Originally posted by cal31
Cruise was just kick ass in it, taking down that whole night club was awesome.
Right on. Cruise was absolutely convincing in this role. Like I've said in other threads, I can tell what is good acting when I totally forget the actor behind the character, and that's exactly how I felt during this film-- I only saw "Vincent," and totally forgot that it was Cruise behind the character. Plus, he weilds a gun like a pro.
I saw it Friday night, and got the feeling they took it out of the oven about 20 minutes too early. It's as though the script writers thought they had until Thursday to finish it, but their professor said Tuesday, and they hurriedly tacked on an ending so they could turn it in for full credit.
I thought it was EXTREMELY hokey that
Spoiler:. From that point, it was as though we were suddenly back in the late 80's/early 90's (the peak of unbelievably over-the-top action movies) watching what marginal realism the plot had unravel into utter fantasy.
Annie just HAPPENED to be Vincent's fifth victim
just saw it last night. i have to say it was worth it. the performance of cruise was kick a$$ as expected. his character, vincent, was a stone face killer without qualms with his proffesion. he's hired, he gets the job done. no details, just specifics.
i thought foxx coulda done a better job of portraying max... or it could just be the way the character was presented through out the movie, but convincing none-the-less.
Spoiler:
the only thing that i found quite "disturbung" is the fact that vincent didn't even graze max. his marksmanship is unbelievable accurate, they shoulda made one bullet hit max at least in his arm or shoulder. i could see hpw he missed int he room though. dark, a lot of glass doors,a lot of shadows and reflections.
i thouroughly enjoyed cruise's and foxx's exchanges in the cabs. and the club fever scene was the best scene in my opinion. all in all i give it 7 1/2 out of 10.
I saw this on Saturday night, and I thought it was above average for the most part. I didn't like the night club scene, and I won't go into the countless number of movies out there with shooting scenes in nightclubs where the patrons are still running around several minutes into the shooting. And it's not like there was a huge mob trying to get out the front door because the main characters get out pretty quick as well.
Anyways, another reason I saw this was that the film selection at the local theater was atrocious. The only other options were:
1) Some junk about people cooking out on a grill for 2 hours
2) The sequel to Anaconda. 'Nuff said.
3) Princess Diaries 2. I do not share Stormy's taste in movies, sorry.
4) Wicker Park. I didn't know anything about this when we showed up for the theater, but one look at the movie poster was all I needed.
5) Paparazzi. NO.
6) Yu-gi-oh!. No offense to any big fans of this movie, but this looked like a film too immature for 5 year olds.
7) Hero. I do not like martial arts movies in the least bit.
8) Exorcist prequel. This will be a video pick, no more.
9) AvP. I have already said this is a pass
So as you can see Collateral was the obvious choice.
Why do people think Collateral was good?
Sorry for starting a new topic, but I figured if I didn't make a new one, that nobody would read a buried post this much after the release of the movie. Anyway:
I don't know why this movie got such good reviews. To me, all I saw was crap from beginning to end. Its been a while since watching it but lets see if I can recall several of the negatives. First of all, the camera. This, I admit, is just a preference. I felt like I was getting sick with all of the shaking around. People see it as unique, I see it as cheap. I felt like I could have filmed the movie with my parents cam-corder that they bought in 1992. Its one thing to use a camera that is not mounted still, but I got the impression that they just shook the camera. In the cab, the camera bounced around so much, and Jamie Foxx/Tom Cruise didn't bounce even the slightest. Before I forget, I also want to point out that the whole movie had no traffic on their side of the road but tons of cars on the other side. Anyway, Collateral seems to have one of the biggest plot holes I've ever seen in a movie. The cops are outside the nightclub and zoom in and listen to Jamie Foxx say that his name is "Vincent" to the security guards. The cops immediately jump to the conclusion that he must be the killer because his name is Vincent. They said, "It must be him, he even admitted that his name is Vincent." OH MY GOD! VINCENT!?! That must mean he is the killer even though the cops never once prior to that scene even hinted that they were after a man named Vincent. Apparently, if you are investigating a murder, and a man named Vincent shows up, he must be a killer because he "even admitted his name was Vincent." A friend of mine protested this and said, "Well, Vincent is a pretty good assassin so once they heard the name, it must have clicked and they linked the assissin to the murders." Even if that is the case, it was never even implied that they knew of a man named Vincent who was a killer (which is just bad film making). It was simply, 'his name is Vincent, he must be the killer.' Moving on from that... A couple of scenes show a lack of logic within the characters themselves. 3 Examples: 1- Jamie Foxx: He takes off with Vincent's suit case while Vincent is with his mother. If Jamie were to completely get away, screwing Vincent over, all Vincent would have to do is go back to his mother and kill her, or at the very least, wait for Jamie to visit her again. Jamie Foxx assumes that Vincent is not going to harm his mother, but only an ideot would risk something like that. 2- Cop who comes across Jamie and flipped car: This one was more funny than bad. Jamie flips the cop over and holds the cops gun to him. The cop, rather than a normal human saying, "Please, don't shoot me," barks an order at Jamie as if he is still in control, "SIR! PUT DOWN THE GUN!" I just laughed. 3-Vincent: At the end he knocks out the electricity because the girl is on the phone. There is no reason for him to do this. He cuts out the phone because she is using it to talk to Jamie Foxx. However, Vince has no reason to believe that Jamie Foxx knows the girl, or even a reason to believe that it is Jamie on the other end of the line. If anything, cutting the power to that floor, would draw attention to himself. Maintance would see that there is a problem on that floor and would send somebody up. Another problem with the movie is how predictable it was. Any ideot could have seen from the beginning that Vincent was going to go after the girl that Jamie gets sweet on (hell, I saw since the commercials). If you didn't realize that she was going to be the last target in the beginning, it spells it out for you in the middle. Vince talks about how he goes after anyone from witnesses to "prosecuters" at times (if that wasn't the biggest hint in the world). The coincidences were way to big as well. One big thing happening by chance is kind of neat, but when everything is coincidental, its just ridiculouse. First, he meets the girl that Vincent is going to go after right before meeting Vincent. Then Vincent tells a story about a dead man on a train which is how he dies. Then there is more subtle coincidences such as the cops arriving to the night club at the same time as Jamie and Vincent. The action scenes were not as good as people make them out to be as well. I'll admit that the kick that breaks the guys knee was cool but for most of the fighting, the camera was everywhere and it was filmed with too many bodies around the camera, so that you couldn't actually see what was being done. At one time, Vincent jumpst on one man and dives out of the way of machine gun fire (which killed the man that he rolled away from). The man with the machine gun apparently decides that he isn't going to change his aim and waits approximately 3 seconds for Vincent to grab a gun of his own and shoot back. Vincent dives out of the way, and in about 4 motions (which is not fast), grabs a guns turns and fires while the machine gunner stands dumbfounded waiting to be shot. There was many many more flaws and annoyances in this movie as well, but I just can't seem to recall them all because there was simply just way too many. The drama genre is the hardest to **** up generally other than simply being to slow (example: Serpico), but Collateral finds a way to do it in its own ridiculous way. By the way, the storyline of "Drive me around as a kill people" is pretty weak as well.
3 out of 10 (one of my least favorites of the year)