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A cab driver finds himself the hostage of an engaging contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in Los Angeles. A cab driver finds himself the hostage of an engaging contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in Los Angeles. A cab driver finds himself the hostage of an engaging contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in Los Angeles.

Michael Mann
Stuart Beattie
Jada Pinkett Smith
1K User reviews
238 Critic reviews
71 Metascore
22 wins & 73 nominations total

Richard Weidner

Traffic Cop #1

Young Professional Man

Young Professional Woman

Traffic Cop #2

(as Ken Ver Cammen)
(as Charlie E. Schmidt Jr.)
Fever Bouncer
(as Michael A. Bentt)
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Trivia According to Michael Mann , Vincent is a man able to get in and out of anywhere without anyone recognizing or remembering him. To prepare for the movie, Tom Cruise had to make FedEx deliveries in a crowded Los Angeles market without anyone recognizing him.
Goofs When Max and Vincent load the first corpse in the trunk, the "corpse" is holding Max by the wrists as well.

Vincent : Look in the mirror. Paper towels, clean cab. Limo company some day. How much you got saved?

Max : That ain't any of your business.

Vincent : Someday? Someday my dream will come? One night you will wake up and discover it never happened. It's all turned around on you. It never will. Suddenly you are old. Didn't happen, and it never will, because you were never going to do it anyway. You'll push it into memory and then zone out in your barco lounger, being hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life. Don't you talk to me about murder. All it ever took was a down payment on a Lincoln town car. That girl,you can't even call that girl. What the fuck are you still doing driving a cab?

Crazy credits There are no opening credits of any kind. The title does not appear until the closing credits.
Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Collateral/Code 46/Stander/Little Black Book/Festival Express (2004)
Soundtracks Debestar Written by Rick Garcia , Rene Reyes & Cisco De Luna Performed by The Green Car Motel Courtesy of FastKat Records

User reviews 1K

dbillick-35631
Dec 14, 2022
Is this the first film that Tom Cruise has played a villain?
What's the song that Daniel is playing when Max & Vincent see him playing in the jazz club?
August 6, 2004 (United States)
United States
-Official Facebook
Untitled Michael Mann Project
El Rodeo Restaurant, 8825 E Washington Blvd, Pico Rivera, California, USA (Felix' hangout)
Paramount Pictures
Dreamworks Pictures
Parkes/MacDonald Image Nation
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$65,000,000 (estimated)
$101,005,703
$24,701,458
Aug 8, 2004
$220,239,925

Technical specs

Runtime 2 hours
Dolby Digital

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Collateral Is the Most Michael Mann Film of All Michael Mann Films

An underrated gritty return to form, the film includes the best seven minutes on his resume that don’t involve Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and a diner booth.

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In Michael Mann’s greatest movies, the good guys are never really all that different from the bad guys. And make no mistake, they are always guys. The heroes and antiheroes of his stylishly macho films are put through their cat-and-mouse paces in a decidedly grey moral world, rather than a black-and-white one. There’s no room for concepts like right and wrong, they are all lonely nocturnal ambiguity—modern-day Ronin sagas cloaked in a cool shades of gun-metal slate. Just think of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in 1995’s Heat , where these two acting heavyweights play two equally obsessive sides of the same coin. Watching their famous diner tete-a-tete with the sound off, you’d never know who was the cop and who was the criminal.

Heat is widely (and rightly) considered to be Mann’s masterpiece—the director’s grand meditation on all of his favorite pet themes: loyalty, honor, integrity, crime, compulsion, loneliness, and the point where good and evil bleed into one another until you’re no longer sure which side you’re meant to be rooting for. It’s a grab bag of leitmotifs that was there from the start in the director’s pair of ‘80s gems, Thief and Manhunter . But as undeniably lean and mean as both of those films are, I’d argue the movie that actually nips most closely at the heels of Heat in the top tier of Mann’s underworld classics is 2004’s Collateral —another violent, nihilism-drenched thriller that, if you squint just a little, seems to exist in the same spiritual universe as Heat . They’re two movements in an underworld symphony of L.A. after dark.

Just out in a flawless new 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Collateral isn’t exactly what anyone who considers themselves to be an auteur buff would call a “deep cut.” Any movie that stars Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx and makes $220 million at the worldwide box office can hardly be called “overlooked.” And yet, well, it kind of is. The story of a lone-wolf contract killer (Cruise) who strongarms a hapless and meticulous cab driver (Foxx) into ferrying him on his nightly rounds to wipe out five targets involved in a grand-jury case, Collateral may not be the best Michael Mann film, but it certainly is the most Michael Mann film.

When Collateral hit theaters 16 years ago, Mann was coming off a pair of well-received, Oscar-nominated dramas, 1999’s The Insider and 2001’s Ali . Both had the technical precision, live-wire performances, and high-IQ smarts we expect from Mann’s movies. And both were based on real life headlines and headline-makers. But let’s face it, real life isn’t what we’re looking for when we fork over ten bucks to see a new Michael Mann movie. We want crooks plying their crooked trades in the shadows, haunted men obsessed with their jobs to the point of mania, and the sort of gritty-but-gorgeous action set pieces that leave you breathless and spent. Collateral marked a return to stoic form.

Written by Australian Stuart Beattie, Collateral was originally called The Last Domino , a lousy title which was thankfully changed. And eventually, the script made its way into the hands of Frank Darabont ( The Shawshank Redemption ), who had a deal at the time to make low-budget genre movies for HBO. But HBO passed, clearing the way for DreamWorks to step in. The studio flirted with Mimi Leder ( Deep Impact ) and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski ( Saving Private Ryan ) to direct, but both would end up drifting away. As would Russell Crowe, who was itching to play the hitman-villain role of Vincent. But the one fortuitous thing that came from Crowe’s brief involvement was that he passed his enthusiasm onto the man who recently directed him in The Insider , Michael Mann.

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With Crowe out, Mann sparked to the idea of casting Tom Cruise against heroic type. Adam Sandler toyed with the idea of playing Max, the cabbie. But when Sandler bailed to star in Spanglish (just one of the countless puzzling, ‘What If’ choices Hollywood happens to be littered with), Mann offered the part to Jamie Foxx—a happy accident if ever there was one because he’s absolutely perfect. Something Mann suspected from working with the actor on Ali . As is Cruise, whose unexpected amorality and guiltless, hair-trigger sadism shows just how great the star can be when he fucks with our expectations and zigs when we expect him to zag.

Over the years, Mann has described Collateral as “only the third act” of a story. And that gambit works so well in the film that you have to wonder why more screenwriters and directors don’t try that sort of formal experimentation more often. At the opening of the film, we have no idea who Cruise’s Vincent is, what his backstory is, or what he’s doing in L.A. We just seeing him walking through LAX, presumably just off a plane from Chicago or some other metropolis that breeds cold-eyed killers dressed in sharp grey suits with sunglasses and a shock of silver-grey hair on his head that matches the close-cropped, salt-and-pepper beard on his face. If Tom Ford ever created an haute couture line for sociopaths, Vincent would be its posterboy.

While Cruise’s Vincent is a complete mystery, Foxx’s Max is less so thanks to an introductory scene in which he takes a prosecutor (Jada Pinkett Smith in the best ten minutes she’s ever had on screen) to the airport. Within seconds, he knows what she does for a living, what makes her tick, and even who makes her handbag. Because, for Max, his cab is a confessional booth on wheels. He sees so many people in his rearview mirror every day that he’s developed a sixth sense about them. It’s too bad he doesn’t size up Vincent a few beats longer before he becomes his next fare. Cruise starts off chatty and chummy with Max, offering him $600 to take him to five different spots around L.A. And if the offer seems to be too good to be true, that’s because it is. While parked in an alley during their first stop, a bullet-riddled body lands on the roof of Max’s cab with Cruise racing after it, suddenly forced to explain the new reality of the long, bloody evening that lays ahead. “You killed him!” Max says. To which Vincent matter-of-factly replies, “No, the bullets and the fall killed him….Now get in the fucking car.”

Collateral (4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital)

Watching Collateral again this week, the thing that surprised me the most about it was how amazing Cruise is playing a psycho grim reaper—and why, with the exception of 1999’s Magnolia , he didn’t venture into the dark more often. You could say that Collateral is the anti-Tom Cruise movie, an immersive, full-body deep dive into seductive sadism and remorseless evil where he gets to spout be-bop arias of unhinged lunacy that we rarely get to hear coming out his mouth like “We’ve got to make the best of it. Improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it.” And yet, it’s also totally a Tom Cruise movie because, well, you can’t help but be a little charmed—seduced even—by this existential sicko no matter how depraved his five-item To Do list is.

Like every Michael Mann movie—even the not very good ones like Public Enemies and Blackhat —every single frame in Collateral is composed with a jeweler’s eye for detail. This was actually the first film in which Mann (or really any A-list Hollywood director actually) used high-def video instead of film stock. Mann has said that in order to capture the silhouettes of L.A. at night, celluloid wouldn’t have worked. I’ll take his word for it. But the film’s green-tinted graininess gives the Tinseltown of Collateral the haunted neo-noir glow of a ghost town that left the lights on before it was abandoned. In the movie’s greatest sustained spasm of suspense and violence, he shoots a chaotic gunfight inside a Koreatown dance club like something out of one of the higher rings of Dante’s Inferno. It may be the best seven minutes on his resume that don’t involve Robert De Niro and Al Pacino sitting in a diner booth. And watching it, you can’t help but think of what a mess it might have been had someone like Michael Bay or Joss Whedon directed it instead.

If Collateral wasn’t as great a film as it is, it would be worth checking out just for that sequence alone. But, of course, there’s so many more brilliant moments hiding in plain sight in the movie that jump out at you the more times you watch it: The way Foxx manages to flirt with Pinkett Smith without actually flirting; the way Cruise pop, pop, pops a bunch of drug-addled goons trying to make off with his briefcase and then delivers one final pop without looking as an exclamation point; the way Javier Bardem, in just one quick scene, manages to turn a story about Santa Claus into the cold-sweat nightmare fuel. But don’t take my word for it. Throw it on for yourself and, you know, “improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, roll with it….”

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A t some point, every angry young film nerd picks their favorite movie. And I’d argue that—for the typical angry young film nerd—the “favorite movie” is a calculated argument. It never just means: “Of all the movies I have seen, this one is the best.” It’s a statement of purpose, a clear way of declaring what you want out of the movies—or anyhow, what you want people to think you want out of the movies. This is why it’s rare for any film nerd between the age of, like, 17-24 to say their favorite movie is something popular, or something critically established, or something their parents have ever heard of.

