ‘80s gems, Thief and Manhunter . But as undeniably lean and mean as both of those films are, I’d argue the movie that actually nips most closely at the heels of Heat in the top tier of Mann’s underworld classics is 2004’s Collateral —another violent, nihilism-drenched thriller that, if you squint just a little, seems to exist in the same spiritual universe as Heat . They’re two movements in an underworld symphony of L.A. after dark.

Just out in a flawless new 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Collateral isn’t exactly what anyone who considers themselves to be an auteur buff would call a “deep cut.” Any movie that stars Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx and makes $220 million at the worldwide box office can hardly be called “overlooked.” And yet, well, it kind of is. The story of a lone-wolf contract killer (Cruise) who strongarms a hapless and meticulous cab driver (Foxx) into ferrying him on his nightly rounds to wipe out five targets involved in a grand-jury case, Collateral may not be the best Michael Mann film, but it certainly is the most Michael Mann film.

When Collateral hit theaters 16 years ago, Mann was coming off a pair of well-received, Oscar-nominated dramas, 1999’s The Insider and 2001’s Ali . Both had the technical precision, live-wire performances, and high-IQ smarts we expect from Mann’s movies. And both were based on real life headlines and headline-makers. But let’s face it, real life isn’t what we’re looking for when we fork over ten bucks to see a new Michael Mann movie. We want crooks plying their crooked trades in the shadows, haunted men obsessed with their jobs to the point of mania, and the sort of gritty-but-gorgeous action set pieces that leave you breathless and spent. Collateral marked a return to stoic form.

Written by Australian Stuart Beattie, Collateral was originally called The Last Domino , a lousy title which was thankfully changed. And eventually, the script made its way into the hands of Frank Darabont ( The Shawshank Redemption ), who had a deal at the time to make low-budget genre movies for HBO. But HBO passed, clearing the way for DreamWorks to step in. The studio flirted with Mimi Leder ( Deep Impact ) and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski ( Saving Private Ryan ) to direct, but both would end up drifting away. As would Russell Crowe, who was itching to play the hitman-villain role of Vincent. But the one fortuitous thing that came from Crowe’s brief involvement was that he passed his enthusiasm onto the man who recently directed him in The Insider , Michael Mann.

More Coverage Of the Movies That Matter

With Crowe out, Mann sparked to the idea of casting Tom Cruise against heroic type. Adam Sandler toyed with the idea of playing Max, the cabbie. But when Sandler bailed to star in Spanglish (just one of the countless puzzling, ‘What If’ choices Hollywood happens to be littered with), Mann offered the part to Jamie Foxx—a happy accident if ever there was one because he’s absolutely perfect. Something Mann suspected from working with the actor on Ali . As is Cruise, whose unexpected amorality and guiltless, hair-trigger sadism shows just how great the star can be when he fucks with our expectations and zigs when we expect him to zag.

Over the years, Mann has described Collateral as “only the third act” of a story. And that gambit works so well in the film that you have to wonder why more screenwriters and directors don’t try that sort of formal experimentation more often. At the opening of the film, we have no idea who Cruise’s Vincent is, what his backstory is, or what he’s doing in L.A. We just seeing him walking through LAX, presumably just off a plane from Chicago or some other metropolis that breeds cold-eyed killers dressed in sharp grey suits with sunglasses and a shock of silver-grey hair on his head that matches the close-cropped, salt-and-pepper beard on his face. If Tom Ford ever created an haute couture line for sociopaths, Vincent would be its posterboy.

While Cruise’s Vincent is a complete mystery, Foxx’s Max is less so thanks to an introductory scene in which he takes a prosecutor (Jada Pinkett Smith in the best ten minutes she’s ever had on screen) to the airport. Within seconds, he knows what she does for a living, what makes her tick, and even who makes her handbag. Because, for Max, his cab is a confessional booth on wheels. He sees so many people in his rearview mirror every day that he’s developed a sixth sense about them. It’s too bad he doesn’t size up Vincent a few beats longer before he becomes his next fare. Cruise starts off chatty and chummy with Max, offering him $600 to take him to five different spots around L.A. And if the offer seems to be too good to be true, that’s because it is. While parked in an alley during their first stop, a bullet-riddled body lands on the roof of Max’s cab with Cruise racing after it, suddenly forced to explain the new reality of the long, bloody evening that lays ahead. “You killed him!” Max says. To which Vincent matter-of-factly replies, “No, the bullets and the fall killed him….Now get in the fucking car.”

Collateral (4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital)

Watching Collateral again this week, the thing that surprised me the most about it was how amazing Cruise is playing a psycho grim reaper—and why, with the exception of 1999’s Magnolia , he didn’t venture into the dark more often. You could say that Collateral is the anti-Tom Cruise movie, an immersive, full-body deep dive into seductive sadism and remorseless evil where he gets to spout be-bop arias of unhinged lunacy that we rarely get to hear coming out his mouth like “We’ve got to make the best of it. Improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it.” And yet, it’s also totally a Tom Cruise movie because, well, you can’t help but be a little charmed—seduced even—by this existential sicko no matter how depraved his five-item To Do list is.

Like every Michael Mann movie—even the not very good ones like Public Enemies and Blackhat —every single frame in Collateral is composed with a jeweler’s eye for detail. This was actually the first film in which Mann (or really any A-list Hollywood director actually) used high-def video instead of film stock. Mann has said that in order to capture the silhouettes of L.A. at night, celluloid wouldn’t have worked. I’ll take his word for it. But the film’s green-tinted graininess gives the Tinseltown of Collateral the haunted neo-noir glow of a ghost town that left the lights on before it was abandoned. In the movie’s greatest sustained spasm of suspense and violence, he shoots a chaotic gunfight inside a Koreatown dance club like something out of one of the higher rings of Dante’s Inferno. It may be the best seven minutes on his resume that don’t involve Robert De Niro and Al Pacino sitting in a diner booth. And watching it, you can’t help but think of what a mess it might have been had someone like Michael Bay or Joss Whedon directed it instead.

If Collateral wasn’t as great a film as it is, it would be worth checking out just for that sequence alone. But, of course, there’s so many more brilliant moments hiding in plain sight in the movie that jump out at you the more times you watch it: The way Foxx manages to flirt with Pinkett Smith without actually flirting; the way Cruise pop, pop, pops a bunch of drug-addled goons trying to make off with his briefcase and then delivers one final pop without looking as an exclamation point; the way Javier Bardem, in just one quick scene, manages to turn a story about Santa Claus into the cold-sweat nightmare fuel. But don’t take my word for it. Throw it on for yourself and, you know, “improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, roll with it….”

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Under the Radar: ‘Collateral’ is the second greatest movie about a taxi driver

October 5, 2023
Kyle Quinlan

Vincent (Tom Cruise) is a contract killer who hijacks a taxicab and its driver, Max (Jamie Foxx), for a job in DreamWorks Pictures’ and Paramount Pictures’ dramatic thriller “Collateral”, directed by Michael Mann. (PRNewsFoto/via TNS)

Under The Radar is a weekly film column that highlights underappreciated and overlooked movies of the past. Graphic credit: Kyle Quinlan

“Collateral” (2004)

Genre: Crime/Thriller Starring: Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith Director: Michael Mann

Tom Cruise. Jamie Foxx. One night. One taxicab. What more could viewers want from a neo-noir classic?

Taking place over one bustling night in Los Angeles, “Collateral” follows a taxi driver, Max (Jamie Foxx), whose mundane shift is interrupted when a mysteriously confident man, Vincent (Tom Cruise), hails down his cab.

Vincent offers Max a hefty sum to drive him around the city all night, making a handful of business-related stops. Unable to turn down the money, Max agrees to be Vincent’s personal chauffeur for the evening — and just like that, the madness begins as Vincent’s “line of work” quickly reveals itself.

Why “Collateral” is a Must-Watch

Cruise has been one of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars for years; however, there is debate if “Collateral” is a “Cruise” movie or a “ Foxx” movie. Any time Cruise can be considered second fiddle in a film, it’s an absolute must-watch.

This is what “Collateral” is at its core — Cruise and Foxx working together like yin and yang and giving quality performances. Filled with several amazing action sequences and suspenseful scenes, what makes the movie so brilliant is the moments between the chaos: the relationship and brutally honest conversations between Max and Vincent.

The constant insults and witty banter, the opposing life philosophies and the obvious physical threats that test the pair create a captivating “road trip” dynamic. Not to mention the silver fox, Cruise, who embraces his dark side while sporting a sleek, gray suit and platinum-colored hair.

The supporting cast knocks it out of the park as well, with many actors having little screen time but nevertheless giving fantastic performances.

Jada Pinkett Smith portrays Annie, the beautifully hard-nosed lawyer Max drives around as a client at the beginning of the film. Foxx and Pinkett Smith deliver an absolute master class in chemistry, providing an all-time flirting scene. Foxx demonstrates how even as a cabbie, you can woo someone way out of your league with just a little bit of confidence, charisma and an extensive knowledge of road geography.

Setting the romantic mood, “Hands of Time” by Groove Armada soothingly plays in the background, making it hard to believe that Foxx and Pinkett Smith did not get married immediately after filming.

Mark Ruffalo portrays Detective Ray Fanning, a cop hot on the trail of suspicious activity in the streets tied to the criminal underground. Obsessed with finding connections between crimes and coincidences, Fanning does whatever he needs to catch his target.

