Collateral

Judy and I went to see Collateral yesterday. If you haven't seen it, you might want to quit reading now, because I'll probably give away some supposed surprises.

Here's the deal. Jamie Foxx plays a taxi driver named Max. My theory about books and movies is that everybody is willing to forgive one big coincidence, but the fact that Max's first fare is an attorney (Jada Pinkett Smith) who's on the hit list of his second fare, Vincent (Tom Cruise) is a little hard to swallow. This isn't really giving anything away, however, since anybody who sees the movie is going to twig to it a lot quicker than Max does.

Since the attorney is #5 on a list of five, Vincent has to kill a lot of people before he gets to her, and he hires Max to drive him from victim to victim (there's a hint in the movie that this has happened at least once before, though not to Max). When Max finds out what's going on, Vincent forces him to participate.

You pretty much know how this is going to turn out. Max, the ordinary guy, will prove to be a little more heroic than Vincent expects, there will be a "suspenseful" chase, and yadda yadda yadda.

I thought the movie was pretty good, though. Cruise does a good villain, and has a nice last line. Foxx is a lot better than I thought he'd be. Really good, in fact. I'm looking forward to seeing how he does as Ray Charles in Ray later on this year.

One jarring note that took me out of the movie: Mark Ruffalo appears as a cop and seems to be playing the same guy he played in In the Cut. I kept expecting Meg Ryan to show up for some hot R-rated sex.