Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I’m dying to see this one. I really am. It’s Michael Mann making a crime film set in LA. What part of that sentence isn’t appealing? And knowing how much work Frank Darabont did on the script, I’m betting Mann and his cast had a hell of a foundation to work from. Tonight, the first test screening of the film took place in LA, and one thing to remember as you read these reviews is that Mann is a notorious last-minute tinkerer. Mr. Beaks saw ALI a few weeks before release, and said it was a totally different film than the theatrical cut. What was screened tonight is no doubt a very loose cut, and it’s subject to change between now and the start of August when the rest of us get a look at it.
First up, we’ve got A Fistful Of Yen with his look at the movie:
“Hey, do you wanna see a free movie?”
-- Dreamworks Representative, last week.
“Not bad, it’s kinda like Heat-Lite...”
-- Fistful of Yen, Tuesday night after seeing the first audience screening of Michael Mann’s newest film, Collateral.
Tonight at the beautiful Arclight Cinemas in less-beautiful Los Angeles, Dreamworks and Paramount showcased their latest baby to a viewing audience. If you’ve ever been to the Arclight, it’s an amazing theatre with great screens, wonderful sound, and assigned ticketed seating that simply rocks for those with enough foresight to buy movies in advance. The main lobby always reminds me of the War Room from Dr. Strangelove (He’ll see the BIG BOARD!!!!) So, I was somewhat dismayed to find myself waiting in a line at 5:30 this afternoon for general seating. Oh, well. Who cares? This is MICHAEL frickin’ MANN I’m gonna see in just a few hours. Folks from whatever focus company was there picked my friends and I out of the line early on and took us inside to get our minor biographies and give us priority seating so long as we agreed to stay afterwards to talk with some folks. Sure, no problem.
Focus group hotshot makes his introductions at 7:30. Says the film is a workprint, first time shown, displayed on video instead of film, yada-yada-yada. Amy, his little go-between was pretty cute though… Anyway.
The more I think about that first statement above regarding Heat-lite the more I realize it’s not particularly fair to a movie I rated a “4. Very Good” on my Focus Group Trading Card. Sans spoilers, the movie has some very good performances by it’s leads. I’ll admit to never having been on the Jamie Foxx bandwagon before this, but here he actually shows me why folks seem to hire him again and again (Ali just didn’t do it for me…) Tom seems to really be putting forth the effort to break the mold he’s constructed around himself over the years, and I feel he succeeds in many of the places he’s supposed to. All the important moments are there and solid. But in the quieter, less important scenes he seems to relax a bit too much and we can see some old Cruise standbys popping up here and there.
Direction and photography are what anyone who’s familiar with Mann’s work would expect. The film looked surprisingly good on video, and made me wonder if he didn’t film this digitally. The music was utterly forgettable, hopefully a temp-track of some kind. Chris Cornell? Man…
Y’know, I’m about done with this. In accelerated fashion, the movie tried to be drama, action, suspense, thriller, mystery, and a sprinkle of comedy all at once, and with the cast and crew this flick had you could see the bar set very high. Unfortunately this film falls just that much short in each regard, making it easy to like, difficult to love, and very awkward to recommend to any one group of filmlovers I know. The girls in the focus group seemed to really like it, if that’s any indication, mostly for an unlikely romance between Foxx and Pinkett-Smith that I found much less interesting that any of the love stories in previous LA crime story, Heat.
It just didn’t… impact me. I’ll have this movie on DVD to complete my Michael Mann section of my collection, but it’ll be the one I pick up when there’s nothing else staring back at me from the shelf in Best Buy making me anxious.
Anyway, why are you reading this… You should be out watching Dodgeball kick Spielberg’s ass. Nothing against the man. He’s God on Film, but he’s gotten really lazy approving his shooting scripts.
Thank you, Chuck Norris.
Fistful of Yen;
King of the 909
Funny that this guy actually wondered if maybe it was shot on digital. If people are having a hard time telling, then Mann’s definitely accomplished what he wanted to. Much of his ROBBERY HOMICIDE DIVISION show was shot hi-def, and I’ve heard that as much as 80% of this film was shot that way, and that he really played with the capabilities of the format. Exciting. Let’s see what our next spy thought of it:
Hey Harry,
I just came from the 1st ever screening of Collateral (a supposed work print) at the Arclight in Hollywood. I did sign a release saying I wouldn't speak of the movie or anything...but I also lied about my age (I'm 16), so my signature was invalid anyways....I came into this movie very excited because of the potential for a great psychological thriller...but I was very disappointed. The 1st half of the movie grabbed me. I thought the relationship between Max (Jamie Foxx) and Vincent (Tom Cruise) was very well done. But it makes me wonder: were their performances so great because Michael Mann directed them to greatness, or did they take the shit direction they got and turn it into something to behold? I say this because pretty much everything else about the movie sucked. I can't go on without spoilage, so here is my spoiler warning:
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!
One of the first scenes in the movie is of Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) having a conversation with Max while riding in the cab. A cute but very blatant character establishment where they exchange hopes and dreams. Jada's acting was about as stiff as when she did Niobe in The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions. Something else that annoyed me was that while watching this scene I guessed that she would end up on Vincent's hit list so that Max could come to her rescue later on...and sure enough she is and he does.
