Collateral -- 2004 -- R

Hm, Tom Cruise as a villain. That's different. Usually our golden boy is the hero who's making all the right choices, and now he's the villain controlling all the moves, but it makes for a pretty good movie.

This is the story of two men. One is a paid assassin who is going around town on a contract knocking people off. The other is a cab driver with an ambition of opening up a cool limo company and refers to the cab job as a temporary thing...even though he's been on it for 12 years. The two collide as the assassin wants the cabbie to drive him around all night to make his hits, and the cabbie unwittingly agrees before he knows what he's gotten himself into.

The plot is loaded with its bits of intensity and reversals to keep us going and I admit there was one point where I was shocked (and impressed) as to what happened. Conventionally, it should have gone one way, but instead, they really threw a wrench into it and did something completely different. I had some doubts as to whether Max, the cabbie, would be as flippant and daring as he was in parts, but it still worked for the most part.

I will say that I submitted a goof to IMDB about a scene where Max is atop a parking garage with a cell phone making a call. He gets low battery a couple of times which all of a sudden causes signal problems for him and he drops the call twice. A low battery really doesn't cause signal problems, and a phone will function as normal until it completely shuts off.

The main characters of Max and Vincent were well drawn and we understood these two. Sometimes, Max would do something a bit overblown, but it often seemed like a move he never gave any thought to and then got stuck as to what he should do next. We never get much of Vincent's past, but we understand his demeanor and that works pretty well too. I did want to know how he managed to get card access to the building at the end, but that was a minor point.

This was a really good flick that held my interest until it finally ended on a highly ironic note. The dialogue is peppered with comments that pan out to reality somewhere in the narrative with served to make the movie that much better. Definitely a worthwhile viewing.