Leave it to the list-building think-tanks— your hazily-defined industry organizations , your crowdsourced groupthinking hive minds , your respectable and strenuously accurate journalistic institutions —to honor Citizen Kane or Psycho or Breathless or The Godfather or Star Wars or now even Pulp Fiction , those films that expanded the art form and defined a generation and are therefore helplessly obvious choices. When the angry young film nerd seeks to define—with one a single title—their own unique perspective on what movies are and what movies mean, the decisions trend eccentric.

So you get deeper cuts from great directors. (See: Shadow of the Doubt > Vertigo or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance > The Searchers ). Or you get critically disreputable genre pictures, reappropriated into greatness as an intellectual act of rebellion, a cinephiliac-intellectual method of screaming "Take that, Mom and Dad!" (See: the entire New Wave-era reappraisal of Hollywood entertainments, or the current postmillenial reappraisal of '80s blockbusters as the peak of Hollywood's pre-digital form, or 20 years from now when someone much younger than you claims that Transformers: Age of Extinction marked a new dawn for the cinematic art form.) Or you get aggressively recent releases, films that are still within the half-decade grace period before conventional wisdom allows them to age into canon. (See: The late-2000s critical consensus declaring There Will Be Blood as the New Pinnacle.)

There was a half-decade period when, if you asked me what my favorite movie was, I would've said Collateral .

None of these decisions are right or wrong, because when it comes to "favorite" movies, there is no real right or wrong. Honestly, there may not really be a right or wrong with any movie—especially now, in our weird and exciting post-camp post- Mystery Science Theater 3000 era of film appreciation, when it feels like half of the moviegoing public is critically equipped to enjoy movies on the meta-analytical level. ("I know this is bad, and the knowledge of that badness allows me to enjoy it, and thus it is good, or at least bad in a good way.")

It's fun and worthwhile to argue about movies, but arguing about "favorite" movies is trickier, because everyone's a zealot for their own unique cause. If you're someone who loves movies, there's an urge to colonize your own specific corner of the cinematic galaxy: To discover a new director, or rediscover an old one. The previous generation's Trashy Filmmaker will inevitably become the next generation's Trash Auteur: Douglas Sirk, Paul Verhoeven, kind of Shane Black now for some reason.

So your "favorite" movie when you're young is personal, and kind of weird, and maybe aggressively unlikely. We all know all of this, subconsciously. I am only restating it because I want to very carefully qualify the statement I am about to make, a statement which cannot help but look ridiculous to almost everyone who is a human being besides me, but a statement which represents a whole time in my life and a whole 360-degree encapsulation of how I enjoyed movies and pop culture when I was an angry young film nerd: There was a half-decade period when, if you asked me what my favorite movie was, I would've said Collateral .

Collateral is a movie directed by Michael Mann, a man who has at this moment released 10 theatrical feature films in the last 33 years. Michael Mann is my favorite Hollywood filmmaker. I still believe that, even though it's been 10 years since his last great movie, even though/possibly because most of his movies are variations on a very specific theme. They're spiritual remakes, really, like how every Hitchcock movie is about a wrong man or how every Judd Apatow movie is about a man-boy farting towards maturity. (One of Michael Mann's movies is a direct remake of a TV movie he directed; one of his movies is a wildly indirect remake of a TV show he produced.)

In one abstract version of the Michael Mann Movie, there's a good guy and a bad guy. They're not so different, these two: Investigator Will Graham and murderer Francis Dolarhyde in Manhunter , overacting icon Al Pacino and underacting icon Robert De Niro in Heat , blandly charismatic Johnny Depp in Public Enemies and blandly intense Christian Bale in Public Enemies .

In the other abstract version of the Michael Mann movie, there's just one guy, and he's a little bit bad and a little bit good, but you root for him, because he's struggling against The System. The System could be criminal (James Caan vs. the mob in Thief ) or corporate (Russell Crowe vs. Big Tobacco vs. CBS News in The Insider ) or political (Will Smith vs. the government in Ali ) or it could be the cruel all-encompassing march of time (just look at the title of The Last of the Mohicans .)

Both kinds of movies are about men: Quiet men, tough men, troubled men, men who pour everything they have into their work, men who define themselves by their work, men who maybe don't have much beyond their work. "You never wanted a regular type life?" Pacino asks De Niro. "What the f--- is that? Barbecues and ballgames?" De Niro responds, trying to sound dismissive, trying to sound cool, even though all he wants to do is jet off to some island somewhere, maybe have a barbecue, watch a ballgame.

The Michael Mann Hero’s Journey, in Three Easy Steps:

1. Man is alone.
2. Man doesn't want to be alone.
3. Man makes choices that ensure he will be alone.

This all makes Mann sound like an artsy director, or a head-y director, or a philosophical director. He is, but he's not. Mann makes action movies; even his biopics are thrillers. His movies are visually spectacular; they are "stylish" or "stylized" or whatever euphemism for "looks cool" you want to use.

And Collateral is all of Michael Mann's movies in one—even The Keep . And more: Collateral is a high point in the career of basically everyone involved. It's the last Tom Cruise film from the pre-Katie Holmes era—the epitome of Cruise in his unquestioned superstardom, before the couch-jumping Weird Period and the post-couch re-entrenchment in his PG-13 Action-Movie Fortress of Solitude. It's the last film Jamie Foxx made before Ray turned him into Oscar Winner Jamie Foxx and then Hit Musician Jamie Foxx and then Frustrating Actor Jamie Foxx.

Collateral is a high point in the career of basically everyone involved. It's the last Tom Cruise film from the pre-Katie Holmes era—the epitome of Cruise in his unquestioned superstardom

Collateral had two credited cinematographers—Paul Cameron, who had just made Man on Fire , and then Dion Beebe, who had just made Chicago —and whatever parts they shot represent the most evocative and quietly powerful images in their very different but extremely loud filmographies. Screenwriter Stuart Beattie wrote Collateral before he went on to a healthy career writing movies with "Frankenstein" and "Tarzan" in the title. (At some point Frank Darabont rewrote the movie; doesn't he always?) There are actors in Collateral who only appear for one scene, and frequently, it's one of the best scenes of their career. So what is Collateral ?

There's the sound of a plane landing, and we see a man arriving in Los Angeles. He is gray: Gray suit, gray tie, gray hair, gray stubble that looks painted on. He wears sunglasses inside. There's an angle where you watch Collateral and you pretend that the movie is trying to make this man look boring, or unmemorable. But that's not really possible. The man is played by Tom Cruise. And this is Cruise firmly in his long golden period: midway through his Spielberg duet, less than a year since he turned a mournfully turgid two-and-a-half-hour period melodrama with a couple battle scenes into the sixth-highest-grossing movie of the year . Cruise is a restless actor—his default face is jocular intensity or fierce intensity, depending on the era. In Collateral , Cruise is always on the move, staring out windows, checking his six. He looks like a man who's ready to counterattack.

An option presents itself. Cruise walks through the crowd; another man walks through the crowd; they run into each other. The other man is Jason Statham. Maybe it's actually Frank Martin from The Transporter ; there are theories, and the movie does nothing to disprove them.

The two men share a meaningful glance. They exchange briefcases. Maybe you can watch this now and see Jason Statham, Incipient Action Star, paying his respects to Tom Cruise, Action Icon. Maybe you can see a brief prideful glimmer on Statham's face, like he's having a blast talking to a legend, or like he thinks he's the new kid on his way up. Mostly, he looks sad and amused and bored, like always. "Enjoy L.A.," he says in that accent, so it sounds like all one word, "Injoyullay." He's the welcoming committee. Or maybe "Enjoy L.A." is roughly translated from the original Latin: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Then there's this other guy. He's doing a crossword puzzle. He's waiting for his cab to get serviced. This is probably the last time in recorded history that it was possible to make Jamie Foxx look even vaguely uncool, and so he immediately makes an impression as the Anti-Cruise. Dressed in dull green-brown earth tones, wearing pre-hipster nerd glasses, immediately trapped inside a cab at the beck and call of screechy Angelenos. One of his passengers is Debi Mazar, arguing loudly with a guy who is her co-worker or her boss or her boyfriend or her married lover, or all of the above.

Is Mazar actually playing her character from Entourage? There's a way that Mann has of casting people—even the smallest roles are familiar faces, doing familiar things.

We follow Foxx through his day, in a few quick shots. The soundtrack shifts from Spanish-language radio to the Roots. Foxx drives downtown, picks up a lady on a cellphone in a business suit. We know she's important; she's Jada Pinkett Smith.

She tells him she's going downtown, and insists he take one specific route. She knows the fastest way to get there. Max insists that he knows a faster way. They banter back and forth about the time of day, the flow of traffic, one freeway or another. (How Californian! How Californian !) He promises he'll give her a free ride if he's wrong. He's not. She's impressed. We learn their names: He's Max, she's Annie. She notices the cab—and who ever really notices a cab? It's clean. "You take pride in being the best at what you do?" she asks. It's a question, but for Max, it's a bit of a threat. He's not a taxi driver, he insists. He's getting a new business together. Island Limos. "Like an island on wheels. A cool groove, like a club experience," he says—and watching this 10 years later, from 2014, you see Jamie Foxx become Jamie Foxx for just a second, a confident smile, like he's flirting with the whole world. "When you get to the airport," he finishes, "you're not gonna wanna get out of my limo."

You see Jamie Foxx become Jamie Foxx for just a second, a confident smile, like he's flirting with the whole world.

He looks in his rearview mirror; he can tell that the lady is losing interest. (She lives in Los Angeles; she recognizes that tone of voice, when someone turns a conversation into a job interview.) He asks her what it's like to be a lawyer. She grins: How'd he know that? He Sherlocks her: "There's the dark pin-stripe suit. Elegant, not too flashy. That rules out advertising. Plus a top-drawer briefcase that you live out of. And the purse. A Bottega . Anyway, a man gets in my cab with a sword, I figure he's a sushi chef. You: Clarence Darrow."

This is Mann, building a character by way of building another character. In a few minutes, we know that Max is observant, intelligent enough to throw out a name like Clarence Darrow. He's the Cabbie-as-Learned-Traveler, a man who sees all types in his rearview. (Cabbies always have to symbolize something in movies, like boxers and hookers and men who dig for anything.) We've seen Max bored, disinterested in the people in his back seat; now we see him interested.