Guest spots from actors like Jason Statham and Javier Bardem keep audience members on their toes, providing some heavy-hitting acting and electrifying scene-stealing.

The Reception, The Legacy

IMDb: 7.5/10 Letterboxd: 3.8/5 Rotten Tomatoes: 86 percent

Raking in over $220 million from the worldwide box office — with a budget of $65 million — “Collateral” was quite popular among audiences and critics at the time of its release.

The film is no cookie-cutter thriller, containing much more than the explosions and fistfights audiences are used to; instead, “Collateral” focuses on its characters and the emotional journey they ride through a crazy night.

Receiving Oscar nominations for Best Film Editing and Best Supporting Actor (Foxx), “Collateral” sadly went home empty-handed at the 77th Academy Awards.

However, Foxx did bring home some hardware in the Best Actor category for his unbelievable performance as Ray Charles in “Ray.” This is one of the 12 times in Oscar history where an actor/actress was nominated in two different categories in the same year.

The box office numbers, nominations and high praise from critics might suggest this is a beloved movie, but the film’s legacy seems to be undervalued and hidden on the movie shelves of the only Blockbuster left.

Similar Movies

Those who enjoy the “one crazy night” structure should check out “Training Day,” starring Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke, for a film that feels like a fraternal twin to “Collateral.” The Safdie Brothers’ “Good Time,” starring Robert Pattinson, also serves as a more modern film in the subgenre.

Anyone interested in seeing Cruise play a character different from his typical roles can watch “Magnolia” for a strange and conflicted performance as T.J Mackey. Martin Scorsese’s pool drama, “The Color of Money,” sees Cruise as a different Vincent — literally wearing a shirt that says “Vincent” — a goofy kid who’s not exactly the smartest guy in the room.

If you want to dive into director Mann’s filmography, “Heat” is the next watch if you haven’t already. The undeniable cat-and-mouse crime epic, starring Pacino and Robert De Niro, is regarded as a top movie of all time and is a must-watch. If you dig his style, “Thief,” “Manhunter” and “Miami Vice” are all great movies that showcase his slick dealings in criminal life, with “Miami Vice” being his most accessible if Mann isn’t your cup of tea.

Hopefully after watching “Collateral,” viewers will understand the frustrations with the Academy snubbing it of a Best Picture nomination.

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Collateral (2004)

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Collateral: Looking Back at Tom Cruise's Underrated Villainous Performance

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Vincent (Tom Cruise) is a contract killer in Los Angles for one night to eliminate five targets who are going to declare in a grand-jury case. Max (Jamie Foxx) is a taxi driver with grandeur dreams of having a limousine business. Vincent gets in the cab and decides that Vincent is going to be his ride for the whole night. Their cat-and-mouse game starts there and doesn’t stop until the end of the movie. That’s the story of Collateral , one of the best Michael Mann movies, with Tom Cruise’s best villainous performance, and here’s why:

Tom Cruise, the Villain

For most of his career, Tom Cruise has played heroes . That’s why it is so interesting when he decides to play complicated, gray characters ( Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, Born on the Fourth of July ), or evil characters ( Interview with the Vampire, Collateral ). We would’ve liked to see more of this side of Cruise, as his whole acting style changes and makes him a more interesting actor. In Collateral , Vincent is methodical, charismatic, and pragmatic, using all the qualities that make Cruise a star for evil. He wears all gray to try to be, well... gray and unmemorable, but that’s impossible. Tom Cruise's acting sometimes looks like someone trying to act as a human, and in this movie, that’s a benefit, as Vincent is trying to act like a human to be less menacing, and more mundane. At least until the first kill in the movie happens, and then we see the devil behind all that grayness, and Cruise having fun: “improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, sh*t happens, I Ching, whatever man, roll with it…” Vincent tells Max, as it was Cruise talking about shooting the scene.

His character (as most by Cruise and all by Mann) knows he’s the best at what he does, and this night will present him with a challenge that will help sharpen his always-great skills. Vincent is the devil, and as so, he first has to be conniving and seductive, and Cruise nails that part of his character. Mann and Cruise together in a movie is a match made in movie heaven. They both go all-in in the preparation of their characters. Cruise had all kinds of training to prepare for the movie, and Mann had an extensive history of the character; well-thought-out, even if it doesn't appear in the movie. Of Cruise’s gray look, Michael Mann told Entertainment Weekly : “I saw Tom as all steely, and the visual for that was silver hair and a tight gray suit. The man he’s playing is erudite, well-read, and [his] sociopathy is total. With Tom, you don’t get what you hear from a lot of movie stars, which is ”Don’t move me out of my range, what I bring to every movie I do.”

Related: Tom Cruise’s Best Drama Movies, Ranked

Foxx vs Cruise: Incredible Acting Fight

Michael Mann loves heavyweight fights between two actors at their peaks. It's spectacularly shown with Pacino and De Niro in Heat , but it also happens in Collatera l. Cruise was still in one of his best moments, working with Spielberg, and still wanting to get challenged by movies; before he became a stuntman ready to die for entertainment (we love the Mission Impossible movies, and we’ll be the first in line at the cinema, but his acting in those movies is no challenge). Jamie Foxx had already shot Ray, but the world hadn’t seen it yet, so he was still trying to prove that he was much more than a comic actor . Both actors were at the perfect moment to be opposed to each other in this movie, and as in tennis, playing against a great opponent makes you top your game. With a few scenes in his cab, Mann artfully presents to us who Max is; smart, observant, with a big dream, and good at his job. That’s why Vincent uses him, and that’s why he becomes the best foil for our bad guy. Foxx's character isn’t cool (the greatest trick Foxx plays on us is to get us to believe he’s not cool), but he’s resourceful and has a moral code. That’s why the conflict between both characters and actors is so interesting. They’re not that different, except for the killing, a duality Mann always loves to play, showing they might be two sides of the same coin.

Once the conflict is set, the movie never stops (literally) as there are four more killings to get to, creating a strange, scary tour of L.A. Both lead actors are great, but at those stops is when we see the incredible cast Mann has selected for the movie and, in small roles, they shine. Javier Bardem might only have a scene, but what a scene ; it could be said that it's the best of the movie, as the menacing Mexican who has his own way of looking at life. The same has to be said about Barry Shabaka Henley and the scene in the nightclub. We can see the moment he understands he’s about to die and how his whole body, face, and mannerisms change in just a second. Jada Pinkett Smith is sexy in her first scene with Max in the cab, and we understand their connection almost instantly, even if at the end, she’s a little bit too much of a damsel in distress. And then there’s Mark Ruffalo as the detective; he’s never looked so sleazy, with an earring and his hair all gelled back. Ruffalo always looks like a smart professor (one of the things that made him great for the Hulk), and here you can believe he has an ex-wife who never gets her alimony payments in time. The moment he dies is also surprising, as we understand Collateral is a different movie, one without heroes, and Max will have to survive this hellish night by himself. Even the Jason Statham cameo leaves us with questions. Is this his Transporter character? Probably, but we’ll never know for sure.

Related: Best Films Set in Los Angeles, Ranked

Michael Mann’s Brilliance

Michael Mann is an obsessive, brilliant director who always loves to make movies about men who are great at their job, but who don’t have that much more out of it. They only really live when they work, and the rest is blurry: romantic partners, friends, holidays, those don’t matter as much, and their personal hell would be spending too much time in those worlds. And Collateral is no different. Both Vincent and Max live and breathe their jobs, one of the reasons that makes them such good pairs in the movie. In another world (where Vincent is no killer, or Max's morals are less important), this could’ve been a buddy movie, as both characters get to understand each other, but here they’re rivals.

Mann loved the script because “the whole movie is like the third act of a traditional drama”. We only catch this guy on this specific day and moment in time. With those ingredients, Mann could obsess on the small details that make him a unique director and try new things. This was the first film in which Mann (or really any A-list Hollywood director actually) used high-def video instead of film stock. Mann has said that to capture the silhouettes of L.A. at night, celluloid wouldn’t have worked. Also, there's coherence in the route the cab takes; something that is usually not that important for directors as long as it makes for a good shot; creating Mann’s second-best movie, Heat, almost thirty years later, it’s still his best.

Collateral (2004)

Collateral Ending Explained: A Cab And Subway Ride Through 21st-Century Existence

Forget everything you think you know about Michael Mann 's "Collateral," and just think of it as a movie about work culture and 21st-century life, framed through the lens of cab driving and contract killing. Through this reading, the title can be understood as a reference to humans as collateral damage. Mann explored a similar subject in "The Insider," a seven-time Oscar-nominated film about a whistleblower exposing a tobacco company for purposefully making its cigarettes more addictive. In "Collateral," he and screenwriter Stuart Beattie simply went about it in a more indirect, action-oriented manner.

The surface-level plot of "Collateral" is easy enough to follow and describe in 25 words: hitman Vincent ( Tom Cruise ) forces cabbie Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him around L.A. at night as he crosses off names on his kill list. Thematically, there's a lot more to the film than that.

Taken as a mere action thriller, the ending of "Collateral" might not need explaining, per se, but maybe it's worth reexamining with a deeper interpretation in mind. This is a movie with some meat on its bones where subtext is concerned. It emerges in the dialogue, the character roles, and the twists and turns of the plot: all of which go toward a metaphorical examination of the failure of the American dream for working-class individuals like Max, and the potential breakdown of the social order at the hands of morally grey-collared professionals like Vincent.

