THE DUKE ON
COLLATERAL
COLLATERAL
I’d imagine the worst thing most taxi-drivers have to put with
is a couple drunk fuckers in the back seat asking them the
same damn question twenty times and then they puke, but at
least they opened the door, even though it still splattered
all over the interior. For sure, that’s a thing and a half for
a man to endure, but it’s hardly the worst thing in the world.
“What time you on tae, anyroad? Aye, knows the score. Knows
the score that cunt there. He’s a fuckin’ good man. What’s
your name anyway taxi driver? Oh aye. So what time you on tae
anyroad? Three? Fuckin hell. Here, you ever see that film
about the taxi driver. Oh, hire it out, hire it out, I’m
telling ye. Martin Scorsese. Knows the fuckin score that cunt
Scorsese. Oh aye. So what time you on tae?”
And so on and so forth.
Turns out, though, there are worse things for a taxi driver to
put up with, especially if you’re a taxi driver by the name of
Jamie Foxx, and happen to be part of a motion-film by the name
of Collateral. I’m guessing Jamie Foxx would pay good money
for to have a fella ask him what time he’s on till and then
puke over the back of his neck. Anything, thinks Foxx, for a
fella that falls asleep and forgets where he wants to go.
What Foxx gets saddled with though, is none other than Tommy
Boy Cruise. He probably assumed that the worst that could
happen would be maybe Cruise would start yacking about the
time he was in Days of Thunder, or try to palm off some
Scientology literature of some kind. Turns out, though, Tommy
Boy Cruise is nothing less than a grey-haired motherfucking
hitman.
What Tommy Boy suggests is that Jamie drive him around L.A so
that he might perform the “hits” lingering on the old “hit-
list” for that particular evening. I’d imagine you might not
be too fussed on the idea, but there is the fact that probably
Tommy Boy’ll kill your guts off if you refuse, and then kill
your bed-ridden mother, and then probably rope you into some
film about he hangs off of a mountain in the trailer, but
that's all anyone knows since they missed it at the cinema and
never bothered hiring it out.
What Collateral illustrates, is that Michael Mann is still
among the finest directors in Hollywood. It’s just that
everyone seems to forget between pictures. It’s not like with
Coppola, where everyone assumes that he’s brilliant just cause
he made these couple flicks back in the day that you read
about all the time. Mann has to keep up the quality, is what.
He’ll fling out The Insider, and it’ll rule, and everyone
loves it, but next thing you know they’ve forgotten all about
it. He’ll remind you again with Ali, and again, you forget ten
minutes later. So here he is reminding you again. What
Collateral is saying to the world is “I made Heat and
Manhunter for fucks sakes. Did Scorsese ever get De Niro and
Pacino to share a scene? No he didn’t, but I fucking did. Pay
me some damn attention, would you ever?”
To this end, Collateral, at times, plays out like The Best Of
Michael Mann. There’s the lengthy, inexplicably tense dialogue
exchanges, there’s L.A presented as a neon netherworld,
there's the synth-heavy score. It’s all very 1987, is what.
Also, the last fifteen minutes are pure Manhunter.
Most important of all though, is that it’s fantastic.
Hit-Man flicks are always going to be worthwhile, is what The
Duke has deduced. A fella slinking around corridors and then
hiding in a cupboard, and someone else comes into the room and
the lights don’t work, but wait, there’s red dot dancing
around my chest. Either it’s a buncha motherfuckers with those
damn laser pens, or I’m about to be killed for reasons I
probably wouldn’t understand even if he told me, which he’s
not gonna, since he’s a silent assassin. From Le Samurai to
Leon to Grosse Point Blanke and all those Hitman video games
where you can even shoot the fucking pigs in the pig-pen if
you so desire, Hit-Men have always provided hours and hours of
quality entertainment.
I was gonna be one myself, truth be told, but a couple
factors, i.e., being a pacifist and all, and not really having
the arse for it, limited my career prospects. I was hoping
maybe I could just break into someone’s brothel and have a
long chat with them about Kirsten Dunst and maybe they’d
rethink their lives. But no. A bullet in the guts, said the
agencies, to which I cuttingly spat “Well fuck you then.”
But I digress from the point I haven’t made yet.