He asks Annie questions. He finds out she's stressed out. A big case tomorrow. A full night of work ahead. He stops in front of her office, and he turns around to look her in the face. (This isn't nothing; half the scenes in Collateral are two people talking without looking at each other, a driver and a passenger, like a confessional on wheels.) He figures she needs inspiration. He gives her his inspiration: The picture of the island he keeps on his visor. She thanks him. She walks away. And he sits there, like a chump: That moment when you've just met someone that you'll never meet again. There's a knock on his passenger-side window. Annie hands him her business card. She looks nervous—has Jada Pinkett Smith ever looked this nervous?—and tells him to call her if he ever needs legal advice.

Cabbies always have to symbolize something in movies, like boxers and hookers and men who dig for anything.

This a long sequence, and if you're expecting Collateral to be an action movie, it's probably strangely boring. It gets better on the rewatch; the 10th or 11th time I saw it, I decided that this scene defines everything I love about Collateral . Every great director has flaws, and the greatest directors have the most mesmerizing flaws. For Mann, it's women. They're wives or girlfriends, and even though Mann treats them as three-dimensional characters, they're only in the mix as exemplars of what the man wants/can't have. Diane Venora sometimes seems to be in Heat just to craft an internal feminist critique of Heat , as if a movie could generate its own Jezebel.com.

In that sense, Collateral immediately teaches you just how different it will be from Mann's usual work. Max and Annie are just talking. They learn about each other. You get the sense immediately, even before it's made explicit, that Annie is a workaholic—this in 2004, when the idea of the Movie Female Workaholic was just beginning to take on its Heigl-era association with Why Women Can/Can't Have It All. And at first, maybe Max and Annie are symbols: He, the working man with a dream; she, the educated working woman with an important case. But then they become particular people: they make an actual connection. You know that famous line that Umberto Eco has about Casablanca —how the movie is an example of clichés "talking among themselves." In Collateral , the clichés talk themselves into humanity.

Every great director has flaws, and the greatest directors have the most mesmerizing flaws.

And then Tom Cruise appears. He knocks on Max's door, but Max doesn't notice him: he's staring at Annie's business card. Cruise walks away, hailing another cab... and Max calls him back, welcoming the passenger into his taxi, freely and of his own will. Cruise needs to get to South Union Street. He asks Max how long it'll take. He times him. He talks a lot. He says he doesn't like Los Angeles—so if you're a New Yorker, gray-haired Tom Cruise is immediately your favorite character in this movie. Cruise asks a lot of questions. Does Max get benefits? "It's not that type of job." Max assures his passenger that this whole taxi thing is just temporary. "How long you been driving?" asks Cruise. "12 years," Max says.

But he's got something else going on on the side. Cruise asks what that "something else" is. Max almost gives the Island Limos speech... but decides not to. Cruise understands. "You're one of these guys that do, instead of talk," he says, explicitly summarizing the operating aesthetic of Michael Mann's entire career. They get to their destination, right on time. Cruise is impressed. He makes Max an offer. He's in town for real estate deal. He needs to make five stops, then fly out early the next morning. Max refuses: That's against regulations. Cruise doesn't take no for an answer. How much does Max usually make, a night like this? Three hundred? Well:

I could watch Cruise flip those dollar bills a hundred times, a thousand times. On the Collateral commentary track, Mann spends a lot of time talking about how much preparation the actor did for this role: Live rounds, combat training, the ultimate goal being the ability to call upon all those skills and make it look nonchalant. But Cruise doesn't really do "nonchalant." It all looks practiced, in the best way.

Cruise doesn't really do "nonchalant." It all looks practiced, in the best way.

And so there is something smooth but also stiff about that motion. Another, lesser-known actor could've maybe turned this role into a believable character, but Cruise does something so much better: He takes Vincent—that's his name, "Vincent" and not "Vince"—and makes him genuinely inhuman.

Max agrees: Why not? He drives around back. Vincent goes upstairs. Max starts to eat his lunch. Then this happens:

And this is when the movie begins, really—or anyhow, it's when Collateral becomes what most people think Collateral is, an action movie about a hitman and a cab driver. Except that Collateral resists the urge to becoming just an action movie. On the commentary track, Mann describes Collateral as "only the third act" of a story, a description which you might expect would result in a nonstop action thrill ride. And there is something about Collateral that anticipates our current vogue for realtime action movies—the cultishly adored Raid series, the supremely underrated Dredd remake, this summer's Snowpiercer , next summer's Mad Max: Fury Road , these movies that begin in motion and never really stop.

But Collateral stops all the time. Even as Max and Vincent drive, they're already analyzing what just happened to them. Vincent, with one of many lines from Collateral that belongs on a cast poster: "Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, s--- happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it."

Max demands to know more about that man in his trunk.

Vincent: Max, six billion people on the planet, you’re getting bent out of shape cause of one fat guy.

Max: Well, who was he?

Vincent: What do you care? Have you ever heard of Rwanda?

Max: Yes, I know Rwanda.

Vincent: Tens of thousands killed before sundown. Nobody’s killed people that fast since Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Did you bat an eye, Max?

Vincent: Did you join Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Whales, Greenpeace, or something? No. I off one fat Angeleno and you throw a hissy fit.

Max: Man, I don’t know any Rwandans.

Vincent: You don’t know the guy in the trunk, either.

Collateral zigs when you think it will zag. A peaceful conversation becomes a tense showdown. A character who seems important gets dispatched without any fuss whatsoever. So maybe now is the time to zag and mention one of the defining aspects of Collateral : It's one of the first theatrically released movies shot on digital video. It's not entirely on digital video—which sets it apart from most movies made today. A mere 10 years later, most films aren't really "film." Digital is cheaper; it's faster; it's easier to use, maybe, if you're just starting out.

In some ways, Mann is a weird choice to be an HD video convert. This is the guy that defined a neon '80s look—who shot Thief and Manhunter and Heat in a dazzling kaleidoscope of bright brights and dark noir blacks. But Mann experimented with digital video with Robbery Homicide Division , a short-lived police procedural that's one of the great lost shows of the 2000s. Collateral is a spiritual sequel to RHD : Shot on the streets of Los Angeles, it oozes specificity in a way that rarely comes through in a Los Angeles setting. Part of that is the location: Mann shot much of Collateral in actual places, or in places specifically designed to look like actual places.

But part of that is the video. About half of the Collateral commentary track is Mann rhapsodizing about the Sony F9000 High Definition Video Camera, and the very specific visual creations that you get from High-Def Video that you can't get from film. One of those visual creations is the downtown skyline behind Vincent. "You couldn’t see this without using digital video" Mann says on the commentary, again and again and again.

This could just be a stylish director doing a stylish experiment, like Alfred Hitchcock trying to film Rope in the equivalent of one long take. To me, though, the more accurate comparison is Hitchcock filming Psycho , on the cheap, with his TV crew. It's the perfect merging of style and content. Just as Psycho had to look a little cheap—had to feel like a snuff film directed by a painter—so Collateral needs all those skylines, all those lights in the distance. You're constantly aware that those lights represent real people—and that those real people don't notice the horrors being perpetrated by Vincent.

It's all a direct echo of what Vincent says, in that first scene in the cab:

"Seventeen million people. The fifth biggest economy in the world and nobody knows each other. I read about this guy who gets on the MTA here, dies. Six hours he's riding the subway before anybody notices his corpse doing laps around L.A., people on and off sitting next to him. Nobody notices."

If Collateral were just this—just empty nihilism—it would be beautiful but empty. Vincent would be one of those speechifying anti-reality prophets that Hollywood cinema started coughing up around the turn of the century: Tyler Durden, Morpheus, the Joker in The Dark Knight .

But Collateral is all about noticing. Vincent and Max's journey takes them to every corner of Los Angeles: to a jazz club in Leimert Park; to a dance club in Koreatown; to a restaurant-club called El Rodeo, where the Mexicans wear cowboy hats (actually in Pico Rivera, though they shot in Wilmington); to the rooftops of downtown, those tall glittering buildings all empty in the dark early morning. The movie starts in the airport and ends at a subway station—an exact structural inversion of Mann's own Heat . You're constantly aware of the genuine city of Los Angeles.

The twelfth or thirteenth time I watched Collateral , my eye was mostly drawn to the corner of the frame: To the early-2000s gas prices that already have the depressing accuracy of a period piece, to the smoke in the distance from some kind of factory.

Am I being too rhapsodic? Is Collateral just an action movie? There's a just-the-facts-ma'am vibe to Mann's commentary track—which I'd never heard before last month. (I rewatched Collateral on Aug. 6, the day it turned 10 years old; then I rewatched it again, and again.) Maybe it's more sensible to enjoy Collateral as just a thriller, moving forward with a brutal grace, like the casual way that Cruise turns around and ends a man's life without even looking at him.

But Collateral is also an open text: A film that tells you almost nothing besides the bare-essential details about its characters, its plotline, its overall journey. (ASIDE: Umberto Eco talked a lot about open texts . I don't know how an essay about Collateral wound up featuring two references to Umberto Eco. END OF ASIDE.) On the commentary track, Mann also has one big line about the movie: "The answer to 'What’s gonna happen?' is not: 'Is Max gonna live or die?' 'Is Vincent gonna live or die?' It’s: 'What is this relationship?'" Maybe the best way to try to understand what kind of movie Collateral is is to try to understand the Max-Vincent relationship. Maybe we can reduce Collateral, in the lingua franca of our modern era, to a few interpretations.

Twelve Ways of Looking At 'Collateral':

It's a buddy-cop movie where the buddies aren't cops and they wind up trying to kill each other..

Imagine Collateral as written by Shane Black. A wisecracking hitman comes to town. He hops in a cab, driven by a lovable family-man cab driver. It's his last day on the job, probably. He's gonna go work for his brother-in-law, probably. The hitman and the cabbie roll around town, getting into car chases, becoming friends, beating the Russian mob. There's the notion that the hitman might kill the cabbie; instead, he leaves the cabbie with enough cash to finally start his limo company.

You can see this version of Collateral right there in Collateral . There's a delightful scene early on, when Max's boss is loudly abusing him via radio, and Vincent steps in to teach Max an important lesson about telling your boss to shove it.

There's an anti-authority, middle-finger-to-the-grown-ups vibe to that scene that runs throughout the whole buddy-cop genre: Nuts to those crusty old police chiefs! Except that Collateral takes the buddy genre to its logical extreme. These two characters don't get along. They learn from each other, and, in learning, they become worse enemies than ever. Imagine if Lethal Weapon ended with Mel Gibson, finally going full-crazy, and Danny Glover has to put him down.

It’s a horror movie. Vincent is a ghost, or perhaps a Golem.