"Collateral" has two other key supporting characters: the federal prosecutor Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) and the LAPD detective Ray (Mark Ruffalo). Annie and Ray represent law and order, which Vincent threatens with a resolve as steely as his suit and hair. Let's start the meter now — and do note the spoilers light on top of this yellow cab.

The dream of Island Limos

"Collateral" breaks into its third act with a car crash. After riding around with him all night, murdering people, Vincent has turned Max's whole life and worldview upside down, so Max returns the favor by running red lights and flipping the cab.

What pushes Max to his breaking point is a monologue Vincent delivers right before this, where he dismantles Max's dream of someday owning his own company, Island Limos. At the beginning of the movie, we saw how Max kept a postcard of a tropical island in the sun visor above his driver's seat. It's the classic image that an office worker might have on their wall calendar to inspire them through the doldrums of their job.

Max's office, as it were, just happens to be one on wheels. He was doing mobile work, or remote work, before it was in-fashion. Released in 2004, "Collateral" positions Max as the face of the century to come, someone whose job comes with no retirement or health benefits and whose boss is just a voice on the radio, all too ready to "extort a working man," as Vincent puts it.

Vincent suggests unionizing, but Max tells himself this job is temporary. The only problem is, he's been doing it for 12 years. This leaves him stuck in a routine where all he does is talk about his dream to other people. He develops a good rapport with Annie, so he's willing to share it with her and even give her the postcard, which leaves him with her business card in its place. However, with Vincent, Max is more guarded, perhaps because Vincent can see right through all of his dreamer-but-not-a-doer "bulls***."

'Nobody knows each other'

Foxx won the Oscar for Best Actor for his 2004 performance in "Ray" — a biopic where he had his eyes glued shut to play blind musician Ray Charles — but he also received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role that year as Max in "Collateral." In a lot of ways, Max is a more relatable character because he's an everyman, not a bonafide musical genius. The same could be said of one of Vincent's targets, a jazz club owner named Daniel (Barry Shabaka Henley), who met Miles Davis and had the night of his life jamming with him before he got drafted into the war and life happened, derailing his dream of being a musician.

To hear Max's mother Ida (Irma P. Hall) tell it, he's living his own dream already. She thinks he's got his limo company set up and drives famous people around because that's the image he lets her take from their interactions. "Max never had many friends," Ida reveals to Vincent in the hospital. "Always talking to his self in the mirror. It's unhealthy."

Though internet culture was not ubiquitous yet and the technology we see in "Collateral" is that of flip phones and flash drives, this side of Max's character somewhat anticipated the rise of social media and people's tendency to publicly curate their selves for an attentive audience that may or may not exist.

Speaking of the Greater Los Angeles area as a microcosm for the country, Max says, "17 million people ... and nobody knows each other." He sees the world changing and says, "We gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment." Yet his idea of that is to coldly execute tasks and execute people.

The illusion of progress

Throughout "Collateral," we see Max getting in touch with his inner Vincent, reusing lines he's heard from Cruise's character to stand up for himself. Early on, when Vincent remarks to Max, "You're one of these guys that do instead of talk," there's a mocking edge to it, though, because we know that's not true about Max.

While waiting for the stars to align and everything to be "perfect," Max has become one of the plebeians Vincent describes who, after a decade-plus, is still stuck in the "same job, same place, same routine." Though he's always on the go, always moving, always working, Max is really just driving in circles around L.A., making no forward progress on his dream. This is what leads Vincent to finally dress him down before "Collateral" moves out of the two-man taxi, where Max chauffeurs him around, and into the mass transit system of the subway, where they're both passengers. To Max, it's a devastating personal takedown when Vincent says:

"Someday. Someday my dream will come. One night, you'll wake up and you'll discover it never happened. It's all turned around on you, and it never will. Suddenly, you are old. Didn't happen, and it never will. Because you were never going to do it, anyway. You'll push it into memory, then zone out in your BarcaLounger, being hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life. Don't you talk to me about murder. All it ever took was a down payment on a Lincoln Town Car. Or that girl. You can't even call that girl. What the f*** are you still doing driving a cab?"

When success outstrips humanity

Described variously as a "badass sociopath" and "meat-eater super-assassin," Vincent represents the goal-oriented professional, driven to succeed no matter who he hurts. The last words out of his mouth before Max improbably outguns him at the end of "Collateral" are "I do this for a living."

Right up until the end, Vincent is laser-focused on his work, to the exclusion of all else, even basic human empathy. By his own admission, he's "indifferent" to the plight of others. As Max observes, Vincent lacks "the standard parts that are supposed to be there in people." He's a contract worker, a killer, who operates in the private sector and doesn't get any paid sick leave.

"I don't meet people," Vincent states. His current boss, Felix Reyes-Torrena (Javier Bardem), doesn't even know what he looks like. They've never had a face-to-face conversation, which allows Max to pose as Vincent and stand up to another boss who is ready to terminate his employee (in the Arnold Schwarzenegger sense of "terminate") the minute that employee brings a problem before him.

The problem is that Vincent has lost his list, all the intel on his targets, thanks to Max throwing it over the side of a pedestrian bridge onto the freeway. Since Vincent is just an independent contractor and not a real employee, Reyes-Torrena expects him to sort things out himself. "Sorry does not put Humpty Dumpty back together again."

Vincent's fate is foreshadowed early in "Collateral" with the anecdote he shares about a guy who died on the subway and rode around on it for six hours before anyone noticed. This comes right after he calls L.A. "too sprawled out, disconnected," a line where he could just as easily be talking about modern society in general.

Society and the individual

With his slicked-back hair and goatee, Ruffalo's character, Ray, almost seems like a cop out of another Mann movie — "Miami Vice," maybe. "Collateral" builds him up as a ray (ha) of hope, and you think he's going to come to the rescue, but instead, his death becomes the script's All Is Lost moment. To Vincent, a character motivated by success at the expense of human life, this guy with a badge barely registers. That's why he guns Ray down like he's nothing, as if to casually break the whole law in the form of one man.

What's one person's death weighed against Rwandan genocide and six billion people on the planet? This is the mentality Vincent brings with him into the U.S. Attorney's offices at the end of "Collateral." His presence there endangers the very fabric of society. Max can see the collapse playing out in real time; he's on the phone with Max's last surprise target, Annie, watching as Vincent comes for her through the windows. Only when Max steps up and the dreamer takes action is he able to forestall her death and his own.

The camera in "Collateral" often takes on a God's-eye view, looking straight down from the night sky at Max's cab as it moves through the streets. The law won't save the day down there; it's too easily broken. And as we see in "Collateral," beeping the horn for help only attracts the attention of muggers.

"Take comfort in knowing you never had a choice," Vincent tells him. Yet in the end, Max does have a choice. He can be the change he wants to see. In "Collateral," the responsibility of jumpstarting one's dream and preserving order falls not on outside forces or institutions, but on the individual.

Collateral Review

17 Sep 2004

120 minutes

Heat, Michael Mann's meditation on the crime movie, was a dialogue between two people who breathed the same intoxicating air but rarely shared the same physical space. Collateral, his latest unholy visitation on the City Of Angels, reverses this dynamic. Professionally mild cabbie Max and professional assassin Vincent travel roads that should never cross, but for one night they're boxed together, reluctant chauffeur and ruthless killer.

If Heat explored the harmonics between equal but opposite forces cop vs. thief; Pacino vs. De Niro this investigates a very different relationship between the strong and the seemingly helpless. It is fitting, then, that it pits the world's biggest star against a young actor then still best known as a comedian. And in the same way that Max must tap hidden talents if he's to survive, Jamie Foxx enters the cab with promise and exits as the equal of a Cruise operating at the very top of his own A-game.

Cruise, perverting that trademark salesman charm into something altogether sinister, and Foxx, his natural exuberance pinched into quiet confidence, play Collateral as a buddy movie. It's Vincent who dresses as a lone wolf, but until this night both men have operated as one, and some welcome comedy is occasioned by the odd couple adjusting to each other. Vincent insinuates himself into Max's comfortable routine in one memorable diversion, the killer makes nice with his hostage's mom and challenges his liberal assumptions. In return, Max gradually chips away at Vincent's carefully constructed cynicism, inadvertently turning what should be a routine assignment into a bloodbath.

Cruise (and Foxx) will hog the headlines for playing against type, but Collateral is every inch Mann's movie. Historical baggage weighed the director down on Ali, but like many auteurs before him, he's more comfortable, and more effective, working within the confines of a genre movie. Or, to be more accurate, redefining what those very limitations can be. Just as young Turks are making a mark by brazenly stealing from the Michael Mann playbook, the master stylist pulls ahead of the pack once more. The musical cues are still bold, the location scouting typically inspired, but Mann's weapon of choice this time around is digital video, a tool that allows him to see farther and go deeper into the night than any previous director has dared. The electrifying result is an entirely new type of noir, one not defined by high contrast but by colour, an ever-shifting palette of purples, blues, browns and blacks. By night, Mann's LA is a bruise.

Meticulously constructed it may be, but Collateral is not without structural problems. After a jack-in-the-box first hour, when Max's cab swings right every time you are convinced it must turn left, the last act does slide inexorably towards convention. In place of surprise we are offered mere plot devices, the kind of cosmic coincidences only screenwriters truly believe in. And even as we demand the only possible conclusion a showdown we understand that it can never really satisfy.

