Not sure if it was mentioned but I did see one problem.....

In the shot where Foxx shoots out the glass in the door....after he shoots it out.....the horizontal handle is gone and he can jump right through the door.

Great movie.....just caught that minor inconsistency.

I wanted to touch on this part again:

Second viewing it looks like John is just a middle man. they bump and drop their respected baggage. Cruise picks up the new bag that contains the hit list. The purpose of the character was to deliver the tablet pc and all the info on his hits.

Just came back from seeing it. Great flick. Best of the summer so far.

I just saw it and i thought it was so awesome..


By far a great performance from Cruise.....

Move over bad guy Travolta..... Cruise is now by far the best bad guy out there...

and great performance from jamie foxx.

So, in a building with hundreds of offices, even a moron should realize that it's the DA on the end of that line instead of any one of hundreds of other possibilities. But hey, being a moron, who am I to say different?

If you don't think Vincent has a "screw loose", maybe you should check a few of your own screws for possible tightening.

And he said he was joking about killing his dad, not about his childhood. And even there, you're not sure what the truth is -- was he lying about killing his dad, or was he lying about lying? Of course, this insight comes from a very limited intellect, so I hope I don't insult your intelligence with the obvious.

I might have missed something but

Great flick BTW.

I was wondering the same thing.

Must be something we missed, especially since Mann spent a lot of back-and-forth time with the "choosing" scene.

Well, its the middle of the night, in an empty DA's building. The only person that would be in the building would be Security (which is dead), a Janitor (which could be but probably isn't making phone calls in a library), or a DA working overnight preparing for a case that she has in the morning. Well, its either the DA or people working with the DA, either way the DA is there.

Its the middle of the night and the only possible person that could be working there is your DA target. Vincent also knows that the DA is there because his surveillance (the info he checks on his PDA) hasn't been wrong all night (they were right about the 4 other targets)

1) He knows that the DA is there
2) He knows the DA is probably working on the case
3) The DA isn't in her office
4) The light on the phone with the little tag (LIBRARY) is flashing

Vincent doesn't need Miss. Celo to guide him to the DA.

You don't need a hundred other possibilities. You need common sense.

exactly. and since he did do recon before on the building on how to get in and so forth I wouldn't assume that it is to tough to look up on any info wall on where each office is at.

as for the subway confussion. they were next to the escalator that goes up when they went down. this was ment to make you believe they went into the bottom train. simple fake out.

Perhaps you shouldn't have taken that "even a moron.." comment personally because it was ment for you or as a personal attack. It was just a broad generalization that all it takes is common sense to figure out that the target is in the file room. For that matter in a film full of one lieing to another why would vincent open up to this character with a full detail? The point of it was that they were doing what they were good at all night. Vincent was a good hitman and max was a good taxi driver. That's one of the aspects of the film.

What I like about Mann is that he's able to take paper-thin material and elevate it to something that looks like it's a lot deeper than it really is. Imagine if Collateral was directed by, say, Michael Bay - it really would be just as dumb as The Rock - all the clichés and contrivances would be on full display and there'd be awkward one-liners all around. But Mann is able to down-play these ham-fisted elements, though he never really rises above it

Here's how I interpreted it.

Movie was good not great. The last third of the movie was ridiculous. After Foxx crashed the car

- Cruise and Foxx got out of the car acting like the crash never happened. They were running pretty fast for guys who was just on an accident

- Foxx fighting off the cop Bourne Supremacy style

- Cops never going to the D.A. building when Foxx told the cop about the hit.

- As someone said before, Cruise becoming the terminator.

- Cruise getting shot in the final shootout. Cruise didn't let Fox kill him intentionally because he tried to reload afterwards. SF vs cabbie..hmmmm

One question
what happened to the other 2 guys that was stealing the handbag? There were 4 guys that went to the car and only 2 walked away from the car.

RE: The numerous comments regarding the general un-believability of the movie....

I agree that there are indeed a high number of "coincidences" as well as various parts where certain characters could have made different choices or done different things.... Maybe more logical things. But if that were the case, then there wouldn't be a need to tell this story.