Is Michael Mann a horror director? Manhunter has some of the scariest moments in the history of the serial-killer genre. His second film, The Keep , is a full-blown horror movie. It's the story of a monster set loose by a man who thinks he controls the monster; but unleashing the creature has unintended consequences. Isn't that the story of Collateral , too? Vincent, we learn, was hired by crime lord Javier Bardem to kill five people; by the end of the night, many more people are dead.

Is Vincent a monster—a supernatural being, metaphorically if not actually? He has no past that we can understand. (He tells us two different origin stories—and it's never clear if one is true, or if they're both lies.) There's a moment late in the movie—the beginning of the best scene in Collateral , although there are at least 10 others tied for second–when Annie tries to flee the darkened office, and just as she gets to the door, we can see Vincent's shadow on the other side of the glass. It's an unsubtle moment, and so classical it recalls the shadow crossing the sleeping girl's face in I Walked With a Zombie .

Too subtle for you? About a minute earlier, when Cruise goes full- Shining with an axe and a power line.

Still too subtle for you? Watch this shot, and tell me that that Collateral isn't one of Tom Cruise's two best vampire movies.

Collateral is a strenuously "realistic" movie—"realistic" in quotes because a devotion to realism is a central aspect of Mann's preparation. But the final act of Collateral goes Full Dreamlike. Vincent, covered in blood, suddenly develops the ability to sniff his prey, to know exactly which train Max and Annie are on. And there is the moment when Vincent dies, and in Cruise's impeccable tilt, you don't even see any life leave him. He just stops, like a robot out of batteries.

It's a pre-apocalyptic film about how all modernity—technology, society, laws—is just a cover, barely repressing the animal within.

There are two running visual motifs in Collateral , one of which seems to be an accident and one of which Mann talks about constantly on the commentary. The latter is the trees: The specific way that the palm trees linger in the background of Collateral . Even though it's the dead of night, you can still see their silhouettes against an eerie evening light—another visual unique to High-Definition video.

The other running motif has to do with light, too. If you were to construct a Collateral drinking game, a key aspect would be the appearances of planes. They're up there, constantly, in the sky: Their lights twinkling, taunting Max with the possibility of escape, or maybe reminding Vincent that he only has to linger in this city he despises for a few hours more.

There's a scene in the movie that encapsulates this read on the movie. It is cheesy; it is on-the-nose. It features the voice of Chris Cornell, and worse, the voice of Chris Cornell from his Audioslave period. There is a metaphorical animal, a coyote crossing the road:

This is all in the lead-up to the Korean Nightclub scene, a sequence that is by far the best-known scene in Collateral . It's a bad omen, but it's also bizarrely optimistic: a reminder that none of this really matters, that Los Angeles is still a desert underneath all the palm trees lit up black by the High-Def video. On the soundtrack, Cornell sings, "I can tell you why people die alone." In the hospital Max visits every day in Los Angeles, his mother appears to be in the process of eternally dying. Vincent kills people and feels nothing; ultimately, Vincent winds up dead. The Symbolic Coyote is probably the least troubled character in the film.

It’s a superhero movie.

Max and Vincent are opposite numbers in every way: The wealthy-looking sociopath in a sharp suit, the everyguy loser taxi-driver with a heart of gold. It's the Unbreakable rule of the archnemesis: complementary antagonists, symmetrically opposed to each other. (Vincent loves to improvise; Max always needs to have a plan.) In order to stop Vincent, Max needs to become a hero. And what very specific gesture does he make when he starts to become a hero—when he steps outside of his comfort zone, when he becomes something larger than himself?

So Clark Kent becomes Superman; so Max becomes something larger than himself. Of course, in that scene, Max isn't really himself; he's impersonating Vincent, and the knowledge of playing someone other than himself gives him the ability to talk down to murderous crime lords.

It's a detective story where the detective winds up dead and the mystery never gets solved.

The first two-thirds of Collateral spends a lot of time setting up Mark Ruffalo, playing a cop who is slowly trying to piece together why people keep on winding up dead. You could almost look at Ruffalo's part of Collateral as occupying a completely different movie—an interior spinoff, taking place at the exact same moment. Ruffalo is a Mann protagonist, too. He's an undercover cop, like Sonny Crockett. He doesn't get along with his superiors, like everybody. For some reason that you can't really explain, Mann introduces Ruffalo in a shot that perfectly mirrors a previous shot of Cruise: The two men, walking, slightly out-of-focus, downtown Los Angeles behind them. (Perhaps it's a visual cue to one of Mann's favorite themes: They're not so different, cop and criminal?)

Ruffalo's cop—Ray Fanning, his name is—goes to meet an informant. He's not there—and we know that said informant is currently taking up space in Max's trunk. Fanning's partner tells him to drop it. He won't, of course. (When do movie detectives ever drop anything?) He stays on the case. He finds the other men that Vincent killed... and he finds a connection. They're all witnesses in a grand-jury trial: the grand jury wants to indict evil crime lord Javier Bardem. Tomorrow . (That's the case that Annie is working on; she's Vincent's final target. It's a plot twist that's simultaneously too cute and absolutely essential.)

Fanning and the LAPD go to meet with the FBI, who've been on Javier Bardem's case for weeks. Guess what: the FBI takes the case away from Fanning, because the Die Hard rule of action movies says the FBI is never helpful and always wrong. Fanning's partner again says to drop it: Go home, get some sleep, let the feds handle this. Fanning doesn't. He follows the feds to Koreatown. There's a shootout. He saves Max. You're thinking that we're closing in on the endgame, that Ruffalo is going to have some kind of showdown with Vincent. Hell, you're at least thinking that Ruffalo is going to do something.

Instead this happens:

Fanning gets shot by Vincent. He never even sees the man he's been chasing all night. We don't even get the courtesy of a last real moment with Ruffalo; the final shot of his character is his body in the doorway, hand falling to the side. Structurally, this is a shock to the system: one of the lead characters killed, without a minimum of bombast.

And here's what makes this read on Collateral even more depressing. We're told that the four men Vincent kills are all witnesses in a trial to convict Javier Bardem's character. Even though we know that, the specifics remain hilariously unclear. Drugs are involved—but what sort of bizarre criminal enterprise would encapsulate the owner of a jazz club, a wealthy attorney, a low-level drug dealer and a high-level Korean gangster? (It's like one of those French New Wave fantasies of American-style crime, a conspiratorial enterprise so elaborate that it might as well be the government.)

The final victim is Annie; she doesn't die. But look who else does:

Oh, that's right: Every single witness . Is there even still a case? There's not even any evidence to link crime lord Javier Bardem with all the murders committed by Vincent—no moment when, say, Annie and Max catch Vincent confessing on tape.

Bardem is only in one scene. His name is Felix Reyes-Torrena. Everything that happens in Collateral happens because of him. He never stands up, not once. He's surrounded by bodyguards. In a busy nightclub, he has every table reserved for himself. He is, quite simply, the most interesting man in the world. And it seems very likely that, at the end of Collateral , he defeats the combined powers of the LAPD, the Justice Department, the FBI, and whatever cab service Max works for. He wins. And he doesn't even entirely know why. He never meets Vincent, the man who works for him, or Fanning, the man who is working most directly on stopping his reign of terror.

It’s a movie about the American Dream.

Stop me if you've heard this before. Normal middle-class man has a dream for his future, future arrives, dream does not. It's Death of a Salesman , it's On the Waterfront —hell, it's The Great Gatsby . Max is a great cab driver—two people notice how good he is in the first reel—but he wants to be so much more, and so he feels like so much less.

Enter Vincent, an avatar of contemporary success. He's a man in a suit who travels for a living; he's George Clooney in Up in the Air , literally killing people instead of just ending their career. Vincent smells like success, looks like a man who's lived abroad for awhile. He's in town for a real estate deal, he says. Imagine a different Collateral , where Max never learns Vincent's true nature, where he assumes that Vincent is just one more businessman with a hazily-defined job, making money by taking it out of somebody else's pocket. All around them, other characters who serve as avatars for curiously American tragedy: the wealthy people who built their wealth on crime, on drugs. Recall Gatsby, a bootlegger—and isn't bootlegging just drug dealing with more old-timey hats?

But neither of them are happy, neither Vincent nor Max. Vincent, a wealthy man, is all alone in a cold universe of his creation. Max, not a wealthy man, is the same. They tell each other as much. They see each other clearly; the only thing that saves Max, ultimately, is that he also sees himself clearly:

Can I push this Gatsby thing a little further? Can we agree that Mann is a careful director, a man who's unlikely to pick a detail at random—even a Bacardi advertisement that appears throughout the entire movie, on top of Max's cab, gradually becoming battered and ultimately destroyed as the night goes on? Is it worth noticing those eyes—and is it worth remembering that the Eyes of T.J. Eckleburg were also from a battered old advertisement?

It's a Tom Cruise movie, but also an Anti-Tom Cruise movie.

Wild assertion about Tom Cruise: No famous movie actor of the last 30 years has a more painstakingly well-manicured star persona, and no famous movie actor of the last 30 years is more willing to put that persona in the service of a project that twists the essential iconography in weird, nefarious, subversive ways. Top Gun chiseled the Cruise mythology in granite: the cocky grin, the '80s-era reconfiguration of "heroism" as a thrill-drunk hotshot affectation, the weird paradox that vintage Cruise is a perfect man whose inner turmoil centralizes on the concept that he might be too perfect.

From there it's a hop-skip to The Color of Money and Days of Thunder , to A Few Good Men and The Firm and Mission: Impossible . It's become a common trope to say that there are no more movie stars—a complete fallacy that Jennifer Lawrence disproves every time she shuts down Twitter with a breath. But it is accurate to say that the '90s were the last time that the business of Hollywood depended on stars, and not brand names or digital effects or whatever pretzel-capitalist logic leads to a world where several people who went to business school think Snow White Minus Snow White is something that can make money.

And the '90s were also the last time that stars could completely control their image. Today's stars are generally looser, interacting via social media with at least the pretense of genuine self-revelation. (There was no Ice Bucket Challenge in the '90s.) No one had a tighter control over his own image than Cruise—which means that there is an essential elemental appeal whenever Cruise took a role that purposefully played with that image. Four years after essaying the role of Reagan Military Superhuman in Top Gun , Cruise was a paralyzed Vietnam vet protesting the Republican National Convention in Born on the Fourth of July .