Those who can recall Heat's airport climax will immediately identify the malaise. Not that Mann could ever consciously mount a lazy set-up, but he is understandably reluctant to let his film get out of the cab. After all, for as long as Foxx is at the wheel, Cruise is in the back and Mann's giving directions, this is the movie of the year.

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Tom Cruise looks dramatically off in the distance in a nighttime shot from Collateral.

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Collateral made Tom Cruise into a slasher movie villain

Michael Mann’s gritty L.A. thriller inches close to the horror genre

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A well-dressed man slips through throngs of dancers at a tightly packed nightclub while the rhythmic, electronic drone of Paul Oakenfold’s “Ready Set Go” bounces off every surface in the space. The enraptured crowd is fully lost in the music, unaware of the dark presence that moves among them like a shadow. The figure working his way to the back of the room is not there to dance or mingle. He is there for a single awful purpose, to stalk and kill another victim, and nothing will stop him. A few guards lie in wait, hidden among the crowd, to protect the intended target, but they are quickly dispatched in a savage flurry of snapped limbs and bludgeoning strikes. The loud music and pulsing crowd obscure the violent scene from detection. The brutal killer is unfazed by the physical altercation and now one step closer to completing his grisly mission.

This foreboding sequence sounds like a horror movie, but it’s actually Michael Mann’s 2004 thriller Collateral. Inhabited by Tom Cruise, the character, Vincent, is a rarity among the image-conscious superstar’s past performances, allowing him to play an emotionally distant and ruthlessly violent force of destruction. While it is not his only villainous role, it is certainly his most chilling. Coupled with Mann’s use of sudden violence, Collateral stands out as the closest thing to a slasher movie that Tom Cruise has ever done.

The word “slasher” likely conjures images of unstoppable knife-wielding maniacs killing off coeds at a summer camp or university. But the slasher horror genre is broad and composed of only a few essential elements: an unstoppable killer, unwitting victims (who try but fail to escape the killer’s wrath), and a foil to stand against the madman’s rampage. Collateral may not have Cruise wearing a mask and brandishing a chainsaw, but it unabashedly has all those other needed pieces front and center — they’re just covered in the window dressing of a noir-ish crime thriller.

The plot of Collateral finds Vincent arriving in Los Angeles for a one-night spree of assassinations, intended to stop a federal indictment before it proceeds. To aid him in his task of navigating the city, he dupes a taxi driver, Max (Jamie Foxx), into chauffeuring him, with promises of a wad of cash for an easy night’s work. In these early moments of the film, Vincent doesn’t seem all that unique compared to other Cruise performances. He’s charming but focused, and outside of sporting a buzzed, gray hairstyle that matches his immaculate suit, Vincent feels like the actor relying on the qualities that made him a star. This all changes quickly when Vincent’s first hit goes slightly awry and the body of his victim does a two-story belly-flop onto the top of Max’s cab. The body hitting the car’s roof not only shatters part of the taxi sign that rests there, but also the lies that Vincent spun to Max about his one-night agenda.

Tom Cruise, holding a gun and a bag, walks past some dead bodies after some murdering in Collateral.

Before Max can even fully process what’s happened, Vincent makes it clear nothing has changed for Max’s situation: Vincent still needs ferrying to his destinations, and Max is responsible for that. A deal is a deal. This is the first time the audience, and Max, sees the charming mask that Vincent hides behind fall away to reveal the calculating sociopath underneath. It’s laid bare that Vincent is an apex predator in this jungle of concrete and glass— an uncaring force ready to gun down anything that stands between him and what he’s pursuing.

As the pair make their way across the sprawling and disconnected landscape of after-hours L.A., Max tries to make sense of the situation he finds himself in. He attempts this in the way many of Michael Mann’s noteworthy protagonists do, through conversation. Trapped in a cab and isolated in the empty urban sprawl, he questions his passenger-turned-captor but Vincent offers no answers that would bring clarity or solace. He is, in his own words, simply “indifferent” to the death he leaves in his wake — leaving him not too far removed from other truly monstrous characters of horror fiction, like another well-dressed, charismatic sociopath: American Psycho ’s Patrick Bateman. The biggest difference between the two is training and purpose, but murder is still murder, even if it’s done with tactical efficiency.

Tom Cruise in the back of the cab in Collateral.

Mann seizes horror tropes for alternative use in Collateral to reinforce Vincent as a malevolent force. In one standout scene that takes place halfway through the night, Vincent’s demeanor shifts back to something approaching normalcy when he tells Max they are ahead of schedule and he’ll buy him a drink at a nearby jazz club. The film then cuts to the pair with their drinks, watching the club’s owner, Daniel (Barry Shabaka Henley), masterfully play the trumpet for that night’s patrons. Vincent explains his appreciation for the improvisational nature of the music to Max and even invites Daniel to sit with them for a drink.

Daniel regales them with tales of legendary jazz musician Miles Davis, and in these fleeting moments. Cruise’s natural charisma shines through, and Vincent seems like any other fan, enraptured by the thing he loves. In an instant, his demeanor flips back to icy detachment when it becomes clear Daniel is in fact yet another target on his hit list. Max and Daniel both plead for Vincent to make an exception and let Daniel go. Vincent offers an apparent compromise, if Daniel can correctly answer one question about Miles Davis he’s free to go. Of course, this was never actually a possibility. Daniel answers the question and Vincent still coldly shoots him at point-blank range with a silenced pistol. Vincent rationalizes it with a technicality, but it’s clear Daniel had no hope of survival. The whole situation simply served to show the audience and Max they are at the mercy of a person who simply has no use for the concept.

Another moment heavily informed by the horror genre comes when a narrative thread from earlier in the film is tied off in shocking fashion. After the first assassination’s sloppy resolution, we learn a detective (Mark Ruffalo) is looking for Vincent, and understands Max is likely nothing more than a captive living on borrowed time. The story builds in such a way that the audience is led to think this lone policeman will help Max and work as the competent foil for Cruise’s steely hitman , acting as the Dr. Loomis to Vincent’s well-dressed Michael Myers.

Immediately following a signature Michael Mann show-stopping gunfight inside of a packed nightclub that sees Vincent brutally take out numerous policemen on his way to eliminating his penultimate target, Max is grabbed by Ruffalo’s lone cop and rushed away from the scene. Through the chaos, Max is reassured that this is the help he’s been so desperate for throughout the story. However, as they exit the building, Ruffalo’s character is shot dead mid-stride by an already waiting Vincent. This whole sequence from when they entered the club until the shocking murder of the heroic detective feels like a subversion of a similar scene in the 1984 sci-fi classic The Terminator (“Come with me if you want to live.”). Instead of a valiant stand-off with the unfeeling killing machine that ultimately leads to its defeat, Ruffalo’s Kyle Reese stand-in is wiped out without making any real difference in the story at all. This undermining of the audience’s expectation is a reinforcement of a trope often seen in horror— you may think you are getting away but the killer is always one step ahead and waiting to strike when it matters. There is no safety.

As Collateral enters its final act, the film fully embraces the horror aesthetic it has toyed with throughout its runtime. After he finally rebels and crashes the car carrying them both, Max learns that the last name on Vincent’s list is (in the kind of coincidence that only exists in movies), Annie (Jada Pinkett-Smith), a defense attorney whom Max had shared a romantic moment with briefly at the start of the film. Chasing after Vincent on foot, he tries to call and warn Annie with a stolen cellphone that is unfortunately low on battery, creating a moment all too familiar to horror fans. Annie is working late, alone in her law office’s multi-floor building and unaware that a killer is lurking and moments away from finding her. Max tries to warn her while forced to observe helplessly from the street below as Vincent closes in.

Tom Cruise looks menacingly over the LA skyline in Collateral.

At this point, Cruise embodies Vincent as a neo-slasher character. Bloody and bruised from the car crash, he can no longer hide the darkness behind a clean-cut exterior, and Cruise seems to relish the opportunity to be haggard and desperate onscreen. There is even a moment where he wields a fire axe to cut the electricity in the building. In this moment all the serial killer subtext of his character floats to the surface and he fully becomes what audiences think of as a horror movie villain.

In a sequence that uses Mann’s immaculate eye for staging physical action to create a heavy sense of dread, Vincent slowly stalks a cowering Annie through the darkened high-rise – with only the distant illumination of the surrounding buildings shedding any light on their high stakes cat and mouse game. Just as it seems like Vincent is about to succeed in killing Annie, he is thwarted at the last possible moment by an intervening Max. Cruise’s determined physicality is used to project pure menace in these tense moments, and it’s some of the best physical acting of his career. Vincent goes from being measured and ready to strike to absolutely frantic anger as he smashes through plate glass to give chase to the fleeing couple.

Eventually, Annie and Max make their way onto a public transit train and what they think is safety, but in a bit of stubborn determination that would make Jason Voorhees or Leatherface proud, Vincent follows them for one final confrontation (remember, there is no safety).

Naturally, it ends with Max finally stopping Vincent and fully saving himself and Annie. At that point, the story ends with the two entering into the dawn of a new day, forever changed by the darkness they faced, like any noteworthy survivor of a horror film.

Tom Cruise has not done anything as dark as his role here since Collateral ’s release, nearly 18 years ago, even though he received strong reviews and the film itself was a big box office success. Maybe as he enters his later years and his time as an action star begins to shorten, he’ll once again take on a role that is so diametrically opposed to his typical onscreen persona. If he doesn’t though, at least there is this all-time villain performance for audiences to savor.

