Chiasmus cult cinema trailers - "Collateral" (2004). *These will be ongoing posts, courtesy of the A.Glass DVD collection. As I offer via Chiasmus Cult trailers, my summarized overviews*

"Collateral" (2004) is Michael Mann's return to form, ala the action drama ethos, after his 1995 hit "Heat".  Portraying Mann's fascination or obsession with the psychology of extreme hyperfocus, and how that affects one's cause and effect, as decreed with Heat, via Al Pacino and Robert De Niro's characters, in their opposing circumstances, mixed with an inflexible determination.   Collateral, offers the same paradox, when interrelationships merge and the chance encounter is the counterbalance to the one's directional mideset, in this case "Vincent", played by Tom Cruise, as a methodical, psychopathic hitman, who uses a cab, and its driver "Max Durocher", played by Jamie Foxx, to drive around Los Angeles, as he kills of various witnesses associated with a Mexican drug Cartel. 

Written by Australian director and screenwriter Stuart Beattie, as what it would be like if you did drive a cab, and your passenger for the evening ride is a psychopathic hitman, with straight to the point world views, who can read you like a book. While offering, with money of course, to assist him, unpronounced to you, in a drive around the city kill fest.  Beattie's concept does indeed work, via Mann's intensity, and his renown characterization of detached, hyper-driven motivation.

Filmed in and around Mann's favorite set piece, Los Angeles, for his revamped, noir melodrama, Collateral as an early 2000 post digital stylisation, was filmed almost entirely with a portable Digital camera, removing some of the rawness of Mann's past 35mm cinemagraphic projections.  Thus, the blockbuster expansiveness of "Heat", was reduced to its high definition intimacy, shaky camera style of the late 1990s police drama.  Does it work?  Yes, it works, but at the same time, it struggles to define itself as a memorable movie beyond what looks like a television drama, albeit with larger production values, and movie like editing.    

Jamie Foxx's restrained passiveness, and the psychopathy of Tom Cruise's character is the mainstay of Collateral, as "Vincent" begins to methodically pick off each of his targets, the chain of events in a cascade of cause and effect, start to unravel after his first kill.  While the polar opposite relationship between "Max Durocher" (Foxx) and "Vincent" (Cruise), sets a precedent of the morality of determination versus our own moral compass, and the line between the two, at the end of the day, becomes more blurred.  Spiralling towards the violent conclusion of the movie, Vincent begins to school Max on why he is still driving cabs and is the quintessential beta failure, to which the psychopathic (Vincent) is able to flip the passive (Max) into a brief moment of psychosis, as Vincent becomes more suicidally determined to finish the job.  Max becomes more determined to stop him.

"Collateral" is one of those movies, that does have a cult movie ethos attached, now over 20 years old, with an attempt, at the time, to appeal to the cynical, backlashing Gen Xers and the overambitious Gen Y's, while embracing, and obsessing the dawn of digital social media and cell phones of the early 2000s.  Both Generations probably missed the subtle irony of the movie script, that Middle Class pragmatic consumption, and greed fueled interconnected markets have brought out the worst in us all.  Mixed with Mann's metaphorical laced, visual sequences of extreme determination, may have you speeding towards a brick wall.  And I do wonder, if a slower, more nervous system different Gen Z, can find relatable aspects with Collateral.

It remains to be seen.  

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(A.Glass 2026)

All CHIAMUS Cult Cinema trailers/commentary to date: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/search/label/Chiasmus%20cult%20cinema