Between The Firm and Mission: Impossible , Cruise played a blond, decadent, ravenous immortal in Interview with the Vampire —not one of his best roles but maybe his most fascinating. Then came Jerry Maguire in 1996—not one of his most fascinating roles, but maybe his best. Jerry Maguire would be an insane outlier in today's Hollywood: An R-rated midlife-crisis dromcom, a movie that is simultaneously about a proto-Apatovian male friendship and a realistically complicated romance. And Cruise-as-Jerry is the last time that Cruise ever played a relatively normal guy in recognizably normal circumstances. Jerry's a high-flying sports agent at the start of the movie, engaged to a super-hot business queen. By the end, he's walking around a suburban baseball field with his Zellweger-ian wife and adorable adopted son. Always a nostalgist at heart, Cameron Crowe turns Jerry Maguire into a sidelong monument to a regular-type life. (Remember that line in Heat about barbeques and ballgames?) You wonder if Vincent in Collateral is the one guy on the planet who thinks Jerry Maguire is a horror movie.

In 1999, Cruise was in Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia , two auteurist curiosities that played on different sides of his persona. Eyes Wide Shut takes Cruise's boyish good looks and turns him into the proverbial babe in the woods, an innocent adrift in an erotic fairy tale. Magnolia takes Cruise's macho swagger, twists it into misogyny, and then reveals the misogyny as the shrill overcompensation of a sad little boy trying to impress daddy or maybe kill daddy.

In Collateral , Cruise-as-Vincent says his father "Hated everything I did. Got drunk, beat me up. In and out of foster homes, that kinda thing." Then he says he killed his father when he was 12. Then he laughs—the Cruise laugh, the usual charm turned sour—and says his father died of liver disease. (Think of that scene, then think about what Cruise has said about his own father .)

Minority Report and War of the Worlds are both great entertainments—and even better if you hit "stop" like two minutes before the ending. Minority Report imagines Cruise as workaholic supercop whose hyper-effective action-hero status is explicitly a distraction, a way to not confront his emotions. In Report, Cruise is a mourning father; in Worlds, he's the absent dad. (You could describe War of the Worlds as a movie about the incredible lengths a man will go to foist his children off onto his ex-wife.)

Collateral combines elements of all the other movies. But what makes Collateral the ultimate Tom Cruise movie is that it's also the one movie on his resumé where he is a flat-out villain—an irredeemable demonic force. Even Lestat in Interview with the Vampire had human yearnings—he murdered out of gluttony. Vincent murders because it's his job. He's so good at his job that he can fly into Los Angeles and kill five people without needing to book a hotel room.

It's interesting to listen to the Collateral commentary track and hear Mann talk about Vincent's backstory, which is left completely unexplored in the movie. You can't even really trust that story about Vincent's father—any more than you can trust the story about another drunk abusive father who inspired another gleeful sociopath. (ASIDE: One way to understand the cinema of Christopher Nolan is that it's set in a world where the only movies are Michael Mann movies—and you imagine the Joker watching Collateral and laughing. END OF ASIDE.) Mann, always over-prepared, has a whole Vincent origin story. He describes a Special Forces background; he asserts that Vincent's suit was custom-tailored in Kowloon.

What's weird about this is that Mann clearly views Vincent as a real person. And any other actor could have made Vincent a real person, or "realistic." You could see Mann casting someone purposefully nondescript, a tough guy who can actually fade into the background: Jason Clarke, or Stephen Lang, or Tom Sizemore, or Ciarán Hinds, or chubby-phase Russell Crowe, to only use examples from Mann's own repertory. In Heat , Mann cast Robert De Niro as a quiet professional in a gray suit, and the central pleasure of that performance is how De Niro can play a man in the constant state of disappearing.

He puts Cruise in a gray suit, too, but the effect is completely different. De Niro is a chameleon; Cruise is a supernova. Cruise's gray hair glows neon-bright in the LA darkness. Cruise's gray stubble never looks real, but it looks better than real: It looks unearthly. Fifty-two now, Cruise has never really played old. Like, compare his career to Russell Crowe, who was mid-30s playing mid-50s in Mann's The Insider . (Hell, Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle feels older than Ethan Hunt ever does.) He's not old in Collateral , precisely, which makes his brutal cynicism feel almost anti-human. Another actor could have made Vincent a more believable character, but no other actor could have made Vincent such a force. This is Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West ; this is Denzel Washington in Training Day ; this is the moment in Mission: Impossible II where the bad guy puts on Tom Cruise's face, except this time it's not a mask.

It's a videogame.

There's a shot that pops up constantly in Mann's later work: a handheld camera held just behind a character's shoulder. It's simultaneously intimate and off-putting: You can't see their face, but you can see what they're looking at. Remember those shots of the downtown skyline—that quality of being so near and yet so far, of seeing millions of lives in the distance but not being able to connect with any of them? This shot accomplishes the same thing. It's Mann's way of putting us up close with his characters, but it also keeps them at a distance. (Mann heroes almost always want to keep their distance: from their friends, from their women. That's why the strongest connections they ever make are with people they'll probably kill.)

It's a third-person shot, really, resembling the typical camera angle in a Grand Theft Auto or a Gears of War : It's videogame language on screen. At one point, Mann literalizes this, with a shot from over Cruise's shoulder that stares down the barrel of his gun.

You could look at Collateral as a series of videogame levels, each with their own sub-boss and their own unique soundtrack. When the film begins, there are a series of shots from a god's-eye-view, following the car as it navigates the streets. Of course it's just a coincidence that this resembles precisely the god's-eye-view of the original Grand Theft Auto . Of course it is.

In the final act of Collateral , Max has to save his princess, in her tower in the sky. It's the fairy-tale logic of a Super Mario game, complete with a shot of the princess' castle where, if you look closely, you can see her on one floor and the Final Boss two floors down: A perfect shot, at once realistic and dream-logical.

It's a depiction of Michael Mann's internal creative struggle.

When you hear that Collateral is a movie about a successful hitman and a loser cabbie—and you hear that one of them is a meticulous planner and the other one prefers to improvise—you would assume that the hitman is the meticulous one, right? Quite the opposite. Vincent doesn't know anything about the men he's killing, besides their face and their geographic location. With the exception of Annie, he doesn't check out the locations ahead of time. At least one of his marks is surrounded by bodyguards. Vincent improvises, he adapts to the environment. Point him in the right direction, he'll take care of the rest. Jesus, he hires a taxi driver to drive him between assassinations . He's the jazz hitman.

Michael Mann has made 10 feature films in three decades. (An eleventh, the techno-thriller Blackhat , is coming out next year.) Mann takes his time. He's a fastidious, maybe even an obsessive filmmaker. He can be a cold director—and so many of the directors he influenced are very cold, visual stylists who don't seem to know or care how to work with actors. Some people love the movie version of Miami Vice , but to me, it feels like the most expensive storyboard ever, with the actors as placeholders. (There's a famous story about Mann banishing the color red from the Miami Vice movie, which is a cool story, but it doesn't explain why Miami Vice can't make you believe for even just one second that Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx want to be in the same room.)

You wonder if Mann sometimes spends too much time preparing. You wonder if he worries about that. You wonder if that's why he was one of the first great filmmakers to never really leave television behind. Maybe there's something about the grind that appeals to him, that forces him to keep a schedule. You can't overthink when there's an episode due. You have to make the best of it, improve, adapt to the environment, Darwin, s--- happens, I Ching whatever man, we gotta roll with it. Miami Vice , Crime Story , Robbery Homicide Division . Not all of Mann's work was successful but all of it is interesting, and much of it was said to be "cinematic," which is what we used to say about good television before it was conventional wisdom that television was more interesting than movies.

So Collateral sits at a strange nexus point in Mann's TV and film work. You can look at it as a more low-key Heat . It's like that Al Pacino-Robert De Niro coffee scene expanded to movie length, as if Heat was a whole TV series and that coffee-table scene was a bottle episode. Or you can look at Collateral, as the series finale to a Crime Story -style serialized drama: the explosive climax to a season-long arc, involving the feds and a massive criminal enterprise and Jada Pinkett Smith as a crusading attorney and Tom Cruise as a malevolent assassin with a trademark two-in-the-chest-one-in-the-head kill pattern.

And it's the nexus for Mann, because Vincent and Max are the two sides of his personality. Max the meticulous, Vincent the visceral. Max, who would carefully plot out every shot of the nightclub scene (shot on film!) so that you could follow every plane of action, so you know exactly where the cop and the hitman and the cabbie and the feds and the henchmen and the other feds are in relation to each other. Vincent, who would look through the monitor at a stunt gone wrong and see one of his favorite parts of the movie:

Vincent is supposed to throw the chair through the window, jump behind it, and keep running. Cruise (or maybe it's a stuntman) jumped a little too early, or threw the chair with uncanny perfection, landed on the chair mid-jump, got up, and kept running. On the commentary track, Mann says that was unplanned, and you can feel how much he enjoys it; how he tries so hard to create onscreen worlds out of the hope, but only because he paradoxically wants something genuinely spontaneous to happen within those worlds. Preparation and Improvisation, Max and Vincent.

It's a comedy.

It's a film about trying to figure out who two men really are..

The most obvious, but also the easiest to overlook. It's striking to listen to the commentary track and hear Mann throw out biographical details for Vincent and Max. In the movie, we learn barely anything about them. Mann knows exactly which province in Thailand Vincent lives in most of the year–"a Buddhist country where people leave everyone else alone"–and he idly mentions that Max has three older siblings. (He also refers to Max as "petit bourgeois," lest you think I'm the only one who sounds pretentious when describing Collateral ).

Part of what makes Collateral such an addictively rewatchable movie—a film you can catch on television and keep watching–is how, with each episode of their journey, the two men at the center radically shift their relationship. Sometimes Vincent helps Max, sometimes they learn from each other, sometimes they're almost friends, and sometimes they're the worst enemies.

As a result, it's possible to watch Collateral several different ways. Is it a movie about Max, an everyguy who experiences something profound? Is it a movie about Vincent, a professional at work? Should we read Vincent as a sociopath—as a man incapable of feelings? Mann doesn't seem to think so—and you can see Max hit a nerve when he talks about Vincent's past, the reference to an orphanage, the implication that Vincent has feelings that are buried far, far down. Why does Vincent tell Max to bring flowers when they visit his sick mother? Doesn't Max enjoy pretending to be Vincent a little bit too much?

In the end, there's a shootout on the train. Max kills Vincent—a lucky shot. Max fires blindly through a doorway. Vincent tries his two-in-the-chest-one-in-the-head shot... and happens to hit the metallic part of the door. Max improvised, Vincent didn't: A neat twist. Max stares at Vincent. He tells him the next station isn't too far away. But Vincent gets the last word: "Guy gets on the subway and dies. Think anybody'll notice?" Does he win Collateral ? He sure thinks he does.

But then there's this shot of Jamie Foxx, pulling off Max's glasses for only the second time in the movie, and staring at the man he just killed.

