What if Tom Cruise was a monster, though?
He still laughs, but now he’s laughing at you.
Collateralcame at everyone’s magic moment.
Everett Collection
Director Michael Mann was transitioning from glittery celluloid into scuzzy digital video.
Recent WB sitcom frontman Jamie Foxx was months from Oscar glory.
His new normal was edgy, but also stratospheric.
Tom Cruise in ‘Collateral’.Everett Collection
He did not seem like someone who took public transportation.
and when a body lands on the taxi, Max the regular-guy cabbie becomes a big problem.
Another actor might have played the killer as a robot.
Cruise achieves something scarier: a sociopath with some charm.
Collateraldelivers as a glorious gun fest.
The pairing brings out something different in Cruise.
Lost in space."
He’s explaining why his killing doesn’t matter, and why it’s cool not to care.
With Vincent, though, Cruise seems to strip himself down.
You see Cruise clearly, better than any movie this century.
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.
In the last 18 years, Cruise has not approached the bleakness of this performance with a thirty-foot pole.
WasCollateralconfessional, 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 inCollateral.