The strong point of the movie begins when Vincent enters the cab. A lot of the best moments in the movie occur in the cab between Vincent and Max. On a side note: I think the gray hair look worked very well for Cruise...it gave him an aged, "been there, done that" look that made him seem even more deadly. Back to the relationship. I loved some of the humorous dialogue that occurred in that cab. One scene that I think was an audience favorite was when Max's dispatcher called him wondering where the hell he was and threatening to take the car damage out of his paycheck, and Vincent coming to the rescue acting as an attorney fully explaining how what he was doing to his employee was illegal. After shutting the dispatcher up, Vincent orders Max to say to his boss, "I'm gonna shove this cab up your ass".
Now the bad...the movie begins to fall apart when Max grabs Vincent's bag (which carries the hit list) and throws it over a bridge onto the freeway, completely destroying the contents. First, there was no reason whatsoever for destroying the bag; except to allow for the next scene to happen. Vincent forces Max to go meet Felix (the boss) while posing as Vincent (since the boss doesn't know what Vincent looks like) to get a new copy of the hit list for his laptop. This scene is really enjoyable because Max transforms from being a very nervous cab driver who just wants to curl up in a ball and die to a man taking control of his life. There's a great moment when he tells Felix, "tell your man to put down his gun, or I'll kick his ass" (finally acting like a real assassin) and then takes off his glasses (very similar to the transformation of clark kent to superman). The reason why I say the movie starts to fall apart is because this is the point when suddenly the FBI, LAPD, and the mob start to follow the cab. At this point the movie went from a great character story to a stupid cop movie. We had the stereotypical asshole FBI agent who wouldn't listen to the smart LAPD officer's ideas and ends up fucking up the whole situation. They even had a nightclub scene very similar to "club hell" in The Matrix Revolutions where Vincent disarms and shoots a lot of people in a very sharp fashion.
I say stupid cop movie because it really was just plain stupid. They had shots of cops in trucks locking and loading their guns, and one officer turned on his laser sight and proceeded to check it BY WAVING HIS HAND OVER IT!!!! I slapped my forehead at this point. It just got worse and worse too. After escaping the nightclub massacre, Max takes Vincent on a wild ride by rebelling and speeding up until crashing into a cement block (a "fuck you" to Vincent). Hmm...where have I seen this scenario before....could it be "Nothing to Lose" or any other fucking movie where a bad guy hijacks a car? After the crash, Vincent runs away because a cop car approaches, leaving Max to be calmed down by the officer (excuse me...wouldn't there have been an APB out for the cab by now?). Once the officer discovers the dead body in the trunk of the cab, THEN he attempts to arrest Max. But Max sees the open and flickering laptop with the hit list open to the page where Annie is...so he makes a run for it. He runs with a cell phone to a garage outside her building trying to get to her before Vincent does. Apparently even though he is REALLY far away from the skyscraper, he can see Annie on the 116th floor through her window and Vincent on the 114th looking for her. He attempts to call her on his cell phone, which predictably runs out of battery life and has a bad signal. So he RUNS there in a matter of seconds. Then Vincent miraculously cuts the power and phone lines with one chop of the axe, but only to the 116th floor! When Max gets into the building, all the electricity still works and he uses the fucking elevator to get to Annie.. Then in another act of stupidity...Annie comes out of hiding in her office to crawl to an unknown destination event thought she now knows that Vincent is in the room! Then Max comes to save the day shooting Vincent somewhere in the head. And just as if in a mummy or terminator movie, Vincent gets right back up and chases them. It was never shown where he was exactly shot or how he survived, but he was bleeding an awful lot of fake blood. Stupid Act #134= Vincent cant catch up with them as they get in the elevator so in a matter of seconds he runs down 116 flights of stairs!!! They then get chased onto a subway. And even though Max and Annie get onto an actual subway train, when you see the inside, they've miraculously gotten onto a red line above ground cable train. Here's where the real jem happens...Vincent catches up with the train by jumping across one set of tracks and onto the back of the train. I felt like I was watching terminator or something...but really bad...I'll stop there. I don't want to completely spoil how it all comes out (although you really shouldn't care at this point).
SPOILERS OVER
I guess I just couldn't get over how many stupid things happened and how weak a plot it had. As I said before...the relationship rocked...but that's it. The movie definitely has its moments though and is worth seeing. Also, on the technical aspects....the music sucked...there's nothing more to say about it...it just sucked (although it might have been a temp being a work print and all...god I hope so...cause it sucked). Something else that was really annoying was that there were so many "interesting" camera movements and angles that it actually brought attention to the camera. It really brought me out of the moment when I started noticing things in focus or out of focus on purpose. I think a good movie should never make the audience realize think, "what a cool camera angle" because that takes attention away from telling the story. It was very annoying. The cinematography in general just wasn't that great either. You do have to consider that I was looking at a work print so there might have been some color correcting that needed to be done, but I could easily notice when they were using DV and when they were using Film. The DV looked like shit on the big screen. I know they were going for "a look" but it was such a difference that it once again brought attention to the camera. My overall view: great performances from Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, and the guy who played Felix....bad direction....bad camerawork....bad music....weak plot...great relationships...entertaining, but a bad movie. I'm sorry to give such a negative look on something that everyone was looking forward to, but I think anybody with half a brain will agree with me once they've seen it. If you use this....call me HAL1138
I know our own Mr. Beaks was also there tonight, and I’m curious to hear what he’s got to say about the film in the days ahead. Of course, he’s also got a KING ARTHUR review, a LIFE AQUATIC review, and a ton of other things all kicking around, so I’m not sure exactly when we’ll see this one from him. Soooooooon, I hope.
"Moriarty" out.