Collateral is available to watch on HBO Max .

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Tom Cruise rewatch: Collateral turned Hollywood's biggest star into a villain for the ages

A hitman comes to Los Angeles in Michael Mann's crime thriller, which remains a bold outlier in Tom Cruise's filmography.

In advance of this Friday's release of Top Gun: Maverick , our writers return to their favorite Tom Cruise movies, in appreciation of an on-screen persona that's evolved over decades.

What if Tom Cruise was a monster, though? Imagine America's ever-young action boy with gray hair and stubble, breaking into homes and workplaces to shoot bullets into unsuspecting foreheads. He still laughs, but now he's laughing at you. In 2004's Collateral , Cruise plays Vincent, an assassin who rips a bloody gash through a mean Los Angeles night. The villainous casting could be a stunt, but it's more like a culmination, suggesting a soulless efficiency lurking behind all his glistening heroes.

Collateral came at everyone's magic moment. Director Michael Mann was transitioning from glittery celluloid into scuzzy digital video. Recent WB sitcom frontman Jamie Foxx was months from Oscar glory. The new millennium had found Cruise divorced and adventurous, playing three flavors of drug-addled trauma in Vanilla Sky , Minority Report , and The Last Samurai . His new normal was edgy, but also stratospheric. You started expecting him in science-fiction worlds, in historical fictions, in an empty Times Square or a distant mountain peak. Tough to picture him in the back seat of a taxi cab, or at a 24-hour gas station, or in a hospital elevator. He did not seem like someone who took public transportation.

But that's his journey in Collateral , one of the best movies ever made about the multiverse of everyday Los Angeles. Vincent's a hitman from out of town, hired by a drug kingpin to slay five people in one night. He gets into a taxi driven by Max (Foxx), and offers to pay the cabbie big bucks for an all-night fare. It's a plan that shouldn't hold up to scrutiny — why not hire five hitmen to kill everyone simultaneously? — and when a body lands on the taxi, Max the regular-guy cabbie becomes a big problem. But you believe in the capability of Cruise's Vincent: Dressed in a gray suit to match his cigarette-ash hair, he moves definitively, and speaks like he planned out every conversation weeks ago.

Another actor might have played the killer as a robot. Cruise achieves something scarier: a sociopath with some charm. There's a rhythm to Vincent's patter that recalls Magnolia 's manly guru, a lot of catchphrase philosophy: "Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, s--- happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it ." When he reveals a tragic backstory and then laughs it off as a bad joke, you're seeing Heath Ledger's Joker four summers ahead of schedule.

Collateral delivers as a glorious gun fest. Cool Cruise is here if you want him: punch-shooting his way through a nightclub, hopping on the back of a moving train. The gray hair isn't real-looking, but I still think he still looks amazing, less silver fox than platinum wolf.

Yet this is also the last great showcase (so far) for Cruise in his quieter moments: thoughtful, amazed, baffled, enraged. Something mystical was going on between Cruise and Foxx inside that taxicab; the fact that both men wound up loving the same woman, Katie Holmes, is a strange postscript. The pairing brings out something different in Cruise. Vincent gets all the heavy lines of nihilism, misfortune-cookie lines the actor delivers like gospel: "Millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars and a speck on one in a blink — that's us. Lost in space." He's explaining why his killing doesn't matter, and why it's cool not to care.

Cruise has played nefarious in other films, but those other baddies always felt like costumes: blond olden-times vampire, baldcapped studio exec. With Vincent, though, Cruise seems to strip himself down. You see Cruise clearly, better than any movie this century. (Literally, too: Mann was officially in his period when the camera got follicle-close to actors' faces.)

Near the end of the movie, Max throws all that semi-Randian patter back at Vincent: "The standard parts that are supposed to be there in people, in you...aren't," he says. The look on Cruise's face is something you've never seen him do, before or since. He looks enraged, burn-it-all-down angry, but also wounded. Vincent knows he's been seen, and he doesn't like it. Notable, too, is that this is the last uncompromised moment for Cruise's fame, before the couch and the "glib" and the South Park episode. In the last 18 years, Cruise has not approached the bleakness of this performance with a thirty-foot pole. Was Collateral confessional, or even a tad prophetic? When Vincent flashes that famous smile, a shiver runs down your spine. The biggest stars make the biggest black holes. I don't know if that's physics, but that's Tom Cruise in Collateral .

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Collateral's jason statham transporter cameo explained.

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Jason Statham's cameo in C ollateral left Transporter fans with a few questions. Collateral is an neo-noir action thriller set in the span of a single night, starring Jamie Foxx as unsuspecting taxi driver Max Durocher and Tom Cruise in one of his most iconic roles as Vincent, a relentless hitman in need of a loyal ride around Los Angeles. The film is directed by Heat director Michael Mann, who led the film to high critical and commercial success in 2004.

Jason Statham starred in the original Transporter trilogy as the methodical Frank Martin, a freelance driver for hire who completes shady deliveries for questionable individuals. He strictly follows three adamant rules in all of his services: never change the deal, no names or any indication of who's involved in the job, and the most essential one — " never open the package ." Although he breaks his third rule since the beginning of the first film — when the package is a kidnaped woman — it's his meticulousness on the job, coupled with his almost supernatural driving and martial arts abilities, that makes him the best and most efficient candidate for a transportation job.

Related: Why Jason Statham Isn't Returning For Fast & Furious 9

In the opening scene of Collateral , Tom Cruise's Vincent is seen walking in the crowd at an airport. Immediately after, Transporter actor Jason Statham appears to be walking somewhere nearby. The film isolates the two of them from the crowd to draw attention to what happens next: they bump into each other and excuse themselves a little too much. They then exchange a knowing look before parting ways. Those who saw the first Transporter film two years before the release of Collateral immediately wondered if Statham was playing Frank Martin delivering another package. However, that may not be the case.

Jason Statham's Collateral Cameo Remains A Mystery

The entirety of The Transporter took place in Nice, France. Frank Martin would be relocated to Miami only until the beginning of Transporter 2 , which came out one year after the LA-based and Tom Cruise-led Collateral . Also, Frank only transports his deliveries by vehicle and avoids making any kind of contact with them (except if said package is a damsel in distress). The last exhibit against this theory is that Statham is only credited as "Airport Man," which makes the connection even less likely.

On the other hand, it could be argued that the payment for this particular job is high enough to make the trip from France to Los Angeles worth it. The bag that Vincent exchanges with Frank looks quite full, and Vincent later proves his negotiation skills with Max when he convinces him to be his personal driver. Both Frank and Vincent are similar enough to be part of a bigger criminal network, and Vincent's mission in LA to kill his employer's witnesses and prosecutor Annie (Jada Pinkett-Smith) seems a task worthy of hiring the best transporter in the world. Miami Vice reboot director Michael Mann left the meaning of the cameo up to the viewer's mind, and he has neither confirmed nor denied that Statham's role in Collateral is anything beyond just a nod to his previous character ever since the release of the film, so it's up to each viewer's individual headcanon to see it as such.

Cameos like Jason Statham in Collateral are rewarding to film lovers and fans of the movies they allude to. Characters unexpectedly appearing in different movies are nothing new, and nothing negative would come out of an increase in these kinds of nods to the audience, as long as they're able to understand and enjoy the movie as a whole without the need to know what every reference means. This particular example excels in leaving the viewer free to either see it as a Marvel-type reference that establishes an implicit cinematic universe or to regard it as a fun detail to point out on a rewatch with friends.

Related: Every Tom Cruise Movie Ranked Worst To Best

The Collateral Screenwriter Has Confirmed A Shared Universe

While nothing has been confirmed or denied about the Jason Statham cameo in Collateral , screenwriter Stuart Beattie says that the two movies are in the same universe. Therefore, Statham's "Airport Man" is technically Transporter character Frank Martin. The screenwriter joked that studios probably would never admit it, but he believes that the Airport Man and Frank Martin are one and the same. During the podcast Collateral Confessions , Beattie was interviewed about the movie and asked about the Jason Statham cameo, he had this to say, "Absolutely Frank Martin of Transporter. I asked Jason about that… Yeah, absolutely. Yes, it’s canon. Same world… the studio will never admit to that, but in my head, absolutely it’s him." Collateral isn't the only movie that Jason Statham's Frank Martin (who was replaced by Ed Skrein in the reboot ) will appear in, according to the director of the first two Transporter movies, Lewis Letterrier. As far as Letterrier is concerned not only was it Frank Martin at the airport, but Frank Martin will show up again in other Michael Mann movies. In an interview (via IGN ) , Letterier said, "He’ll just be a cameo in other people’s movies; in Michael Mann’s movies." So, even though Michael Mann has said nothing about the Jason Statham cameo, most franchise fans agree that Frank Martin in Collateral is canon.

Next: Every Movie Tom Cruise DOESN'T Run In

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Luc Besson’s Movies, Ranked by How Absurd They Are

Is 'bad boys: ride or die' streaming where to watch the high-octane fourqel, the 10 most underrated quotes from the harry potter movies, ranked, read update.

Tom Cruise will be back on the big screen with the upcoming Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (July 12). The three-time Oscar nominee has built a successful late career with this highly successful franchise, producing numerous sequels to one of his most iconic films. However, his filmography has several other acclaimed movies that could use a sequel, especially after last year's record-breaking Top Gun: Maverick .

