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34
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78
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57
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29
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57
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68
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67
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xx
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79
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35
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30
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9
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52
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50
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48
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90
Persepolis
44
Rails & Ties
36
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44
Ruins, The
47
Semi-Pro
24
Sex and Death 101
76
Shotgun Stories
37
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63
Signal, The
40
Sleepwalking
62
Spiderwick Chronicles, The
50
Step Up 2 the Streets
61
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33
Superhero Movie
54
Tracey Fragments, The
45
Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns
59
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40
Vantage Point
46
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51
Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland
17
Witless Protection
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
90
Persepolis
79
Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
78
Control
76
Shotgun Stories
70
Caramel
69
Bank Job, The
68
Honeydripper
67
In Bruges
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
63
City of Men
63
Signal, The
62
Spiderwick Chronicles, The
61
Stop Loss
59
Under the Same Moon
59
Definitely, Maybe
57
Flawless
57
Hammer, The
54
Charlie Bartlett
54
Tracey Fragments, The
52
Be Kind Rewind
52
My Blueberry Nights
51
Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland
50
Step Up 2 the Streets
50
Other Boleyn Girl, The
48
Penelope
47
Boarding Gate
47
Semi-Pro
46
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins
46
Bonneville
45
Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns
44
Rails & Ties
44
Chaos Theory
44
Ruins, The
42
Bucket List, The
41
Funny Games
41
Drillbit Taylor
40
Vantage Point
40
Sleepwalking
37
Shutter
36
Remember the Daze
36
Eye, The
36
College Road Trip
35
Jumper
34
10,000 B.C.
33
Superhero Movie
30
Meet Bill
29
Fool's Gold
24
Sex and Death 101
17
Witless Protection
9
Meet the Spartans
xx
Jack and Jill vs. the World
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Collateral
DreamWorks Distribution LLC
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for violence and language
Starring
Tom Cruise,
Jamie Foxx,
Jada Pinkett Smith,
Mark Ruffalo,
Peter Berg,
Bruce McGill,
Irma P. Hall,
and
Barry Shabaka Henley
Max (Foxx) has lived the mundane life of a cab driver for 12 years. The faces have come and gone from his rearview mirror, people and places he's long since forgotten -- until tonight. Vincent (Cruise) is a contract killer. When an offshore narcotrafficking cartel learns they are about to be indicted by a federal grand jury, they mount an operation to identify and kill the key witnesses, and the last stage is tonight. Tonight, Vincent arrives in L.A. -- and five bodies are supposed to fall. (DreamWorks)
| GENRE(S): |
Action
|
Crime
|
Drama
|
Suspense/Thriller
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Stuart Beattie
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Michael Mann
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: December 14, 2004
Video: December 14, 2004
Theatrical: August 6, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
116 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
90
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
Most of the time we are with Cruise and Foxx, and their interplay is never less than galvanizing.
90
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
As a result of Mann's craftsmanship and concern, Collateral crackles with energy and purpose, a propulsive film with character on its mind and confident men and women on both sides of the camera.
90
Wall Street Journal
Joanne Kaufman
Hugely entertaining thriller.
90
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
The best kind of genre filmmaking: It plays by the rules, obeys the traditions and is both familiar and fresh at once.
88
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
This is a rare thriller that's as much character study as sound and fury.
88
USA Today
Mike Clark
Shake it all up and you get Collateral, a movie with only one conceivable flaw: its disinclination to break new ground, though no one held that against "The Fugitive" more than a decade of Augusts ago.
88
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
No crime film in years boasts a cooler vibe than Michael Mann's dazzling Collateral.
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
Cruise is a man whose youthful cockiness has aged into self-assurance and cool confidence. It's a masterstroke of casting. The dynamism of Collateral, however, comes from Jamie Foxx.
83
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Michael Mann's tensely funny and alive Los Angeles night-world thriller, is, in its own twisty way, a very high-stakes buddy movie, yet it doesn't look like one, because it leaps off from a situation more jangled and threatening than we're used to.
80
Time
Richard Schickel
As much a dark, odd couple comedy as it is a quirky, efficient little thriller.
80
Variety
Todd McCarthy
Occupying a dramatic, philosophical and sensory twilight zone that casts a considerable spell, this intensely focused piece soars not only on the director's precision-tooled style but also on the outstanding interplay between leads Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.
80
Newsweek
David Ansen
Mann vividly captures the nocturnal pulse of East L.A. in this taut, confined game of cat and mouse. In the homestretch the thrills get too generic and farfetched for their own good. But the first two thirds are a knockout.