I've talked a lot about Tom Cruise, and he undeniably has the more fun role: Big speeches, big lines, cool action-guy moves. But Foxx is just as good with the tougher role: The guy who has to carry all the real-person weight of the movie, to provide an everyguy counter-balance to his chewier costar. (Weirdly, he's the Tom-Cruise-in- Rain-Man role.) And I just love that last look at Vincent so much. What's he thinking there? Is he sad? Is he confused? Is he a little bit frustrated—did he want that conversation to keep going, want to throw Vincent's nihilism back in his face? There's an angle where you look at that shot and remember Shane Black's Collateral —where that's the face Jamie Foxx would make at the end of the buddy-cop version, "Oh Vincent, there you go again." There's an angle where you look at that face and wonder if that's a man staring at the only person who ever saw him clearly. He leaves Vincent on the train—and isn't that a way of honoring a dying man's final request?

So much of Collateral is just faces, and so much of Collateral is two men's faces. They talk, they think, they look at Symbolic Coyotes, they argue, and all of this plays across their eyes. There's a scene where Vincent holds a gun on Max, and Max realizes he has the upper end or just decides he doesn't care, and the look on Jamie Foxx's face is ecstatic with kamikaze madness:

There's a version of Collateral that's just faces—a modern-day version of The Passion of Joan of Arc . That's not too far from what we have here. You can imagine a fine director shooting Collateral and trying to make the cab scenes look "cool"—wild camera angles, computer-assisted camera movements, shots that circle around the car. Mann just shoots the faces; in the background, the lights of Los Angeles begin to look purposefully abstract:

It’s a swan song for filmmaking on film, and for the whole analog era.

Much of Collateral was shot on digital video. But not all of it. In fact, if you're an average human being who doesn't spend a decade thinking about a random action movie, you probably only remember the scene in Collateral that was pointedly not shot on video. That would be the nightclub scene. By this point in Collateral , the narrative has become a five-ring circus. Vincent goes to the nightclub so he can kill Victim #4, a Korean gangster with several bodyguards. The FBI follows the taxi there—they think that Max is Vincent, and they want to take him down. Felix's bodyguards follow the taxi, too—Felix doesn't seem to trust Faux-Vincent, or maybe he was always planning on killing his assassin. And there's also Fanning, trying to save Max from everybody.

Everyone converges at the same place: How many great action scenes start that way? Once they go inside the club, the sequence is shot on 35-mm film, even though it's represented here by pixels on the internet:

The sequence is seven minutes long. The first gunshot isn't until the scene's chronological midpoint—so this is an "action" scene that is really half "action" and half build-up, which is how most action scenes played out in the days before Michael Bay started blowing things up. There's such a careful sense of tension building, of the scene being set, of the multiple planes of action.

Look at how Mann introduces Victim #4:

He's obscured, but he's also framed perfectly. This is the kind of filmmaking that often gets overlooked in the modern action era, when the camera moves so much that it obscures without revealing.

Maybe Collateral is a send-off for 35 mm film, and for action filmmaking that doesn't depend on digital effects. Maybe the nightclub scene is so memorable because it's composed, almost entirely, out of raw humanity. It's all close-ups of body parts, of arms in the air, of people dancing. It's a scene shot on a built set filled with a few hundred people: Is anyone allowed to do that anymore? (Besides Mann-devotee and digital skeptic Christopher Nolan?)

There's so much to enjoy in this film. The way that Mann shoots the long dialogue scene with Barry Shabaka Henley, who plays the jazz club owner. It's just a guy telling a story about Miles Davis, until Vincent says the wrong thing, and Henley realizes that he's talking to the man who'll kill him. The camera slowly, slowly moves in on Henley's face, moving in unison with his slow realization. It's filmmaking with purpose, matched perfectly with the acting: A little big moment in a movie filled with nothing but.

And there's the moment after the nightclub scene, when Vincent stares up through the back window of the cab at the circling helicopters, and you realize that he only just now realized how many people are chasing after him... and he loves it. He practically giggles: "Only thing that didn't show up is the Polish cavalry!" (What a line!)

Or there's the moment in the hospital, when Fanning gets on the elevator next to Vincent and Max. Not that he knows who they are; not that he'll ever really know much of anything about them. Vincent asks him: "Having a good night?" Ruffalo mumbles something that sounds like "Mizm, mizzo."

He appears to actually be saying "mezzo-mezzo"—"half-half" in Italian—but as delivered by Ruffalo, it's such a perfect sound of nonchalance, an empty "how-do-you-do" gesture responded to with an equally empty "meh" response. Fanning doesn't even see the man who asks him that question.

Or there's the whole silhouette scene—an action scene that plays out in silence and stillness, with the characters just silhouettes etched against the background of Los Angeles. You've seen scenes like this elsewhere: In Kill Bill Volume 1 , in Skyfall .

But those scenes are trying hard to be beautiful , to hit you over the head with the artiness of their design. Mann shoots Collateral on video and doesn't try to hide it—he seems to love the unique aspects of high-def. Ten years later, has any film made better use of HD as a unique art form—as something that isn't just a cheaper version of film?

There's the paradoxical way that Michael Mann uses Los Angeles. (The whole city is inside of Collateral — Rope of Silicon proved it.) He never shoots any recognizable landmarks—and so Collateral is the rare Los Angeles movie that seems to have something to say about Los Angeles but nothing to say about Hollywood. The movie arrived in theaters one year after Thom Anderson released his towering video essay Los Angeles Plays Itself , a film which analyzes (and pointedly criticizes) how Hollywood cinema presents the city onscreen. Anderson's biggest gripe is how many movies default to the most shallow portrait of upper-middle-class lilywhite L.A.—or, even worse, present non -whitebread Los Angeles as an unknowable other.

Collateral came out a few months before Crash , the next year's Best Picture winner, and it's striking to notice how the two films adopt an equivalent structure: Los Angeles-as-cultural-panorama, a story that carries you through the various villages that compromise into what we call Los Angeles. Crash is more shallow and sentimental than Collateral —and also terrible—and there's an authenticity to how Mann films Los Angeles, all the location shoots on evening streets and after-hours clubs.

Then again, you could argue that Collateral is a stealth missile for the movie business—that it's Mann's way of claiming all of Los Angeles for Hollywood, turning every enclave into the setting for an action movie. It's a bit like Falling Down , if you squint: Another movie about a white dude rampaging across Los Angeles, fighting against the "other" of Non-White/Non-Straight/Non-Dude Humanity. The difference is that, this time around, the "other" is the white dude . And not just any white dude: Tom Cruise, Hollywood megastar, art-directed in head-to-toe gun-metal gray, moving like a robot, talking like a human being who doesn't care about anyone and only barely cares about himself. In that sense, maybe Collateral is really an anti-Hollywood movie—note how every episode pinpoints Cruise as the intruder, the bringer of death and chaos.

Or maybe it's just an anti-anti-Los Angeles movie. Everything Cruise says about the city is anti-Angeleno boilerplate—"too sprawled out, disconnected"—and the ensuing journey through the city's cultural worlds is a stern rebuke.

Collateral says a lot without needing to say very much. It's a movie about a city, and a movie about a couple of guys. It's an action movie where an old man talks about Miles Davis; it's a philosophical drama where Jamie Foxx does a Tom Cruise impression; it's a violent melodrama where Javier Bardem delivers the line "'Sorry' does not put Humpty-Dumpty back together again" right before telling a story about Santa Claus' evil little helper. It's a movie about the best cab driver in Los Angeles, and the most heroic thing he can do in the movie is crash his car. Maybe that's why Max winds up so much better off than most Michael Mann heroes; he's the one guy who doesn't choose his job over everything else. (You think he'll ever drive another cab?)

Collateral is haunting and haunted: It's a film about two men who seem keenly aware that their entire lives have been leading up to one night in Los Angeles. They're together for a few hours; they've never met anyone like each other. You could watch Collateral on loop, pretend it's in the same Los Angeles as Mulholland Drive , the purgatory between moments. Maybe they're trapped there forever. Vincent's body leaves Los Angeles; Max walks away with Annie, trying to find a ride home. A few hours later, Vincent arrives in Los Angeles, runs into the Transporter, grabs the briefcase, hops in Max's cab.

"First time in LA?" asks Max.

"No," says Vincent. "Tell you the truth, whenever I'm here I can't wait to leave. It's too sprawled out, disconnected. That's me. You like it?"

"It's my home," says Max, never answering the question.

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Watch Collateral with a subscription on Paramount+, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

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Driven by director Michael Mann's trademark visuals and a lean, villainous performance from Tom Cruise, Collateral is a stylish and compelling noir thriller.

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Collateral: Is It Still Worth Watching Two Decades Later?

Collateral represents a brilliant achievement for director Michael Mann and stars Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.

Tom Cruise delivers a memorable performance as hitman Vincent, transforming into a predatory monster.
Jamie Foxx shines as Max, creating a convincing character with an interesting life story.
Director Michael Mann's character-based approach and masterful suspense make Collateral a standout film of the 21st Century.

Like all great thrillers, Collateral is, at its core, a study of human behavior. Before Collateral declares itself to be a thriller, director Michael Mann establishes the surface-level personalities of the film’s characters so convincingly that it’s a genuine surprise when one of them is revealed to be a hitman. Tom Cruise plays the hit-man in question, Vincent, who has traveled to Los Angeles to kill five strangers in one night. Jamie Foxx plays Max, a cab driver whom Vincent, upon arriving in Los Angeles, randomly selects to drive him to the various locations of his targets.

Max and Vincent talk to each other. As Vincent’s initial indifference toward Max develops into a semblance of affection, there is genuine suspense regarding whether Vincent will allow Max to survive the night, even though Vincent’s profession doesn’t allow for the existence of living witnesses. It's this character-based, conversational approach in Mann's direction that makes the movie so distinct. Of course, credit must also be given to the performances of Cruise and Foxx, whose chemistry transforms a fear-based relationship into something that resembles an unhealthy friendship.

Tom Cruise's Vincent is a Splendid Villain

As Vincent, Tom Cruise makes a memorable villainous impression in Collateral , with Vincent making his first appearance inside an airport terminal, where he obtains a briefcase that contains the identities of all the people whom he’s been contracted to kill. Well-dressed, with a lithe physique and short gray hair, Vincent looks like a businessman and projects the image of a calculating, cold-blooded professional who operates with utter ruthlessness of precision. However, it is Vincent’s behavior and personality that most clearly defines his assassin persona.

