Collateral

Upon arriving in Los Angeles, a man (Tom Cruise) gets into a taxi and hires the driver (Jamie Foxx) to ferry him to several locations over the course of a single night. At the very first stop, it becomes clear that the passenger is a contract killer intent on carrying out five hits before dawn. The plot of "Collateral" resembles the concentrated climax of an old B-movie: a cat-and-mouse game in which two mismatched men engage in philosophical verbal sparring amidst gripping sequences of suspense and action. Yet, perhaps even more compelling than the tense thriller itself is Michael Mann’s visual style, utilizing the then-novel HD aesthetic. Never before had the nocturnal metropolis appeared so dark yet so precisely rendered on screen: the primordial soup of neon reflections creates a nightmarish haze in which every action seems almost like a manifestation of the sleeping city’s unconscious.