Collateral - Movie Discussion (Spoilers)

[Knightshade Dragon]

So I went and saw Collateral yesterday and I have to admit that I enjoyed it quite a bit.   I'm not a big Jaime Foxx fan and that dude from "In The Cut" made me think he was going to pull a Halle Barry and ruin my movie in record time, but all in all it was solid performances all around.  Even Tom Cruise didn't turn in his usual Captain Charisma character portrayal.  (Although I really wasn't sold on his 'aged' look)  

(Spoilers below)
The move kept a solid pace and some parts of it completely shocked me (Jazz man...I didn't see it comin)  and other parts were absolutely predictable (JP Smith as last on the list).  The only thing that I thought could have used a little more love was the very end...it just seemed very abrupt, although him sitting on the MTI and riding it was fitting.
(End Spoilers)

Anyone else see the movie?  What did you think?

[whiteboyskim]

Best movie I've seen this year. I'm a huge Michael Mann fan, and despite his overuse of close-ups and way too much of the film based off of coincidence, I loved it. It's very easy to forget that Tom Cruise is a hell of an actor, and Jamie Foxx is really starting to blossom into a solid actor as well. His switching from reluctance to acceptance while talking to Felix was awesome, as was the final scene in the cab where he understands that he's just been dreaming his dream for the last 12 years instead of living it.

The ending kind of dragged, but otherwise I thought it was very tightly done. I also was surprised quite a bit (the jazz bar, for example, as well as the entire nightclub shootout) and that's always welcome.

[Balshazaar]

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 I went into this movie knowing next to nothing about it, except that Rotten Tomatoes had given it a good rating, and I came out extremely disappointed.  There are a lot of things that bothered me, but I found that the biggest disappointment was the plot: it was predictable, unoriginal, and did not flow particularly well.  Why build part of the plot around the cops, when they had nothing to do with it in the end?  The J.P. Smith appearance at the beginning, along with her job title, guaranteed her a showing later in the movie, and one you knew what Cruise was up to, you knew where you'd see her.  It was not a surprise at all when he 'discovered' that she was last on the list.  

Where were you ever led to believe earlier in the movie that Jamie Foxx wasn't actually going to go forward with his dream plans?  His character wasn't fleshed out enough for his 'awakening' to make any sense to me.  He seems like a guy good to his word throughout the whole thing.  

Why would a killer put his own life at risk to save the life of the taxi driver in the one bar scene?  This is just confusing.  Hell, Tom Cruise was obviously familiar enough with the city to run from the taxi to the building he was going to at the end, so why couldn't he have just driven the taxi himself?  

How in the world would a trained professional killer not have his an amateur with AT LEAST one bullet during the train scene at the end?  But the amateur hits him?  Please...  

It's not a bad movie, but between the look-how-cool-I-am director kitsch, the easy-way-out plot devices, and all of the coincidences, (yeah, like you're going to lose cell signal in one of the busiest business districts in the world), I just thought it could have been a lot better.  Each to his own, I guess.

[Knightshade Dragon]

SPOILERS

How in the world would a trained professional killer not have his an amateur with AT LEAST one bullet during the train scene at the end? But the amateur hits him? Please...

You can see the bullets in the door that didn't quite penetrate from Cruises gun that he got from the cop.  Foxx'es gun was the assassins gun, you can bet he was probably using armor piercing rounds, so I'm willing to suspend my disbelief on that.

It's not a bad movie, but between the look-how-cool-I-am director kitsch, the easy-way-out plot devices, and all of the coincidences, (yeah, like you're going to lose cell signal in one of the busiest business districts in the world)

Ugh...I know EXACTLY where that building is, and having stayed in the hotel close to there let me tell you that the cell reception was crap.  Besides, he ran out of power.

That said, there were some plot devices that needed too much thought for an action flick.  As for why not drive himself, they explained in the movie that he uses the crazy-cabbie as his cover.  He doesn't exist...