“Collateral” is an interesting film to say the least and it reminded me a lot of the director Michael Mann’s other film “Heat”. This film, like “Heat”, focuses a lot on two characters: the good guy and the bad guy, even more than it does on the action sequences.

In “Collateral”, Jamie Foxx (“Ray”, “Stealth”) is a L.A. taxi driver, who one night picks up a guy named Vincent (Tom Cruise “Minority Report”, “Mission: Impossible”). Vincent wants taxi driver Max to stay with him all night as Vincent intends to briefly visit several places but as the film continues we discover Vincent is a contract killer and now Max is his hostage.

Jamie Foxx is reasonable here but he’s not exceptional. I do quite like the casting of Tom Cruise as the bad guy as it makes a change from him always playing the dynamic hero. However, out of the two lead roles, he certainly is much more suited to the role of the slick professional killer than the taxi driver. The two have good interaction, in the same way Al Pacino and Robert Niro did in “Heat”. Also the very first scene contains a cameo by Jason Statham, who drops off a package and if anyone has seen his “Transporter” films then they’ll find that quite amusing.

“Collateral” perhaps should have focused a little more on the action scenes than it does because they do feel a little weak in comparison to the character development and conversations but that being said the final shootout is really tense and once again reminded me a lot of “Heat”, in fact this whole movie is structured in a similar way, which is odd as they contain two completely different plots but they do at least occupy the same genre and the same city. “Collateral” is certainly not excellent but it’s worth seeing.