Collateral by Steve Rudd

Starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx, this rollercoasting thrill-ride is one of the coolest of action movies to have hit the screen in 2004, as Summer goes out to the dogs and the first pangs of Autumn strike the air. Tom, like his ex-wife Nicole Kidman, never seems to stop working, with this movie being his second major movie after the Edward Zwick-directed masterpiece The Last Samurai that came out earlier in 2004. And, yes - it is true... Tom does play a bad guy in Collateral. A very bad guy in fact.

Tom is a contract killer, while Jamie Foxx plays an innocent cab driver who takes Tom's character for a ride. Before Fox knows what is going on, he's been hired for the night as the killer's personal chauffeur as such, as they both rush round Hollywood, stopping off at certain houses to kill various people. Foxx, naturally, tries to escape from Cruise's deranged character, but to no avail. But in the end justice does prevail, and Foxx - to some extent - saves both the day, and the police a job - without me giving away the ending too much.

Directed by the hugely respected Michael Mann who has previously barked orders on the movie sets of The Last of The Mohicans and Heat to stunning effect, Collateral is a great movie not only due to the great performances from Cruise and Foxx, but because of the way it has been made.

The approximate two hours running time is pretty much set in real time. Fans of the TV series 24 will be familiar with such a concept. All the action in this movie does take place during a gruesomely exhilarating window of a few hours, as a late night in LA edges towards the next day's dawn, at which point the movie ends.

The prospect of setting a movie in real time, I'm sure, would scare the hell out of many a director because real life isn't usually interesting or exciting in such a non-stop and intense manner, so the story really does need to have something going on every second of every minute in order to keep the person watching the movie suitably enthralled.

Fortunately, elements of energy and suspense are sustained throughout here, and are spectacularly unleashed in a number of graphically violent and potentially disturbing action scenes. For sure, when Cruise enters a nightclub in the early hours of the morning and starts shooting his gun off, the resultant scene of chilling horror is almost as bloodthirsty as any number of scenes from the mid-90's movie Interview With The Vampire,' in which Tom also starred.

Fans of Cruise will be probably be surprised at how well he portrays a bad guy. Such fans will also be pleased to know that he looks as dapper as ever. Even if, at the end of the night, he does wind up dead with a bullet in is head. Without me giving away the ending too much. 4/5 But if any sequel that may materialise in the near future is even half as action-packed and as cool as this movie, I - for one - can't wait.

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