Michael Mann has once again conjured a world before our very
eyes, a world of smoke and reflection, of jazz-clubs and
foreboding alleyways, of steel-eyed killers and cops drenched
in regret. I’m sure it bears little resemblance to the actual
real-life locale, but just as Woody Allen cared less about the
reality of Manhattan that what it meant to him, so Mann evokes
the spirit of L.A., and to molten hell with the facts of the
matter.
Tommy Boy Cruise is magnificent here, although truth be told
he’s never really much less than magnificent in anything. For
sure, Far And Away with it’s quirky Oirish, and Vanilla Sky,
Cameron Crowe’s pointless remake of Abre Los Ojos can be
locked in an underground vault someplace, but even in the
weakest material, Cruise shines. What happens in Collateral is
that the material is worthy of him. It’s the best thing he’s
done since Jerry Maguire.
Show me the motherfucking money you fuck, was, I believe, the
big “catchphrase”.
Unlike Maguire, Collateral is a particularly downbeat picture.
It’s all very mournful, very solemn. When it chooses, though,
it pumps the adrenaline like as if it were some hoody-cloaked
malcontent wandering round one of those side-streets, opening
their coat now and again to reveal a dozen sachets of the
smackity cracks or whatever, and probably a couple bootleg
Rolex’s. The shoot-out in the nightclub is fantastic, a flurry
of confusion and screaming and folks getting shot in the legs.
Mann, y’see, takes the opposite route from action flicks that
punctuate the screaming and the bleeding with a moment of
calm. His whole flick is a moment of calm, but it’s an eerie
calm, like the bit in The Birds when they walk through all the
dead sparrows but it feels fucked-up somehow, like as if some
horrible shit’s about to happen any damn minute, like maybe
somebody decides to make The Birds II – Land’s End.
Collateral is Mann’s The Birds, then. It’s all very eerie,
very eye-of-the-storm, and then every now and again a buncha
pigeons start pecking the fuck outta school-kids, or Tommy Boy
Cruise decides to rudely interrupt a very interesting anecdote
by shooting somebody’s face off.
See it, folks. That’s all a man like The Duke can ask.
Thanks folks
is a couple drunk fuckers in the back seat asking them the
same damn question twenty times and then they puke, but at
least they opened the door, even though it still splattered
all over the interior. For sure, that’s a thing and a half for
a man to endure, but it’s hardly the worst thing in the world.
“What time you on tae, anyroad? Aye, knows the score. Knows
the score that cunt there. He’s a fuckin’ good man. What’s
your name anyway taxi driver? Oh aye. So what time you on tae
anyroad? Three? Fuckin hell. Here, you ever see that film
about the taxi driver. Oh, hire it out, hire it out, I’m
telling ye. Martin Scorsese. Knows the fuckin score that cunt
Scorsese. Oh aye. So what time you on tae?”
And so on and so forth.
Turns out, though, there are worse things for a taxi driver to
put up with, especially if you’re a taxi driver by the name of
Jamie Foxx, and happen to be part of a motion-film by the name
of Collateral. I’m guessing Jamie Foxx would pay good money
for to have a fella ask him what time he’s on till and then
puke over the back of his neck. Anything, thinks Foxx, for a
fella that falls asleep and forgets where he wants to go.
What Foxx gets saddled with though, is none other than Tommy
Boy Cruise. He probably assumed that the worst that could
happen would be maybe Cruise would start yacking about the
time he was in Days of Thunder, or try to palm off some
Scientology literature of some kind. Turns out, though, Tommy
Boy Cruise is nothing less than a grey-haired motherfucking
hitman.
What Tommy Boy suggests is that Jamie drive him around L.A so
that he might perform the “hits” lingering on the old “hit-
list” for that particular evening. I’d imagine you might not
be too fussed on the idea, but there is the fact that probably
Tommy Boy’ll kill your guts off if you refuse, and then kill
your bed-ridden mother, and then probably rope you into some
film about he hangs off of a mountain in the trailer, but
that's all anyone knows since they missed it at the cinema and
never bothered hiring it out.
