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Collateral (2004)

A lot of movies take place in Los Angeles (and of course a lot are made there), but few actually capture the essence of such a unique and strange city. The Los Angeles of the 21st century is a far cry from that of Jake Gittes, where he once remarked, "L.A.'s a small town, people talk." In the Los Angeles of cab driver Max Durocher, L.A. is a sprawling metropolitan area home to 15 million people. And they only talk when forced into proximity of each other; sometimes by taking a cab.

Enter the sharp-dressed hitman Vincent, played by a Tom Cruise, who arrives at LAX with no indication of his location of origin or past. He is The Joker from The Dark Knight before Batman ever began. You can say that this is undermined by the conversation he later has with Max about how he grew up with no mother and that his father despised him, but I would argue that growing up with a loveless single parent is hardly a substantial explanation for a sociopath along the lines of Vincent. "Improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it," he says, conveniently describing his outlook and demeanor all within one line of dialogue.

Balancing the presence of Vincent is Jamie Foxx as Max, our cabbie that requires planned precision and routine as part of his life. He's been driving his cab for twelve years, but 'temporarily' as he says, only as a holdover until he can get his "Island Limos" company off the ground. His own personal inertia has kept him from doing anything else with his life. It's a fairly simple concept for a story, one where polar opposites collide and we watch the spectacular results of that crash.

While it is a movie driven along literally and figuratively by these two characters, what makes Collateral such an outstanding achievement is director Michael Mann's liberal use of digital cinematography where the crisp image captures a sense of immediacy and velocity that traditional filmstock could not. Los Angeles is a city of people coming and going anonymously, whether that be by cab or hitman's bullet. Collateral never skips a beat, and even seemingly mundane moments the elements of the movie are all accelerating towards the speed of light.

In addition to this eternal movement, Los Angeles (much like other major metropolitan areas) is also a city of urban isolation. People often get lost amongst the hubbub. Vincent recites a story about the man who dies on the MTA and is ignored by passengers for six hours. Max is as lonely as that dead man, alone as he is held captive by Vincent and as authorities think he is the killer himself. But once he learns to adapt to this environment (Darwin, I Ching, or whatever), Max finds another fellow lonely soul and overcomes this in the movie's sometimes-absurd climax.

But this movie is not a damnation of Los Angeles as an epicenter where evil comes to reap what it sows (all but one of the targets that Vincent is picking off seem to be heavily involved in some sort of drug dealing syndicate). Instead it is one that depicts and romanticizes the existence of Angelenos whose lives are always in the shadow of larger forces, be it a well-trained hitman or a city sprawling out of control. It is a beautiful struggle to etch out a niche where no one will give a shit.

While Collateral isn't the first movie to use digital cinematography, it certainly was a torchbearer and provided a glimpse at the potential that the medium had. In the 60s, the auteurs of the French Nouvelle Vague were able to create a sense of urgency and excitement through the use of jump cuts. In the 21st century, it seems as if the use of digital cinematography is the heir apparent to Godard's little trick.

It was partially a technical choice to employ digital cinematography in this movie, as it allowed more to be captured in the image as the majority of the movie takes place at night, but don't think Mann wasn't keenly aware of the aesthetic that it provided. The perpetual motion machine that is Los Angeles is rarely caught on film, and that may be because it is the wrong medium altogether.

Some sort of re-introduction.

Sometime in late-2001 I was a moody teenager that was also becoming a burgeoning indie rocker. The Strokes and The White Stripes were my shit, Britney Spears was the antichrist, and The Velvet Underground were apparently the demigods of cool. Prior to that year the only music I was remotely interested had to have been recorded before 1980 or made by someone that was relevant before that Mason-Dixon Line of artistic time. The Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin, and Bob Dylan were The Only Bands That Mattered to me and... Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that at somewhere in that year I had become more artistically aware and much more discerning in taste.

Somewhere along the line a little movie came along called The Royal Tenenbaums that I decided to rent out of the blue. I don't even remember what spurred me to check it out, but I get the feeling it was this review from the oft-maligned Pitchforkmedia.com, a site I regularly read at the time to know what were the Important Records of the day to go buy at my local Rasputin Music (and not download! It was important as a connoisseur of Art to actually own the works in question).

I loved Tenenbaums, but probably more so because it was unlike any other movie I had watched up to that point and I reveled in at least trying to be contrarian. All at once, it was strange, funny, intelligent, and quite surprisingly showed a lot of heart despite being so strange and nebulous. With money I made from tips doing birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese's, I went across the parking lot one day while on break and purchased the DVD from Circuit City (R.I.P.). A movie like that required repeat viewing for me, and buying it would be a lot cheaper than renting it all the time.

Oh, did I watch it. With each viewing did I appreciate the rich scenery of Anderson's storybook faux-New York, the clever script, and the subtlety of the stellar performances. When I had oversaturated myself with the movie, there were rich supplements on the Criterion Collection DVD package to indulge myself with and actually teach myself about the motivations and intentions of Wes Anderson. And since I've been known to have a penchant of sharing my discoveries with my peers, this was a secret too good to keep to myself and I introduced Tenenbaums to my friends who all loved it (or at least claimed to just to humor me).

I know I'm letting this turn into something way too long-winded so I'll wrap up pretty shortly here. One thing led to another, I went to UCLA where I actually became friends with other hipster kids and had a roommate whose interest in movies rivaled my interest in music and we became instrumental in shaping each other (although he probably won't admit to this). Then came Lost In Translation (probably the first movie I literally went way out of my way to see) and eventually my enrollment in a history of American film where a screening of Citizen Kane probably was what converted me forever into the Church of Cinema. Cliche as hell, I know, but who cares.

So here I am, inspired to start a blog about all the movies I watch and my opinions on them after going to my local library and checking out some collected works books on film criticism (American Movie Critics: From The Silents Until Now and Pauline Kael's For Keeps: 30 Years At The Movies in case you were wondering) and feeling like this is probably a better outlet for my intellectual gushing than randomly ranting to friends that normally don't care. This is a blog that has had two previously failed incarnations, and hopefully this is one that'll have some life to it. Hell, it's a new year right? Fuck, a new decade. In conclusion, all I have to say is: Mahnola Dargis, I think I love you.