What makes a story worth telling? Some of the most compelling stories I've ever seen/heard are often sprinkled with certain unbelievable / spectacular elements. That's what makes it interesting.

For example, take the beginning of the movie where, as a number of people have pointed out,

Also, the part where Some believe this is the worst possible time to run since it put her life in danger. I don't believe that's the case, because I don't think Max's intention was to get away from Vincent when he took off.

So, even though this movie definitely has some situations that may appear "convenient," it exists, IMHO, to create a feeling that because this very specific sequence of choices were made, the outcome became what it became. And that if even one of those coincidences did not occur, then there wouldn't be a story to tell in the first place.

Well Statham in the airport was just a middleman as well. I mean if Felix found out who Vincent really was he could have him killed also for not finishing the list or whatnot.

I wasn't much of a Tom Cruise fan, but he's winning me over. His last couple of projects (for the most part) I've really enjoyed; Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, Magnolia, The Last Samurai, and Collateral all come to mind immediately.

for the most part Vincent stated that only certain people get to meet him. I'm guessing that statham is working for those directly that hired him and not those who he is doing the hit for. So for the most part Statham is the informent that represents Vincents "boss" so to speak and is just passing on the list.

Well, I just got back from watching Michael Mann make almost every other movie released this summer look like a joke.

Before I start spoiling, I'll say that after the movie, the audience sat there in stunned silence for a couple of seconds, and then a friend of mine said, "WELL, THAT WAS DULL! I KEPT WAITING FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN!!" Then we all laughed nervously and went for drinks to calm our nerves.

Anyhow:

--Tom Cruise was good, but this was Jamie Foxx's movie.

--That said, Tom Cruise was undisputably ****ing terrifying.



It wasn't just the action that rocked, but the dialogue as well: I could have listened to four hours of Jamie Foxx shooting the shit with passengers while driving around in a cab, and over the course of the movie Vincent and Max became truly well-developed characters, of the kind that increasingly rare in mainstream movies now. But my favorite dialogue bits would have to be and . And Foxx: Mann wasn't credited as a screenwriter, but too much of that sounded like the dialogue in Heat for him not to have written the conversations in the cab, at the very least.

As far as action sequences--I liked the fact that there wasn't really a showcase action sequence, but that the intensity was spread out over the entire movie. However, there were a couple of standout parts: the was pretty intense, but was absolutely INSANE. Shot after shot in that part of the movie was pure genius.

The only minor complaint that I have about the movie, which isn't even a complaint so much as an observation, is that I had a feeling that the original screenplay might've had some flaws. Without such great direction, writing, and acting, plot twists like would have seemed ridiculous. But somehow Mann was able to sell that.

Collateral is the best time I've had in a theater this summer, with the possible exception of Harry Potter. Definitely far better than I, Robot, and even better than Spider-Man 2. Yes, THAT'S WHAT I SAID.

I loved the film, but all Michael Mann had to do was change a few obvious things in the final third of the film and almost nobody would be bitching about it.

What could he possibly have been thinking.....

The horizontal handle was affixed to the glass itself, not the door frame. Many doors are done this way for aesthetic purposes (it's certainly weaker structurally).

I think Vincent sent Max in to get the replacement list from Felix for several obvious reasons.

Meeting Statham in the beginning was part of the plan. Its business and its part of the routine or procedure he follows as an assassin. You know Vincent is really concerned about routine since he times Max to the minute on how long it takes to get from one location to the other and he insists that Max go visit his mother since not going would cause attention.

By destroying his original list, Max changed Vincents routine so it should be Max's responsibility to set things right. Also, Vincent probably knew the Felix was being watched by the Feds. Had he gone himself, he probably would have been identified immediately on camera.

They also said that in a similar crime before in Oakland, a cabbie went on some murder spree and killed people then shot himself (one of Vincent's earlier jobs presumably). Vincent all along was planning to use Max, frame him for the murders, then kill Max. If he knew that the Feds were watching Felix, sending Max in to pose as the assassin would work perfectly in framing him.

did anyone else laugh at Max's reaction to the dead body falling on his winshield?

*BLAM!*..."Oh no!!"