Collateral (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Collateral (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Vincent is a cool calculating contract killer at the top of his game. Max is a cabbie with big dreams looking for his next fare. This fateful night max will transport vincent on his next mission – one night 5 stops 5 hits & a perfect getaway. Together they find themselves in a non-stop race against time. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/22/2006 Starring: Tom Cruise Jada Picket Smith Run time: 120 minutes Rating: RCollateral offers a change of pace for Tom Cruise as a ruthless contract killer, but that’s just one of many reasons to recommend this well-crafted thriller. It’s from Michael Mann, after all, and the director’s stellar track record with crime thrillers (Thief, Manhunter, and especially Heat) guarantees a rich com
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Valkyrie [Blu-ray]
Studio: Tcfhe/mgm Release Date: 05/19/2009 Run time: 120 minutes Rating: Pg13Unpretentious and dramatically straightforward, Valkyrie is a suspenseful yet ennobling story about the last attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler prior to the end of World War II. Tom Cruise is effective if a little opaque as hero Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who channels his anger at Hitler’s atrocities and mismanagement of the war by joining a secret organization bent on killing the Führer. When the outspoken Stauffenberg hits on the idea of linking Hitler’s death with an official policy to safeguard Berlin during a government crisis–a contingency plan called “Valkyrie”–the group realizes a post-assassination coup could be covered by rapidly implementing
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Convincing Characters & Dialogue Work Wonders.,
Director Michael Mann does what he does best with “Collateral”, a well-written (by Stuart Beattie), entertaining thriller that knows just when to be intense and when to be mellow. “Collateral” takes place overnight in Los Angeles. Max (Jamie Foxx), a veteran cab driver who dreams of owning a limousine service, picks up Vincent (Tom Cruise), a slick, talkative fare who offers him $600 for a night’s work: 5 stops and get him to the airport by 6 a.m. Sounds good, but when a bloody corpse lands on his windshield, Max comes to the abrupt realization that Vincent is an assassin. He becomes an unwilling accomplice in a murder spree, as Vincent attempts to fulfill his professional obligations and Max tries to walk the line between thwarting a killer and saving himself.
Much of “Collateral” is distinctly mellow in tone. Low-key conversations play out over the classical music in Max’s cab. This makes the bursts of action more intense and surprising. No one could call “Collateral” realistic, but the attention to detail in the characters’ speech makes it seem so. I have to admire Tom Cruise for embracing villain roles at this point in his career, where other stars have shunned them or insisted on watered-down scripts. Cruise has nothing to lose by playing unlikable characters, and they will among his most memorable work. Vincent’s self-possession lends him great presence and charm, while his moral bankruptcy makes him revolting. Cruise is perfect for the role. Jamie Foxx plays the film’s “everyman” who rises to the occasion when circumstances demand it. He’s stressed, put-upon, and trapped, and he acts it. Jada Pinkett Smith does a nice job in a supporting role as a prosecutor, Annie, who takes a ride in Max’s cab, as does Mark Ruffalo as Police Detective Fanning, who suspects trouble in Max’s cab after one of his informants is murdered. Great cast, great dialogue, and perfect pacing make “Collateral” an engaging, character-driven thriller that almost everyone will enjoy.
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|Tom Cruise as a bad guy? Hell yeah!,
**Warning: Spoilers ahead**
This movie surprised me. I mean it REALLY surprised me. I didn’t know what to expect from this movie. Collateral shows Tom Cruise in what I believe is his first `bad guy’ role and Jamie Foxx in one of his few non-comedy roles. But with its tight writing and direction, and great performances by all actors involved, Collateral is without a doubt one of the best movies of this summer, and the surprise sleeper hit of the year.
The story of Collateral revolves around an assassin named Vincent (played by Cruise) who commandeers a taxi operated by Max (played by Foxx). Vincent forces Max at gunpoint to assist him in assassinating five individuals on his hit list. However, this seemingly simple premise belies an incredibly strong story. If you want non-stop balls-to-walls action, and/or have no patience for movies that `have a lot of talking’ then look somewhere else. While there are several scenes of gunplay, the core of this movie deals with the interaction between Vincent and Max.
It is true that, like in most movies, Collateral’s most interesting character is the villain. Cruise’s portrayal of the character is amazing. As Vincent, Cruise delivers his lines with such ease and confidence, that it’s more than worthy of Oscar consideration. Vincent is a person who his incredibly calm considering the profession that he’s in. He is also extremely resourceful, as shown when he pretends to be a lawyer telling off Max’s boss when he (the boss) wants to take any damages done to the taxi out of Max’s paycheck. Vincent also always has something sarcastic (and often funny) say to Max when he begins to criticize what Vincent has done. After Vincent kills of the first person on his list, Max asks why he would kill his victim after only just meeting him. To that, Vincent replies, `What? I should only kill people after I get to know them?’. Vincent then asks Max whether he heard about Rwanda. He goes on to tell Max thousands of people died yet `Did you join Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Whales, Greenpeace, or something? No. I off one fat Angelino and you throw a hissy fit.’