80
The New Yorker
David Denby
Shot by shot, scene by scene, Mann, whose recent work includes “Heat” and "The Insider," may be the best director in Hollywood. Methodical and precise, he analyzes a scene into minute components.
80
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
Pitched between interludes of anxious intimacy and equally nerve-shredding set pieces, Collateral scores its points with underhand precision.
80
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
If Collateral is all formula, it's polished to a fine sheen.
80
Empire
Colin Kennedy
Perhaps the best premise for thrills since "Speed," only this time the bad guy’s on board and the battle of wits is more philosophical debate than pop quiz.
75
Portland Oregonian
M. E. Russell
Devolves into a contrived, coincidence-driven, by-the-numbers thriller in its final act. That's not to say the movie's a failure. It's impossible to dismiss a film that starts out as such a sensuous, existential crime story.
75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Cruise is chillingly credible as the cold, cruel Vincent. And Foxx shows unexpected depth and humanity as Max, whose night encapsulates the cliché about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
75
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
Stylish - if predictable - thriller.
75
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
The whole movie is something of a joke, a feature-length prank that mixes stark violence and shock humor in the mold of Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction." Though it is a far less ambitious entertainment than Tarantino's masterpiece, it has its moments.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
The first half is exhilarating, and the rest is a tolerably honourable surrender to Hollywood conventions.
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
Collateral is a good idea for a movie, backed up by expert execution... It's straight-up entertainment, not something to see and then talk about a month later, but definitely something to enjoy.
75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Really two movies: a taut, terrific, realistic crime drama, and, by the end, an over-the top, high-tech extravaganza which tries to out-Woo John Woo and turn Cruise into another Terminator.
75
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Stylishly made, if less intellectually resonant than first-rate Mann films like "Ali" and "The Insider."
75
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Collateral is a small, modest movie writ large by people so talented, they aren't capable of anything less.
75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
Foxx makes what he does look effortless. He's the reason to see Collateral, as he walks into the frame and walks off with the picture.
70
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
Like "Heat," Collateral will doubtless go down in film history as the noir marvel it undoubtedly is, but I don't quite buy its characters, and I came out of the theater still wondering what it had to say. Me, I have a soft spot for that old ’60s radical.
70
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
The movie never really gets below that surface. It sticks to the mean streets of Los Angeles without much introspection or analysis. But those surfaces are slick and beguiling.
70
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Nathan Rabin
Mann's moody Collateral unravels toward the end, faltering at its conclusion but dispensing enough atmosphere, characterization, and world-weary humanism along the way that audiences would be wise to enjoy the ride without worrying too much about the final destination.
70
Film Threat
Pete Vonder Haar
After a solid hour and a half, the climax almost seems to have come from a different movie. Collateral is still a hell of a ride, but could've used a smoother landing.
70
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
The best thing Mann brings to his picture is a strong sense of time and place.
63
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
Preposterous without being much fun about it. That's a shame: How often do you get to see Cruise play a professional assassin with Bill Clinton's hair?
63
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
If there was ever an example of a movie's visual language leaving its verbal and narrative components in the dust, this, unfortunately, is it.
60
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
It's essentially an urban variation on "The Hitcher" (1986) with nothing much going on underneath.
60
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
If you boil the psychology of Collateral down to its essence, what you get, mostly, is Vincent badgering Max for not having enough chutzpah -- in essence, for not being enough of a tough guy.
50
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
The director, Michael Mann, remembers the best of film noir pretty well, but it doesn't protect his film against its ultimate Movieland silliness.
50
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
If only all this wonderful talent wasn't in service to a story that pushes credulity beyond the breaking point, perilously close to the realm of farce. Too many coincidences, too much convenient timing, too little honest plot development.
50
Austin Chronicle
Marrit Ingman
Ruffalo makes a dent as a dogged narcotics detective, and the Spanish superstar Javier Bardem appears as a crime boss. Overall, however, Mann seems content to play games with his fast cars, cool streets, and loud rock, leaving Collateral squarely within the action genre.
50
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
Collateral is a slim drink of thin beer, remarkable only as evidence that Mann might have a modern masterpiece in him if he were cut loose and allowed to roam around in his own obsessions.
50
Dallas Observer
Bill Gallo
Suffice it to say that Cruise never seems right in this part--never as treacherous as he should be, nor as mysteriously tortured. Foxx has his moments, but there's no room for his trademark humor, and we can never quite get our minds around the idea that the hit man has beguiled the cabbie.
50
Slate
David Edelstein
It's too bad that halfway through, Collateral turns into a series of loud, chaotic, over-the-top action set pieces in which the existentialist Mann proves he's lousy at action.
 The average user rating for this movie is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 106 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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