Cruise is killer in ‘Collateral’

Everything about Tom Cruise is gray in “Collateral”: his silver sharkskin suit, his salt-and-pepper hair, his skin under fluorescent lights.

His soul, too. Cruise plays a professional killer named Vincent, out on a long nocturnal job in Los Angeles that requires multiple stops. At the beginning of the evening, he’s picked up by a cab driver, Max (Jamie Foxx).

Or rather, Vincent picks up Max, and forces him to stay close for the duration of the evening. The poor cabbie realizes early on that Vincent is up to no good (the corpse dropping on the roof of his taxi is the tip-off). But Vincent has a gun, and Max becomes a reluctant chauffeur-confessor as they tool around the city on their way to the next hit – five targets in all.

“Collateral” is the new one from director Michael Mann, and it’s a dandy. Mann’s last couple of projects have been ambitious epics: “The Insider,” the tobacco-company shakedown, and “Ali,” the boxing bio.

But now he’s back in the world he captures better than just about anybody: cops and criminals, cool clubs, the underworld at night, philosophical musings alternating with gunshots.

Half the picture, it seems, is set in Max’s cab. There are plenty of exciting moments outside of it, as Mann knows how to stage violence so that it snaps off the screen. But you sense that the core of the film is the cab, and the intense conversations that take place there.

Remember the great scene between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in “Heat”? That was a Michael Mann scene. We get a lot of those in “Collateral,” beginning with a terrific curtain-raiser between Max and an attractive woman (Jada Pinkett Smith, just right). Just as Max suspects his loser luck is changing, he picks up Vincent, and the nightmare begins.

Mann and screenwriter Stuart Beattie steer us from one tense moment to another, and always make logical the progress of Vincent and the unwilling Max. A jazzed-up cast keep the juice flowing, including Mark Ruffalo as a cop on the trail, Javier Bardem as a gangster, and Barry Shabaka Henley as a jazz-club owner who shares an anecdote about Miles Davis.

Mann is in love with bright surfaces, and what they reflect about people. He makes nightclubs or office buildings look slippery and seductive in ways you’ve probably never though about before.

And his offbeat choices for his leading roles pay off big. Cruise lets his good-guy grin harden into the wolfish cruelty of Vincent, and it’s a convincing transition. Jamie Foxx bears little trace of his past as a comedian, burrowing down into Max’s resigned demeanor (12 years of “temporarily” driving cab have worn him out – that, and his overbearing mom, played in one memorable scene by Irma P. Hall).

“Collateral” is exactly the reason that the multiplex tends to become more interesting at the end of summer. It’s as cool and hard as Miles Davis at his most focused.

Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx star in “Collateral.”

“Collateral” HHHH

A dandy: Michael Mann’s cool nocturnal thriller about a cabbie (Jamie Foxx) who picks up a professional hit man (Tom Cruise) and is stuck driving him to his jobs. The two actors are strong playing against type, and Mann’s feeling for the nighttime underworld is keen.

Rated: R rating is for violence, language.

Now showing: tk

“Collateral” HHHH

A dandy: Michael Mann’s cool nocturnal thriller about a cabbie (Jamie Foxx) who picks up a professional hit man (Tom Cruise) and is stuck driving him to his jobs. The two actors are strong playing against type, and Mann’s feeling for the nighttime underworld is keen.

Rated: R rating is for violence, language.

Now showing: Everett 9, Galaxy, Grand, Marysville, Mountlake, Stanwood, Cinerama, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place, Woodinville, Cascade.

Robert Horton