Top Gun: Maverick has made a big splash at the box office, making $1.023 billion. It proves that people will still go to the movie theaters if something is playing; they are willing to pay to see it instead of finding something to stream.

Top Gun may be a 30-year-old movie, but it is a movie that fans are willing to pay and see, and because of the success of Top Gun: Maverick , there may be other Tom Cruise movies that need a sequel.

Updated on June 30, 2023, by David Caballero:

10 'risky business' (1983).

Risky Business is the movie that launched Tom Cruise into 80s superstardom and cemented him as one of the decade's biggest draws. The future movie star plays rich teen Joel Goodsen, who explores his sexuality and turns his home into a brothel during his parents' vacation trip.

Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay 's Lana had great chemistry in Risky Business . Having these two characters cross paths again almost 40 years later would be interesting. What kind of work does Joel do now? Is Lana up to something interesting these days?

Watch on Paramount+

9 'The Color of Money' (1986)

The Color of Money is a Martin Scorsese movie that doesn't get the accolades of other films like Goodfellas , Taxi Driver , or The Departed . Many people don't know that The Color of Money is a sequel to the classic film The Hustler , also starring the late and iconic Paul Newman .

It would have been interesting to see Paul Newman and Tom Cruise on screen again. However, revisiting Cruise's character Vincent Lauria would still be great. Is he still arrogant and cocky like he was when he was younger, or has he matured? Does he hustle solo, or has he now become the mentor?

Watch on Tubi

8 'Cocktail' (1988)

The often mocked and critically reviled Cocktail is a movie that Tom Cruise probably wishes was forgotten. But despite all the hostility this film has received, it made a lot of money on its original release and has some excellent mixing drink scenes.

Cocktail is a movie that would probably be a better reboot than a sequel. Maybe cast Austin Butler as Cruise's character, Brian Flanagan. A sequel could be enjoyable, though. Was Brian Flanagan's business a huge success or a big flop? Did Brain and Jordan's ( Elizabeth Shue ) marriage work out, or are they now divorced?

Watch on Hulu

7 'Rain Man' (1988)

Barry Levinson 's 1988 drama Rain Man stars Cruise opposite Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman . The plot follows Charlie, a carefree young man who reunites with his brother Raymond, an autistic savant, following their father's death. Rain Man was a major box-office success and won several Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Hoffman.

A sequel to Rain Man could be interesting to explore, especially considering its bittersweet ending. Did Charlie and Raymond stay in touch despite the challenges? However, any potential follow-up would receive considerable criticism, considering Hoffman, a neurotypical actor, would be portraying a character with autism.

6 'Jerry Maguire' (1996)

Cruise delivers arguably the best performance of his career in Cameron Crowe 's 1996 sports romantic comedy Jerry Maguire . The actor plays the titular role, a sports agent who starts his own management business, joined only by Dorothy Boyd, a young single mother. With only one client to his name, Jerry falls in love with Dorothy as he tries to make his business work.

Jerry Maguire is among the all-time best romantic comedies . Cruise gives his most heartfelt, earnest performance as the slick and spirited Jerry Maguire, creating a compelling and sympathetic figure audiences fall instantly in love with. A sequel would be ideal, allowing fans to see how Jerry's business went and how his relationship with Dorthy developed.

5 'Magnolia' (1999)

Paul Thomas Anderson 's Magnolia isn't everybody's cup of tea; thus, a sequel might not be a particularly great idea. But a movie about an aging Frank TJ Mackey could be compelling. Cruise shocked and won over audiences by playing the misogynistic character Frank TJ Mackie. He is a charismatic jerk who teaches desperate guys how to get laid with his motivational speeches and products.

Cruise delivers career-best work in Magnolia , and it would be interesting to revisit a character like TJ Mackey over 20 years later. Has he changed? Is he still a jerk, or did his encounter with his father in Magnolia change him?

4 'Minority Report' (2022)

Cruise stars in Steven Spielberg 's 2002 sci-fi action thriller Minority Report . Set in a future where a police organization can stop crimes before they happen using clairvoyants known as "precogs," the plot centers on John Anderton, a man on the run after being accused of a crime he hasn't committed yet.

A chilling movie about the dangers of surveillance , Minority Report is among Spielberg's most interesting and thought-provoking efforts. A sequel could explore the fate of the prisoners released at the film's ending while following the precogs' stories. Cruise and Samantha Morton would return, ideally with Spielberg's involvement.

Watch on Showtime

3 'Tropic Thunder' (2008)

Ben Stiller directed and starred in the 2008 war comedy Tropic Thunder . The plot centers on a group of arrogant actors shooting a war movie without realizing they have been dropped in an actual war. Cruise plays the scene-stealing supporting role of Les Grossman, the film's vulgar producer.

Tropic Thunder is among the 21st century's best war comedies . Cruise delivers an outrageous performance as the over-the-top and profane Les Grossman, becoming one of the film's most memorable aspects. A sequel focusing on Grossman would allow Cruise to flex his comedic muscles while delivering another scathing satire of Hollywood.

2 'Knight and Day' (2010)

Cruise stars opposite Cameron Diaz in James Mangold 's romantic action thriller Knight and Day . The story revolves around the quirky June Havens, a woman who becomes accidentally involved in a dangerous plot after meeting the charming Roy Miller in an airport on her way to her sister's wedding.

Benefitting from Cruise and Diaz's electric chemistry, Knight and Day expertly blends romance with action and humor. A sequel would continue June and Roy's story, perhaps showing them on another globe-trotting mission together. Audiences hardly need a reason to see these two movie stars together, especially if they're kicking bad guys' butts!

1 'Edge of Tomorrow' (2014)

Doug Liman 's ambitious and cerebral sci-fi Edge of Tomorrow stars Cruise and Emily Blunt . The plot follows Major William Cage, a PR official with no combat experience, who finds himself trapped in a time loop after being sent to battle during a violent alien invasion.

Cruise and Blunt are perfect together, with the actor delivering one of his most unexpectedly vulnerable performances. The film ends with a decisive victory for humanity; however, Edge of Tomorrow 's weighty plot leaves several possibilities open, and making a sequel would be an easy and rewarding task.

Watch on Max

NEXT: Essential Tom Cruise Movies, Ranked

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

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Michael Mann’s stylish and compelling noir thriller, COLLATERAL celebrates 20 years with this limited edition 4K Ultra HD Steelbook. Tom Cruise gives a chilling performance as Vincent, a cool, calculating contract killer at the top of his game. Jamie Foxx received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Max, a cabbie with big dreams and little to show for it. The film showcases the actors as Max transports Vincent on his next job – one night, five stops, five hits and a getaway. And after this fateful night, neither man will ever be the same.

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MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ R (Restricted)
Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 5.25 x 0.5 inches; 2.4 ounces
Media Format ‏ : ‎ Blu-ray, Subtitled, 4K, Digital_copy
Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 59 minutes
Release date ‏ : ‎ August 6, 2024
Actors ‏ : ‎ Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Mark Ruffalo
Dubbed: ‏ : ‎ Spanish, French
Language ‏ : ‎ English (DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Studio ‏ : ‎ PARAMOUNT
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Broken bones and zero gravity: 17 stunts that almost killed Tom Cruise

E ven if you’ve been holed up in the jungle on a Pacific island for decades, you’re likely to know three facts about Tom Cruise. One, he’s short. Two, he’s a Scientologist… And three, the maniac always – always – does his own stunts .

His latest film, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One , is in cinemas now. And on the press tour, the 61-year-old star has said he hopes to continue doing them well into his 80s – like Harrison Ford, whose latest Indiana Jones film has just opened .

But while Ford has occasionally been seen out and about in his role as a helicopter rescue pilot, Cruise’s dedication to being an action hero, on-screen and off, is unsurpassed. In real life, he saved a family from a burning boat, pulled a small child to safety from a movie premiere crush and used his private jet to send a badly injured crew member to hospital. He’s also famous for sending exclusive £101 chocolate and coconut cakes to close friends and family (and sundry journalists who ask for them) every year for Christmas. Oh, and he once ate two chicken tikka masalas back-to-back. Truly, the man is made of different stuff.

Anyway, here’s a run-down of every time has proved he’s no mere mortal – and danced with death in the name of art.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Cruise’s latest film has several astonishing live-action moments, including a fight on top of a moving train, hurtling along at 60mph. For this scene, which also includes a moment where our hero escapes the train as it crashes into a quarry, the production team built a replica 60-ton antique train – then drove it off a cliff. Like much of the film, it was filmed in the UK; in this case, at Darlton Quarry in Derbyshire.

But for the film’s crowning moment of adrenaline, Cruise drove a motorbike off a cliff in Norway, falling into a BASE jump. Billed as the “biggest stunt in cinema history”, the effort (and expense) which went into getting it right – as opposed to capturing an elaborate snuff flick for one of the world’s highest-paid actors – was extraordinary.

Cruise’s training took more than a year and included intensive skydive preparation. At one point, Cruise was making 30 jumps a day – and logged more than 500 in total. His driving practice was similarly gruelling: he worked up to making 70ft leaps on the bike, performing 13,000 over the course of the build up. He also worked to finesse camera angles and body posture by repeatedly jumping into a quarry full of cardboard boxes, attached to a high-wire. As for the stunt itself, he observed: “The only two things which can go wrong are serious injury and death.”