Max himself is also an interesting character, and is surprisingly well-played by Jamie Foxx. He tells people who get in his cab about his intentions to own a limo service and drive around famous people, yet at the same time he projects a sense that this is more of a dream than a real plan, and you feel sorry for him. His character is also one that continuously changes throughout the movie. After the first killing, Max gets scared and has no idea how to deal with Vincent. But as soon as he sees an opening, Max jumps on the opportunity to destroy Vincent’s suitcase with his work inside. And when Max has to confront a powerful drug lord while posing as Vincent, he has to force himself to become as cool and collected as Vincent himself.
An interesting thing to note about this movie is, just like Michael Man’s other movie Heat, Collateral likes to use a lot of the wide shots of the background. In Heat this was used to good effect to give that movie a more `epic’ experience. In Collateral, this wide shot technique is used to give the viewer to stronger `feel’ for the city of Los Angeles, as a bustling, busy, and warm (in terms of temperature) metropolis.
If Cruise and Foxx continue to make performances like that in Collateral, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day they get an academy award. Hell it’s entirely possible for them to get nominated for their roles in this movie. With so many special effect blockbusters out there this summer, Collateral bucks the trend by providing a movie that focuses on strong characters and dialogue, and a few unexpected twists, rather than relying on huge explosions. Collateral is one of the MUST SEE movies of this summer, so don’t deprive yourself by not checking it out.
I give Collateral a rock-solid 8 out of 10!
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|“Yo Homie. Is that my briefcase?”,
From my point of view, the premise seemed to be very repetitive and potentially boring, but that all changed on August 12, when I went to see this on a rainy day. Don’t get me wrong – the plot does involve five murders by hitman Tom Cruise, playing Vincent, who is driven around by Jamie Foxx, playing Max, but there is a lot more to it than that.
The dialogue is outstanding. Foxx, brilliantly cast, is funny at times, but he doesn’t come off as trying too hard to be funny, which is what Will Smith is often guilty of. Cruise, playing a villain for once, shows his dark side and turns in a more than convincing performance. This movie, like other Michael Mann movies, relies on good dialogue. There are extended scenes of just talking, but they are so well-written that you don’t even notice. A lesser director would have deleted scenes in favor of the more action-packed ones. Now, there is a lot of action and violence, but it never really gets carried away, and it never is without a point. Vincent tries to convince Max that what he is doing isn’t all bad, even though it is murder. This is crucial because it shows the character development.
Also of note, the scenery and cinematography of South Central Los Angeles is beautiful. The more violent scenes are incredibly real, on the same level of being real that Saving Private Ryan was on. It may have just been because I was in a theater, but the gunshots sounded real, and the way Tom Cruise handled himself as a marksman made him look like a real hitman. That’s something that you can’t train for. You either have it or you don’t.
And, there were cops in this movie that were chasing after the cab, but only for a very brief part of the movie, so that it didn’t end up being like another one of those cat and mouse movies that I grow quite tired of. Yet, at the same time, there still are lot of thrilling action sequences. This truly is one of the best movies that I ever saw.
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|Magazine articles proven wrong…again,
9/10 Stars
Forget all the negative hype surrounding Valkyrie, because I assure you it is false. Bryan Singer has made a well-crafted thriller that kept me and my family on the edge of our seats until the end – even though we all know what the story’s unfortunate outcome. Also, many tabloids were making this out to be the movie that would permanently cripple the career of Tom Cruise. This is entirely false. Cruise delivers a fine performance, and this hatred I can only assume is related to his rather odd personal life. Tom Cruise is as strong of an actor as he ever was, and I won’t let something like turning Oprah’s couch into a playground deny the fact that the man has talent, and is a truly passionate actor (and seriously, he does have a slight resemblance to Stauffenberg).
The movie is based on the last of fifteen known attempts on the life of German dictator Adolf Hitler (I’m sure everyone will have him in a nice “Five Most Evil People” list), and has Tom Cruise playing Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who of course was the key player in the assassination attempt. Ultimately this attempt failed (as we all know Hitler would die by suicide nine months later), but that doesn’t keep Valkyrie from being an addictively engaging film.
Every member of the cast does their part well, not jockeying for superiority in any way. More importantly Cruise does not grandstand in this movie, fading in with the rest of the cast, rather than trying to stand above them like you’d expect, given his past films. Cruise gives a performance similar to 2005′s War of the Worlds, where he does a good performance, but he never tries to overpower the other members of the cast. In Valkyrie Tom Cruise is a being a good team player, not trying to steal any glory, and never once does he overact the part.