Vincent is a sociopath. This identity is manifested through gallows humor, through which Vincent is able to justify virtually any form of behavior, especially murder. After Vincent kills his first victim, who subsequently falls out of an apartment window and onto the roof of Max’s cab, Vincent tries to calm a stunned Max by portraying the victim as a criminal whose criminal history makes him unworthy of Max’s sympathy. This sociopathic behavior is most apparent in Vincent's relationship with Max, whom Vincent observes with the same morbid fascination that an emotionally undeveloped child with a magnifying glass has with ants in sunlight.

Scenes From Collateral Could Be Short Films

The character and conversational-based approach that Michael Mann brought to his direction of Collateral is especially prevalent in terms of how various scenes and sequences in the film function, separately from the rest of the film, as compelling short films. The most impressive example of this is a scene that takes place inside a jazz club , where hit-man Vincent and cab driver Max go, amid Vincent’s killing spree, ostensibly to have a drink and listen to music before Vincent continues with his murderous assignment. Inside the club, Max and Vincent encounter the club’s world-weary owner, Daniel, played with heartbreaking sadness by Barry Shabaka Henley, who creates an entire life story within just a few lines of dialogue.

Related: Tom Cruise’s Best Drama Movies, Ranked

The scene opens with Daniel describing a fateful encounter with legendary jazz musician Miles Davis one night in the club and continues with Daniel describing his own missed opportunities in life. Then Daniel is forced to beg for his life after Vincent reveals that Daniel is Vincent’s next target. However, Vincent offers Daniel a reprieve if Daniel can correctly answer a question about Davis. If this scene existed separately from the rest of the film, beginning with Max and Vincent’s arrival at the jazz club and ending with Daniel’s answer to Vincent’s question, this would be an Oscar-worthy short film.

Why Collateral is an Overlooked Masterpiece

While Collateral was a commercial and critical success upon the film’s initial 2004 release and received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Jamie Foxx’s performance as Max, Collateral nonetheless deserves to be regarded as being one of the best films of its era.

Tom Cruise's performance as hitman Vincent represents Cruise’s most interesting role since his Oscar-nominated performance as Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic in the 1989 biographical drama film Born on the Fourth of July . It’s fun to watch Cruise abandon his all-American screen persona to play a character as dirty as Vincent, whose basic psychology has the effect of transforming Vincent, especially toward the end of the film, into a predatory, relentless monster, like an unmasked, well-dressed version of Michael Myers.

Related: These Are the Best Michael Mann Movies, Ranked

Another revelation in Collateral is Foxx, who, in the role of Max, creates a convincing character whose life story would doubtlessly make for an interesting film even if Max hadn’t unwittingly allowed a hit-man to enter his cab. While Foxx’s Oscar-nominated performance in Collateral was technically a precursor to Foxx’s Oscar-winning titular performance in the 2004 biographical drama film Ray , which was released several months later, the filming of Ray took place several months before the filming of Collateral . Foxx, the fine dramatic actor, had already arrived.

Collateral marked Mann’s first crime-oriented film since the 1995 epic crime film Heat. Collateral demonstrates that while Mann has always been an expert regarding the logistical and technical details of the crime genre, Mann is also an accomplished dramatist and a master of suspense. As a result of the stunning achievements in everything from performances to behind-the-scenes roles, Collateral is not just still worth watching but is also one of the best movies of the 21st Century. Stream Collateral on Paramount+.

Every Tom Cruise Movie Ranked (By the Magnificence of His Hair)

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There are many ways to rank the works of Tom Cruise . One might consider the quality of his performance, the overall caliber of the production, or the skillfulness of the action sequences. Those are all valid measurements, but I prefer to judge them according to what really matters: the uncanny beauty of Tom Cruise’s hair.

Like driver-side airbags in a new car, certain features come standard in every Cruise movie. He’s definitely going to run at least once (or thirty times). Flashing that million-dollar smile is basically guaranteed. And Tom Cruise will almost certainly sport a majestic mane of hair. Over his nearly 40 Hollywood features, Cruise has consistently presented one outstanding collection of locks after another. Sure, he’s had his stumbles; no one is perfect (Looking at you, Lions for Lambs ). But at 53, he’s still cranking out A+ hair work (see the brand-new Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation ) for proof of that.

For more than 30 years, Cruise has maintained a nigh-unblemished record of follicular excellence. No matter the role or film, he’s got nary a hair out of place (unless it’s supposed to look that way, in which case they’re perfectly out of place). But which Cruise hair is the best Cruise hair? ScreenCrush polled a team of fashion experts, stylists, cinematographers, dermatologists, tailors, and barbers to create the definitive ranking of the Cruise-hair oeuvre, which you’ll find in the gallery above.

Okay, fine, so it was actually just me. But I put a lot of thought into this. And if I could, I would totally have the cut from Mission: Impossible II . That thing is good.

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Celebrity Toupee

Tom Cruise Hair: From Top Gun to Today

By Rehairsystem

July 1, 2023

Tom Cruise is not only known for his impressive acting skills but also for his ever-changing hairstyles. From his iconic ’80s look in Top Gun to his current silver fox vibe, Cruise has sported a wide range of hairdos throughout his career. So we will take a closer look at the evolution of Tom Cruise’s hair and explore the mysteries and rumors surrounding his iconic locks.

The Evolution of Tom Cruise’s Hair

From top gun to today: a look at tom cruise’s iconic hairstyles.

Tom Cruise burst onto the scene in the 1986 hit film Top Gun, where he showcased his signature hairstyle – short, slicked-back locks. This look quickly became a trend among his fans, with many trying to replicate his impeccable style. Over the years, Cruise’s hair has undergone drastic transformations, reflecting the changing trends and his personal aesthetic.

The Mystery Behind Tom Cruise’s Hair

Does tom cruise dye his hair unraveling the truth.

One question that has intrigued fans and critics alike is whether Tom Cruise dyes his hair. There have been speculations and rumors suggesting that Tom Cruise dyes his hair to maintain its dark color.

While Cruise has never publicly confirmed or denied these rumors, experts believe that he may indeed use hair dye to maintain his vibrant locks.

Cam Newton’s Hair
Trae Young’s Hair

Tom Cruise’s Long-Haired Phases

Throughout his career, Tom Cruise has occasionally ventured into the realm of long hair. Whether for a role or personal preference, Cruise’s long-haired phases have always garnered attention.

From his tousled locks in Interview with the Vampire to the shoulder-length mane in The Last Samurai, Cruise has proven that he can effortlessly pull off a variety of styles.

The Signature Short Haircuts of Tom Cruise

While Tom Cruise has dabbled in longer hair, it’s his short haircuts that have become his signature look. From military-inspired buzz cuts to neatly styled cropped hair, Cruise’s short hairstyles are sleek and timeless. His ability to effortlessly transition between various cuts has solidified his status as a Hollywood heartthrob and style icon.

Tom Cruise’s Unique Hair Look

Tom Cruise is not one to shy away from experimenting with unique and daring haircuts. Whether it’s a spiked punk rock style in Rock of Ages or a slicked-back pompadour in Risky Business, Cruise always manages to make a statement with his hair. These bold choices reflect his fearless attitude towards fashion and his willingness to take risks both on and off-screen.

Tom Cruise and the Rumors of Hair Transplants

Speculation surrounding Tom Cruise’s hair often includes rumors of hair transplants. Some observers suggest that his hairline has appeared more robust over the years, indicating a potential transplant. While there is no concrete evidence to support these claims, the notion of Cruise undergoing hair restoration is a topic of persistent speculation among fans and the media.

Decode: What Does Tom Cruise’s Hair Color Reveal?

Beyond the style and cut, Tom Cruise’s hair color has also seen variations throughout his career. From his natural dark brown to a lighter chestnut hue, his hair color choices may reveal more than meets the eye. Different colors can convey different moods and characters, and Cruise’s hair color selections have played a significant role in shaping his on-screen persona.

Facial Hair Chronicles: Tom Cruise’s Experimentation

Beyond the scalp: tom cruise’s adventures with facial hair.

While his hairstyles regularly steal the spotlight, Tom Cruise has also experimented with facial hair throughout his career. From a clean-shaven look to a rugged beard, Cruise has tried various facial hairstyles, adapting them to suit his roles. His ability to transform his appearance with facial hair adds another layer to his impressive range as an actor.

Silver Fox: Tom Cruise and His Gray Hair Journey

Embracing the silver: tom cruise’s relationship with gray hair.

Over the years, with age comes wisdom, and for Tom Cruise, it also brings a stunning silver fox look. Embracing his natural gray hair, Cruise has effortlessly transitioned into a more mature style. His salt-and-pepper locks have only heightened his charm and appeal, proving that age is just a number for the veteran actor.

Tom Cruise’s Latest Haircut: The Buzz on His Newest Style

Cutting-Edge Style: Unveiling Tom Cruise’s Newest Hairdo

As a Hollywood icon, Tom Cruise’s latest haircut is always a topic of interest. Whether he sports a buzz cut for an action-packed role or debuts a new style on the red carpet, fans eagerly anticipate his next hair transformation. Stay tuned to find out what exciting new haircut Tom Cruise will unveil next.

The Way to Get Cruise’s Any Hair Look, Wear a Toupee

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Our store offers a wide selection of toupees that cater to every individual’s unique preferences and needs. From natural-looking hairlines to a variety of hair textures and colors, we have it all.

From his early days in Top Gun to his current status as a Hollywood legend, Tom Cruise’s hair has undergone an incredible journey. His ever-evolving hairstyles, whether long or short, have become synonymous with his iconic image. With each new cut, color, and style, Cruise continues to captivate audiences and inspire fans around the world. As he continues to push boundaries in his acting career, we can’t wait to see what hair adventures lie ahead for Tom Cruise.

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Is David Spade Bald? Or He Wears A Toupee?

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Tom Cruise’s Villainous Turn in Michael Mann’s 'Collateral' Remains One of His Best

Tom Cruise is a respected action hero with a multitude of iconic performances, but this Michael Mann film shows he can play evil just as well.

These days, when you think of Tom Cruise , you likely think of him riding motorcycles off of cliffs, as he most recently did in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One . While we wait for the next installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, it's a good time to revisit a smaller scale thriller in which he portrays a character even Ethan Hunt would struggle to take down. Cruise is known broadly as a heroic figure, playing characters like Hunt or Maverick in Top Gun who are unrelenting in their drive for saving the day. When Michael Mann , director of Thief and Heat , brought him on for Collateral , audiences did not know they were in for a subversively evil outing from Cruise. Despite the whiplash of seeing Cruise's typical charm and Cheshire Cat grin twisted into a purely intimidating force of a character, Collateral is one of his finest films, and deserves much more attention when thinking about Cruise's best performances.