On the day, Cruise pulled the jump six times to ensure the team had enough footage. Of course he did.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

For his films, Cruise has driven cars, piloted planes, ridden bikes – and charged on horseback in full Samurai gear. But it turns out there’s a limit, even for Tom Cruise. And that limit is piloting a $67.4 million Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet in the name of entertainment. So, no: despite the rumours, the cast of Top Gun: Maverick weren’t actually allowed to fly the fighter jets in last year’s Top Gun film.

But they got most of the way there, enduring a three-month intensive flying bootcamp prior to filming. During this gruelling regime, they spent up to four hours a day in the cockpit, experiencing the same G-forces as those depicted in the film as the US Navy’s stunt pilots pulled highly technical manoeuvres, such as flying in mirror formation. They worked their way up from twin-prop training planes to the real deal – genuine F/A-18 fighter jets, generously lent by the US Navy for a mere $11,000 an hour. So those rictus grins as they suffer the thumping G-forces are entirely unfaked.

Cruise arguably endured more in the original Top Gun. On that film, the training was a little less graduated – notoriously, the stunt pilots wanted to take the pumped-up young leads down a notch, so they took them up for a spin with the express aim of crushing their heads into their knees with Gs and making them vomit. Charming.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

While shooting a sequence for Mission: Impossible 6 in London, Cruise was captured by TMZ cameras attempting to leap between two buildings, but smashing into the edge of a roof instead. While he was then seen attempting to finish the scene, he was filmed limping badly.

As is clear from the gruesome footage Cruise showed off on the Graham Norton Show afterwards, Cruise shattered his ankle during the impact, bending his foot back till it nearly touched his leg.

“I was chasing Henry and was meant to hit the side of the wall and pull myself over but the mistake was my foot hitting the wall,” he explained. “I knew instantly my ankle was broken and I really didn’t want to do it again so just got up and carried on with the take. I said, ‘It’s broken. That’s a wrap. Take me to hospital’ and then everyone got on the phone and made their vacation arrangement.”

TMZ later reported that Cruise had already tried and failed to perform the stunt at least once before, proving that one 55-year-old man can only defy gravity so often before gravity strikes back.

The Mummy (2017)

It wouldn’t be a Tom Cruise press tour without a gleeful anecdote about the star nearly getting decapitated, or getting tossed out of an exploding plane onto a motorcycle or something similarly outlandish.

So in 2017, Cruise appeared on The Graham Norton Show to tell the story behind the standout action scene in The Mummy, which involved him and costar Annabelle Wallis being flung around an airplane cabin in zero-gravity.

“I had to convince the studio to let me do it, and Annabelle and I had to do the scene 64 times,” he revealed on The Graham Norton Show.

“It took us two days and the crew was flying around and vomiting in between takes. You couldn’t train for this. Normally stunts take months of prepping but we just did it. It was wild and I can’t believe the studio actually let me do it!”

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)

The most extreme stunt in the fifth Mission: Impossible film has Cruise’s Ethan Hunt attempting to break into a Airbus A400M as the huge military transport plane starts to taxi down the runway, before taking off with the super-agent clinging on by his fingertips.

Cruise was attached to the plane by a harness. In order to have his eyes open during the scene, the film’s team used “sclera” contact lenses that would cover them both entirely, protecting them from rogue particles and hard air.

Airbus was initially reluctant to let the star do the stunt, and it took some convincing before they agreed to it. “The things we were all very concerned about were particles on the runway and bird strikes,” Cruise said in an interview with Yahoo Movies.

“We spent days clearing out the nearby grass of any birds, and they brushed the runway as best they could. My stunt coordinator would poke me if he got reports of bird strikes. The pilot had to be on the lookout for anything in the air that could impact me in any way.”

In the end, they shot the scene eight times. “I fly warbirds [vintage military aircrafts], I fly aerobatic airplanes, but this was pretty damn exciting and exhilarating,” said Cruise. “The adrenaline was flowing! When that thing was going down the runway it was everything to keep my feet down, then it went up and my body was slamming on the side. I was like ‘Whoa, this is intense.’”

Ever the dedicated professional, the most anxiety-inducing scene in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation has Ethan Hunt break into an underwater security vault, holding his breath for three minutes. Cruise had been keen to film the sequence for a while, training with a professional free-diver to learn to hold his breath for six minutes.

“The kind of training I had to do for that was pretty intense,” Cruise said. “I’ve done a lot of underwater scenes but I’ve never done one [like this] that will get the audience to lean forward and have a visceral reaction.”

Cunningly, the sequence was filmed all in one take, encouraging viewers to hold their breath alongside Cruise. And reflect, with burning lungs, on the incredible lengths the man will go to in the name of our entertainment.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Filming a car chase sequence, Cruise was “almost killed” by his co-star Emily Blunt. As they performed the scene for a second time, Blunt had to take a hard right at high speed.

“Suddenly, as I approach the right hand turn, I hear him going, ‘Brake, brake, brake... Oh God! Oh God! Brake the car! Brake the car!’” she recalled.

“When I first heard him say, ‘Brake’, in my head I went, ‘Oh, shut up’, you know? As if I knew more about stunt driving than Tom Cruise!”

Luckily, she did eventually paid attention. And both stars lived to see another promo tour.

Jack Reacher (2012)

In 2012 Cruise told American talk-show host Jimmy Fallon how he hurt his foot after repeatedly kicking another man in the crotch during the shoot of espionage thriller Jack Reacher.

Having filmed a number of takes, what was initially a not-unenjoyable activity for the actor – “the first 10 times it was like ‘Yeah!’” Cruise told Fallon – became painful for him. “After about 50 times in, my foot was swelling... I kept having to loosen my shoe.”

Rob Alonzo, the film’s stunt coordinator, said that Cruise is “better than most stunt men. He’s an incredible driver, an incredible fighter and stunt performer. He flies planes, he knows how to ride horses, he rides motorcycles, so any director would be lucky to have a guy like that because they can keep the camera on him the whole time and it’s more engaging.”

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

While filming Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Cruise insisted on scaling Dubai’s Burj Khalifa which, at 2,723ft, is the tallest building in the world. In the movie’s most memorable action sequence, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt climbs up the building with adhesive gloves, then abseils down it on a makeshift rope, swinging himself through an open window.

For this last part, the actor struggled against crosswinds, and repeatedly slammed into the building: “It took a while to figure out how to not come into the building head first,” he said. Although Cruise did have a stunt double, he was only used to check the rigging (Cruise wore a harness that was digitally edited out in post-production).

In order to do the stunt, the production team was forced to scrabble around for an insurance company after the first one they used refused to cover Cruise’s scramble on top of the Burj.

Valkyrie (2008)

In 2008’s Valkyrie, Cruise played amputee Nazi war hero Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who unsuccessfully plotted to assassinate Hitler. Although the actor remained unharmed during shooting, 11 extras were injured on set when they were hurled from a truck.

The side of the vehicle came loose during the filming of a night scene in Berlin, where part of the city was cordoned off and transformed into the Third Reich’s power base.

Collateral (2004)

Another day, another near-death experience at the hands of a co-star. During the filming of Michael Mann’s Collateral, Jamie Foxx had to drive his car into Cruise’s Mercedes, but misjudged the speed. Cruise’s car went flying off the set.

“I was hitting the roof,” said Cruise. “I was down on the ground.”

“They were so worried that I had killed my man,” Foxx said. “Can you imagine all that money bouncing around in the back seat?”

The Last Samurai (2003)

The Last Samurai involved 8 months of training for the then 41-year-old Cruise, including horseriding and all manner of martial arts. “I’ve done fight scenes before,” Cruise told the Daily Mail, “but this was significantly different from anything I’ve ever experienced... There were more than 70 points of contact where you could potentially lose your eye, your ear or your nose.”

The actor came closest to death when the mechanical horses used for some of the scenes malfunctioned. While filming a fight sequence with co-star Hiroyuki Sanada, the horses were meant to stop as the two actors swung their blades. “He was approaching me and then suddenly his horse hit me and his sword was an inch from my neck.”

Cruise was saved by Sanada, whose quick reflexes and skill with the sword meant he was able to avoid decapitating the Hollywood star. “I just managed to stop my sword an inch from his neck,” said Sanada. “It was so hard. I was drenched in sweat! My God! But Tom never blinked! It was the biggest moment, the most dangerous moment. After that, I never hit him, he never hit me.”

Mission: Impossible II (2000)

In the opening scene of this 2000 sequel, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is reintroduced to viewers free-climbing cliffs at Utah’s Dead Horse Point. Cruise did all of the climbing save for the moment his character slips from the cliff. He was winched in and out of position and the harness he wore for safety was removed in post-production.

Director John Woo said that he was too terrified to look through the viewfinder as the scenes were shot, fearing that his star might slip 2,000ft to his doom. Cruise would not be persuaded against doing the stunt, though, and even tore his shoulder jumping across the cliff-face in the pursuit of the perfect shot.

Mission: Impossible (1996)

The first Mission: Impossible film set the tone for all that followed. Here, aside from the famous dangling-on-a-rope break-in scene, the most memorable stunt was the one which saw giant fish tanks explode, bringing with them a tidal wave of glass.

Cruise did the stunt himself, to the horror of director Brian De Palma and Cruise’s producing partner Paula Wagner. Fortunately he walked away with nothing more than a hurt ankle. One of the other stuntmen was unluckier still, as a piece of glass cut a gash in his leg.