What Collateral illustrates, is that Michael Mann is still
among the finest directors in Hollywood. It’s just that
everyone seems to forget between pictures. It’s not like with
Coppola, where everyone assumes that he’s brilliant just cause
he made these couple flicks back in the day that you read
about all the time. Mann has to keep up the quality, is what.
He’ll fling out The Insider, and it’ll rule, and everyone
loves it, but next thing you know they’ve forgotten all about
it. He’ll remind you again with Ali, and again, you forget ten
minutes later. So here he is reminding you again. What
Collateral is saying to the world is “I made Heat and
Manhunter for fucks sakes. Did Scorsese ever get De Niro and
Pacino to share a scene? No he didn’t, but I fucking did. Pay
me some damn attention, would you ever?”
To this end, Collateral, at times, plays out like The Best Of
Michael Mann. There’s the lengthy, inexplicably tense dialogue
exchanges, there’s L.A presented as a neon netherworld,
there's the synth-heavy score. It’s all very 1987, is what.
Also, the last fifteen minutes are pure Manhunter.
Most important of all though, is that it’s fantastic.
Hit-Man flicks are always going to be worthwhile, is what The
Duke has deduced. A fella slinking around corridors and then
hiding in a cupboard, and someone else comes into the room and
the lights don’t work, but wait, there’s red dot dancing
around my chest. Either it’s a buncha motherfuckers with those
damn laser pens, or I’m about to be killed for reasons I
probably wouldn’t understand even if he told me, which he’s
not gonna, since he’s a silent assassin. From Le Samurai to
Leon to Grosse Point Blanke and all those Hitman video games
where you can even shoot the fucking pigs in the pig-pen if
you so desire, Hit-Men have always provided hours and hours of
quality entertainment.
I was gonna be one myself, truth be told, but a couple
factors, i.e., being a pacifist and all, and not really having
the arse for it, limited my career prospects. I was hoping
maybe I could just break into someone’s brothel and have a
long chat with them about Kirsten Dunst and maybe they’d
rethink their lives. But no. A bullet in the guts, said the
agencies, to which I cuttingly spat “Well fuck you then.”
But I digress from the point I haven’t made yet.
Michael Mann has once again conjured a world before our very
eyes, a world of smoke and reflection, of jazz-clubs and
foreboding alleyways, of steel-eyed killers and cops drenched
in regret. I’m sure it bears little resemblance to the actual
real-life locale, but just as Woody Allen cared less about the
reality of Manhattan that what it meant to him, so Mann evokes
the spirit of L.A., and to molten hell with the facts of the
matter.
Tommy Boy Cruise is magnificent here, although truth be told
he’s never really much less than magnificent in anything. For
sure, Far And Away with it’s quirky Oirish, and Vanilla Sky,
Cameron Crowe’s pointless remake of Abre Los Ojos can be
locked in an underground vault someplace, but even in the
weakest material, Cruise shines. What happens in Collateral is
that the material is worthy of him. It’s the best thing he’s
done since Jerry Maguire.
Show me the motherfucking money you fuck, was, I believe, the
big “catchphrase”.
Unlike Maguire, Collateral is a particularly downbeat picture.
It’s all very mournful, very solemn. When it chooses, though,
it pumps the adrenaline like as if it were some hoody-cloaked
malcontent wandering round one of those side-streets, opening
their coat now and again to reveal a dozen sachets of the
smackity cracks or whatever, and probably a couple bootleg
Rolex’s. The shoot-out in the nightclub is fantastic, a flurry
of confusion and screaming and folks getting shot in the legs.
Mann, y’see, takes the opposite route from action flicks that
punctuate the screaming and the bleeding with a moment of
calm. His whole flick is a moment of calm, but it’s an eerie
calm, like the bit in The Birds when they walk through all the
dead sparrows but it feels fucked-up somehow, like as if some
horrible shit’s about to happen any damn minute, like maybe
somebody decides to make The Birds II – Land’s End.
Collateral is Mann’s The Birds, then. It’s all very eerie,
very eye-of-the-storm, and then every now and again a buncha
pigeons start pecking the fuck outta school-kids, or Tommy Boy
Cruise decides to rudely interrupt a very interesting anecdote
by shooting somebody’s face off.
See it, folks. That’s all a man like The Duke can ask.
Thanks folks