Using very little CGI Valkyrie is also a wonderful film to look at. The vintage automobiles and aircrafts make this film have a distinct authentic flair that few other war films have (CGI looks like it was only used for the climatic assassination attempt). You can look at this and tell that this is the real deal, with the production team putting careful care into how they want this film to look, unlike most Blockbuster films that try and inflate every aspect of the film rather than aim for reality. Like the performance by Tom Cruise they don’t try and overpower the audience with special effects, they simply let the characters slip into the realistic settings.
Also, the complaints about the accents I truly feel are desperate attempts to bash Cruise’s performance. It was director Bryan Singer’s concept to not use false German accents, and not that of Cruise, or the primarily British cast. I agree with Singer’s concept that if feels false, and inaccurate to have people speak in English, but with foreign accents. I know several Germans in real life, and they do not sound very “German” when they speak in English, because the accent is not intended for the English language. I personally feel the desire for English being spoken in German accents comes from decades of WWII films where we’ve categorized every-single member of the German army, and by them speaking in that accent only is to cliché them and separate them from American audiences. They can speak in German accents, but only if they’re speaking in German, because if they aren’t it seems to be a tool to keep your common American moviegoer from relating to the characters.
Don’t go into Valkyrie expecting to be greeted with a horrifically bad film that you will be able to poke fun at with friends. The movie has been released, and I feel the rumors, and negative hype of been proven decisively false. This isn’t a movie to kill Cruise’s career, but it won’t help him regain love in the American community either (as previously mentioned he doesn’t shine so much as mix in with the rest of the cast). It is a very enjoyable dramatization of a true event, and I don’t think the material could have been handled much better, even with a full German cast, because Singer’s style and method of conveying this story are all very well-done.
Go out and enjoy this dramatization of one of the darkest periods of human history. It is worth every second of your time, and all though it isn’t Oscar-worthy it is certainly worth two-hours of your time.
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|Faithful to History, well done,
All Historical Dramas faithful to the actual events run the risk of being dry and boring. Fortunately, although it is a bit dry here and there, the producers of Valkyrie didn’t stray too far in that direction. The story is well-told, and I did not feel that it dragged or got into excessive and boring detail at any point. If you are a student of WWII, and particularly this famous failed attempt to assassinate Hitler, you will be pleased with the quality of the film, the acting, and the film’s faithfulness to facts and to the tone of the times. The film brings forth many details of which I was not aware, and the historical facts I know-of from past research are accurately portrayed.
It is clear computer graphics are used extensively in this film, since many of the scenes could not have been filmed in any other way, more than 60 years after events took place. The special effects are for the most part well done, and are not intrusive – clearly used only as needed to support the story instead of being an excuse to show-off a studio’s CGI capabilities.
As for acting, this story was an excellent vehicle for Tom Cruise. I feel Cruise’s portrayal of Colonel von Stauffenburg, who was a central figure in the assassination plot and this story, was excellent and believable. Some may argue that the characterization is a bit wooden, but I suspect this may be intentional on Cruise’s part, and in keeping with the historical figure: a decorated soldier filled with anger towards Hitler, who could survive in the upper levels of the German Army only by masking his true feelings.
The rest of the cast is phenomenal. I was amazed at the number of familiar and respected actors and actresses that appeared in relatively minor roles throughout the film. Not a single performance was less than I would expect from such a cast.
The film is not a light-hearted one, nor does it end well for most of the characters. There are several bloody scenes, but none of the violence is gratuitous. As such, this is a film that will be appreciated primarily by those interested in the history of WWII, or are solid Tom Cruise fans. I am well pleased with the film as a whole, and feel the end product meets the goals of both the producers and their intended audience. I’ll give it Five Stars.
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|Outstanding film, a must see for all history buffs…,
As a history buff, I was complelled to see this film from the get go. The fact that critics were particularly brutal led me to believe this was indeed an excellent film. I was very pleased to see it stuck to the facts even if some of the details are rather mundane. The cinematography does an excellent job at placing you in the era as if you were a bystander to the events before you.
The acting was simply top notch. Tom Cuise elevated himself with his performance. He was quite believable and true to the accounts of Colonel Stauffenberg. I reject the accounts by critics that this was a Gerry Maguire performance in uniform. The supporting cast is award worthy. it is rare to find a cast that works so seemlessly together. I believe the director deserves particular credit for this achievement.
Bottom line, Valkyrie is a top quality film worthy of your time. Forget what all those bitter, envious critics says, see it for yourself and then judge the film in it’s merits.
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