Collateral

Just back from watching Collateral. Good stuff, definitely worth watching!

Tom Cruise is a jazz-loving, highly effective, yet cynical contract killer with a mandate to eliminate in one night five material witnesses to a court case beginning the following day. But he's in need of a ride, so he hires chance encounter, equally effective cab driver Max. Max however has fallen for the prosecutor general, who is target #5, so the inevitable takes its course...

Very good, "documentary" camera (you're right there, Orlando!), great soundtrack, good acting, even by Cruise. I love the linked critique's quip on his "complete abandonment of mimic introspection"! And the way he terminates target #3 for answering a Miles Davis question incorrectly is just vicious. Very nice & atmospheric also the hunt for #5 in the dark district attorney's law library - reminded me of the cloaked alien hunter in a movie the name of which escapes me just now.

The movie breathes an unusual, almost existentialist air, what with the intense mutual psychoanalysis happening in the cab and Cruise joking about having killed his father while Max cannot live up to his ailing mother's expectations (they actually pay her a visit as well!). And the ending is not entirely Hollywood, either, despite of its close enough setting ...