24 April 2005
maybe they needed Queen Latifah
So tonight we watched Collateral, the highly-touted adrenalin-infused thrill ride starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.
Well, I didn't put the adrenaline there, the people who write things on DVD covers did. I didn't see too much in the way of adrenaline except for a couple of running chases. Those, for what they were worth, lasted seemingly much longer than humanly possible.
Which you could also say about the whole movie. I don't think that Michael Mann is capable of a movie shorter than 110 minutes. The few he's done that I've seen (Heat, Manhunter, and The Insider) all seemed interminably long at points. They all seemed to take place in Los Angeles, though I'm pretty sure Manhunter took place quite a ways from there.
In general I seem to have difficulty with movies set in L.A. (though I failed to mention it much) and in particular I seem to have trouble with Michael Mann's. There's just something about those movies that I just don't enjoy, critical accolades aside.
It's not just the length of the movies that I don't like. I also am not fond of the visuals he seems to employ, lighting-wise and otherwise. Nevermind the fact that so much of the movies happens after dusk (and yes, I realize that Collateral takes place over a single night) in some nearly-neon-lit cityscape that looks like Toronto built out of rejected bits of Las Vegas. Nevermind the harsh lighting, the blues and greens and reds washing out entire scenes in bold color. Nevermind the shaky cameras at key points moments equally shaky.
Really, this time around, it was Tom Cruise's really fake greyish hair. It's entirely possible they're trying to make him look older, or moreover that they're trying to make him look like he's trying to look like he's older, or that it's just bad hair.
I paid a little attention to the music, here and there, since the visual stuff was so spread out time-wise, and many a time it seemed that the 'score' was an attempt to stretch out the instrumental bits of recognizable songs. I barely noticed it when they slipped in one with lyrics, something by Audioslave in fact, except for the fact that it was utterly pointless and completely out of character for the film.
I guess I just didn't like it. Jamie Foxx did well for an early bout of serious acting, but Tom was relatively unconvincing, coiffure aside. He just didn't strike me as a tough guy, even with the guns.
Come to think of it, maybe it was the hair.
2 comments on maybe they needed Queen Latifah
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I thought the movie was boring. They didn't really explain anything or develop the story. It was like, here's a cab driver and here's a hitman and the hitman gets a ride from the cabbie. We don't know why the hitman does what he does or whom he works for. I made the point about the bad hair, by the way, Mike. The movie was not at all exciting, thrilling, or suspenseful or whatever it claimed!
[...] It’s also among the few movies set in L.A. that I didn’t hate. * I sent AMG my comments as below: Your synopsis is incorrect. Neville is not guarding the serum; the Family isn’t interested in being cured at all. They want to kill him. If he’s trying to preserve anything it’s his own life and sanity. His grasp on the latter is tenuous at best, but clearly having survived the Family’s attacks for two years he’s done well so far with the former. [...]