Far and Away (1992)

For his role in the 1992 immigration drama Far and Away, Cruise had to play a contender in the world of bare-knuckle boxing. “I caught a few shots,” Cruise said. “The stunt guys didn’t want to hurt me, but it had to look real.”

“I screamed,” said Nicole Kidman, who co-starred in the film. “I saw the bruises to his body and said you better tell Ron [Howard, the director] what’s happening. But [Tom’s] pretty tough.”

Post-release, Cruise took more a pronounced pummelling by the critics – most notably for his damn-nigh-incomprehensible Irish accent.

Days of Thunder (1990)

The idea for this Nascar racing drama was Cruise’s: he’d been introduced to the sport by Paul Newman when the two were filming The Color of Money. Cruise did his own driving, naturally, and was praised by real-life racers for his control of the stock cars.

There was one occasion, though, when he lost control of his car. After shimmying to the left, he tried to take a right-hand turn, with the result that the car spun off the track. Although Cruise wasn’t badly hurt, the $100,000 camera that was attached to his car was totalled.

Top Gun (1986)

While filming the climactic post-crash scene in which Cruise’s character holds Goose’s lifeless body in the ocean, the actor’s parachute began to fill up with water without him realising.

Luckily a frogman noticed the swelling and cut the chute loose seconds before it could drag Cruise down to the depths. “Cruise came as close to dying as anybody on a set I’ve ever seen,” said Barry Tubb, who played Wolfman in the film.

Sadly, Top Gun’s aerial cameraman Art Scholl wasn’t so lucky. Scholl’s biplane spun out of control as he filmed scenes meant to show Maverick’s POV as his jet plunged into the sea; he crashed, and was killed instantly. The Top Gun: Maverick contained a touching tribute to him.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part One is in cinemas now

Which of Tom Cruise’s stunts do you find most impressive? Let us know in the comments

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Great Escape: Esai Morales and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning - Part One

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Lee Gabler, Talent Agent and Former CAA Co-Chair, Dies at 84

By Jack Dunn

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BEVERLY HILLS , CA - JUNE 08: CAA Co-chairman Lee Gabler arrives for The Help Group's 29th annual Teddy Bear Picnic at the Beverly Hilton June, 8 2006 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Matthew Simmons/Getty Images)

Lee Gabler , a talent agent and former co-chairman and managing partner at Creative Artists Agency, died June 3 in Los Angeles after suffering a brain injury. He was 84.

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COMMENTS

Collateral (2004)
Collateral: Directed by Michael Mann. With Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo. A cab driver finds himself the hostage of an engaging contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in Los Angeles.
Collateral (film)
Collateral is a 2004 American neo-noir action thriller film directed and produced by Michael Mann, written by Stuart Beattie, and starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.The supporting cast includes Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Berg, Javier Bardem, and Bruce McGill.The film follows Max Durocher, a Los Angeles cab driver, and his customer, Vincent.
Collateral
Rated 3/5 Stars • Rated 3 out of 5 stars 04/18/24 Full Review James B a great movie cool seeing tom cruise as a villain very suspenseful and well shot film ... big city in the back of a taxi ...
Collateral movie review & film summary (2004)
Roger Ebert August 06, 2004. Tweet. In "Collateral," a contract killer named Vincent (Tom Cruise) hires a cab driver for a journey into a physical and psychological netherworld. Now streaming on: Powered by JustWatch. "Collateral" opens with Tom Cruise exchanging briefcases with a stranger in an airport. Then, intriguingly, it seems to turn ...
Collateral (2004)
Vincent (Tom Cruise) enters the cab next, giving Max $6000 for chauffeuring him to five appointments. As Max waits at the first stop, Vincent enters an apartment complex and shoots drug dealer Ramone Ayala. Ayala unexpectedly falls out of the window directly onto the cab, forcing Vincent to reveal himself as a hit-man.
Collateral (4/9) Movie CLIP
Collateral movie clips: http://j.mp/1CL4ADVBUY THE MOVIE: http://amzn.to/uxrsOMDon't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6prCLIP DESCRIPTION:A p...
COLLATERAL Clips + Trailer (2004) Tom Cruise
COLLATERAL Clips + Trailer (2004) Tom CruiseSUBSCRIBE for more Movie Clips HERE: https://goo.gl/8xzRw4After a long day, LA taxi driver Max is about to knock ...
Watch Collateral
Ruthless assassin Tom Cruise forces cabbie Jamie Foxx to chauffer him to a series of planned hits over the course of a seamy L.A. night. 7,058 IMDb 7.5 1 h 59 min 2004. ... Find Movie Box Office Data: Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations : IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities: IMDbPro Get Info Entertainment Professionals Need:
Collateral
Max (Foxx) has lived the mundane life of a cab driver for 12 years. The faces have come and gone from his rearview mirror, people and places he's long since forgotten -- until tonight. Vincent (Cruise) is a contract killer. When an offshore narcotrafficking cartel learns they are about to be indicted by a federal grand jury, they mount an operation to identify and kill the key witnesses, and ...
Why Collateral Is One of the Best Underrated Michael Mann, Tom Cruise
Collateral (4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital) Now 12% Off. $23 at Amazon. Watching Collateral again this week, the thing that surprised me the most about it was how amazing Cruise is playing a psycho ...
Under the Radar: 'Collateral' is the second greatest movie about a taxi
Genre: Crime/Thriller. Starring: Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith. Director: Michael Mann. Tom Cruise. Jamie Foxx. One night. One taxicab. What more could viewers want from a neo-noir ...
Collateral (2004)
Cruise is matched by newcomer Foxx, who holds his own, making his taxi driver a guy you respect and care about. Supporting cast members are pretty decent, including Jada Pinkett Smith, who I used to dislike, and Mark Ruffalo, exceptional as a sympathetic cop on the trail.
Collateral 2004 Trailer HD
Collateral 2004 A cab driver finds himself the hostage of an engaging contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in Los Angeles....
Collateral: Looking Back at Tom Cruise's Underrated ...
Max (Jamie Foxx) is a taxi driver with grandeur dreams of having a limousine business. Vincent gets in the cab and decides that Vincent is going to be his ride for the whole night. Their cat-and ...
Collateral Ending Explained: A Cab And Subway Ride Through 21st ...
The surface-level plot of "Collateral" is easy enough to follow and describe in 25 words: hitman Vincent ( Tom Cruise) forces cabbie Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him around L.A. at night as he ...
Collateral Review
Collateral Review. Max (Foxx) is an LA taxi driver who dreams of a better life. Smooth-talking Vincent (Cruise) is in town for one night, with five stops to make. Max agrees to provide the ride ...
Collateral made Tom Cruise into a slasher movie villain
Tom Cruise movies run the genre gamut, but Michael Mann's Collateral, now on HBO Max, is basically slasher horror. ... To aid him in his task of navigating the city, he dupes a taxi driver, Max ...
Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Michael Mann: Movies & TV
Gritty Tom Cruise movie. Tom Cruise performed amazing as always and Jamie Foxx did a great job in his role too. Read more. One person found this helpful. Helpful. Report. G.a. ... Moi, qui suis taxi depuis plusieurs Années, ce genre de client dans votre taxi, ça fait froid dans le dos !
Collateral turned Tom Cruise into a villain for the ages
In 2004's Collateral, Cruise plays Vincent, an assassin who rips a bloody gash through a mean Los Angeles night. The villainous casting could be a stunt, but it's more like a culmination ...
Collateral (4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital)
Tom Cruise plays an assassin hired to kill several victims (to keep them from testifying against a cartel) in this thriller set in and around Los Angeles. Tasked with driving this killer to his intended targets, cabbie Jamie Foxx attempts to put an end to the man's carnage once he figures out what's going on.
COLLATERAL Clip
COLLATERAL Clip - "First Kill" (2004) Tom CruisePLOT: After a long day, LA taxi driver Max is about to knock off when sharp-suited Vincent offers him $600 to...
Collateral's Jason Statham Transporter Cameo Explained
Jason Statham's cameo in Collateral left Transporter fans with a few questions. Collateral is an neo-noir action thriller set in the span of a single night, starring Jamie Foxx as unsuspecting taxi driver Max Durocher and Tom Cruise in one of his most iconic roles as Vincent, a relentless hitman in need of a loyal ride around Los Angeles. The film is directed by Heat director Michael Mann, who ...
10 Tom Cruise Movies That Could Use a Sequel Like 'Top Gun ...
10 'Risky Business' (1983) Image via Warner Bros. Risky Business is the movie that launched Tom Cruise into 80s superstardom and cemented him as one of the decade's biggest draws. The future movie ...
Collateral [4K UHD Steelbook+ Blu-Ray + Digital Copy]
Michael Mann's stylish and compelling noir thriller, COLLATERAL celebrates 20 years with this limited edition 4K Ultra HD Steelbook. Tom Cruise gives a chilling performance as Vincent, a cool, calculating contract killer at the top of his game.
Broken bones and zero gravity: 17 stunts that almost killed Tom Cruise
The most extreme stunt in the fifth Mission: Impossible film has Cruise's Ethan Hunt attempting to break into a Airbus A400M as the huge military transport plane starts to taxi down the runway ...
Lee Gabler, Talent Agent and Former CAA Co-Chair, Dies at 84
Lee Gabler, a talent agent and former co-chairman and managing partner at Creative Artists Agency, died June 3 in Los Angeles after suffering a brain injury. He was 84. After earning his stripes ...

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Under the Radar: ‘Collateral’ is the second greatest movie about a taxi driver

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