Tom Cruise Is a Terrifying Passenger in 'Collateral'

Cruise portrays Vincent, introduced in the first moments of the film sporting stark white hair, dark sunglasses, and a solid gray suit. Vincent picks up a briefcase at an airport in a suspicious exchange featuring a cameo from Jason Statham , who's potentially portraying his Transporter character, as it's in the same universe as Collateral . The film then shifts to the character of Max, portrayed by Jamie Foxx . Max is a late-night cab driver working toward the ambition of starting his own limousine company. After a charming scene where Max gives a ride to Annie ( Jada Pinkett Smith ), Vincent enters his cab and a fateful fare begins, one which will wreak havoc through the streets of Los Angeles and change Max's life forever.

Vincent begins the cab ride on the basis that he is simply a business person needing to meet with some associates at five different stops. Max hesitates to stick with a single fare for the night, but Vincent flashes $600 in cash for his services and Max decides to go for it. The night foreshadowed by their early conversation seems easygoing, but a minute after the first stop, a body plummets onto the roof of the cab. Max panics, and upon Vincent's return, it becomes clear that Vincent is responsible for the dead body they now have to quickly hide to avoid being caught. This is the point where Cruise's arresting charm is inverted into something terrifying, as Vincent threatens Max's life and proclaims to him that their ride must continue as planned if he wants to make it through the night unharmed.

Michael Mann’s 'Heat' Is Ultimately About Being a Workaholic

Cruise has flipped a switch, and despite continuing to disarm Foxx's character through gentle banter and jokes, there is a cruel and lifeless gleam in Vincent's eye which makes it clear that Max is dealing with a man who will kill him and anyone who gets in his way without remorse. Vincent, dressed and poised in a manner that echoes a great white shark, is a ruthless hitman with four more names on his list. As they work their way through the city, Vincent repeatedly challenges Max to take control of a life Vincent perceives to be passive and cowardly. Max learns to hold his own against Vincent as the two bicker back and forth, and the dynamic between Cruise and Foxx grows to more thrilling and entertaining heights. When Max discovers that Vincent's final target is Annie, revealed to be the prosecutor working on a case in which all the victims of Vincent's killing spree have been related, Max decides to finally take his fate into his own hands. Ultimately, Vincent appears in Max's life almost as a twisted inversion of the angel from It's a Wonderful Life , showing him the darkest end of the human experience and pushing him to greater ambitions for what Vincent believes to be the betterment of his own life. Cruise plays all of this with such intense precision, crafting the most overtly villainous version of the typical Michael Mann character who is utterly devoted to his professionalism and oftentimes detached from all personal relationships.

Tom Cruise and Michael Mann Are a Perfect Pairing

Putting Tom Cruise in your movie usually means you are going to find him diving headfirst into whatever niche skill or profession the character engages in, whether it be flying helicopters in Mission: Impossible - Fallout or shooting pool in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money . Being a central character in a Michael Mann movie typically means you are going to end up firing live rounds, operating heavy equipment used by real, professional criminals, and devoting months of your life to understanding the profession of your character. These two figures are known for striving for authenticity in their art, so Mann's tendency to lean toward verisimilitude combined with Cruise's enthusiasm for embodying every aspect of a character makes for a dynamite actor-director combination.

Mann has spoken about the intense preparation Cruise brought in various talks and on the film's behind-the-scenes features. Considering Mann's unusually thorough process, working with an actor as laser-focused as Cruise allowed for a creatively challenging and fruitful environment. Given Mann's affinity for jazz, including a sequence set in a jazz club in Collateral , his working relationship with Cruise is comparable to two jazz musicians riffing and building off of each other's work. Film critic Russ Fischer , attending a conversation between Ava DuVernay and Mann , reported that Mann and Cruise engaged in a covert "game" involving post-it notes slapped on unsuspecting crew members to indicate a "kill."

Cruise also worked undercover as a courier to see if he could accomplish getting from one point to another without being recognized , thankfully delivering packages instead of taking on the experience of a contract killer firsthand. The dedication makes scenes like the massive nightclub shootout worth all the effort as Cruise moves through the room like a Terminator, taking down henchmen left and right, or the final confrontation with Foxx and Pinkett Smith where Cruise is playing Vincent akin to a slasher villain lurking in the shadows.

Tom Cruise Needs To Play More Villains

Mann has directed many actors in iconic roles, most notably James Caan in Thief and Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Heat , and these characters often have a lot of overlap in terms of personality and thematic arcs. Cruise's Vincent checks some of the typical Mann boxes: a lonely criminal, dedicated to his work more than anything, exhibiting antisocial tendencies. However, Cruise brings a pure evil core out of Vincent which makes him stand out among the rest of Mann's most well-regarded characters.

Cruise has only played a handful of villains , and in the years since the release of Collateral , the number of characters who are in any way ethically compromised is almost zero. Seeing Collateral in this light makes it clear that moviegoers are sorely missing out on the chance to see Cruise take on another dark role, one which allows him to channel this cold and calculated side that has not been utilized on screen in years. Vincent remains one of Cruise's best roles and one which stands out as especially remarkable due to how much of an anomaly the masterpiece that is Collateral appears to be when compared with the rest of his career.

The Big Picture

Tom Cruise's performance in Collateral showcases his ability to portray a subversively evil and intimidating character, flipping his typical heroic charm into something terrifying.
The dynamic between Cruise and Jamie Foxx grows to thrilling heights as they navigate the streets of Los Angeles, with Cruise's character challenging Foxx's to take control of his life.
The collaboration between Tom Cruise and director Michael Mann, known for their commitment to authenticity, creates a dynamite combination that brings out the best in both of them.

Cinephilia & Beyond - Films and Filmmaking

L.A. Breakdown, a Hitman In Crisis: Michael Mann’s ‘Collateral’

By Tim Pelan

When people think of Tom Cruise, what do they see? That shit eating grin, the Scientology, star power? I prefer to think of Cruise as a character actor trapped in a superstar’s body. Once he went stratospheric with Top Gun , he began to seek out more interesting parts, and get the attention of some great directors. One of his greatest collaborations is with Michael Mann in Collateral . Cruise seems cursed to be casually dismissed when he stretches himself or thinks outside of the action star box, whilst others ride his coattails to glory. Jamie Foxx is pretty great as Max, the cabbie whom Cruise’s stone-cold contract killer Vincent coerces into driving him around L.A in one night of murderous mayhem, and was nominated for work alongside an outstanding Cruise performance here, as was Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man (he won an Oscar). Cruise doesn’t exactly go unnoticed either, as his hitman tries to. Darren Franich wrote a terrific, long (and I mean, REALLY long) form piece on Michael Mann’s Collateral almost four years ago for Entertainment Weekly , but if you haven’t already read it, tough luck, it’s snuffed out, like one of killer Vincent’s targets. Luckily it’s been archived . I’ll be quoting liberally from it too. “It’s a movie about a city, and a movie about a couple of guys,” Franich wrote. “It’s an action movie where an old man talks about Miles Davis; it’s a philosophical drama where Jamie Foxx does a Tom Cruise impression; it’s a violent melodrama where Javier Bardem delivers the line ‘Sorry, does not put Humpty-Dumpty back together again’ right before telling a story about Santa Claus’ evil little helper. It’s a movie about the best cab driver in Los Angeles, and the most heroic thing he can do in the movie is crash his car.”

Vincent arrives at LAX dressed in a grey suit, grey tie, white shirt, grey hair, grey stubble, black shoes, shades, black watch strap. I’ve read that, as well as designed to make him look like some kind of an anonymous businessman, the suit was a nod to Cary Grant ’s in North by Northwest . Bamfstyle said , “The choice is an interesting contrast: in North by Northwest , Grant’s character is supposed to be an innocent nobody being chased by assassins… in Collateral , Cruise plays an assassin tormenting an innocent nobody.” Vincent is a seemingly unflappable lone wolf, at one point making eye contact with a coyote crossing the street, each sensing a kindred spirit. Detailed backstory dreamt up by Mann (Special Forces background, abusive drunken father, institutionalized, suit handmade in Kowloon ) and never even raised is telegraphed in economical body language. When things go wrong in a busy club during a hit and Vincent starts to see control slip away we see worry briefly flash across his face. “In my mind,” says Mann on the DVD commentary , “it’s almost as if Vincent is eleven years old for a fraction of a second. He’s confused by bad things happening to him and he responds by reassembling his perspective and reacting with violent aggression and acting out.” He shoots Max a quick look of irritation that says it all in a second—“look what you’ve got me into now.” I mean it as a compliment when I say that I could see Lee Marvin in the same role. Mann described the building of back story jettisoned for subtle hints and reveals here as making the film akin to the climactic third act of an existing structure, one where Jada Pinkett Smith’s crusading lawyer Annie is about to see a long building case against a drug enterprise come to fruition, whilst Cruise is in town to off all the witnesses, and her—“a man in a suit who travels for a living; he’s George Clooney in Up in the Air , literally killing people instead of just ending their career.” Roger Ebert called Collateral “a rare thriller that is as much character study as sound and fury.”

Familiar actors pop up in supporting roles of varying length, the shortest appearance probably being Jason Statham , who purposely bumps into Vincent in LAX so they can exchange briefcases detailing Vincent’s hits. It’s fun to imagine Statham here as Frank from The Transporter series—his suit is dark enough, though no tie? Another reason for the cameo could be that years before Cruise was a fan of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels , hoping to do a remake someday, and this was the best opportunity to work with Statham. Mann says the Stath’s London accent is there to deliberately clue the viewer in to Vincent’s international connections.

Vincent seems methodical, but he’s improvisational , like his hero, Miles Davis—a jazz hitman. He knows nothing about his targets until he gets into town and studies his paperwork in the back of the cab. When his first hit takes a tumble out the window onto the roof of Max’s cab, he tells him, “Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it.” Max is methodical, always needs a plan, has his cab just right. He plans so much, he’s been cabbing “temporarily” for twelve years, Island Limos still a pipe dream: “Like an island on wheels. A cool groove, like a club experience.” It takes a sociopath to snap him out of his ennui.

“Prepping Jamie Foxx for his role in Collateral was a matter of getting him to understand the neighborhood this man came from, and the death-by-repetition involved in being a cab driver,” Mann told DGA Quarterly . “Having been a cab driver myself, I knew what a grind that is. For Tom Cruise, who plays a hit man, the preparation involved all kinds of crazy stuff in preproduction—acquiring the skill sets he would need to be this man. We had him stalking various members of the crew for weeks, in secret, learning their habits, and then picking the moment. This person would be coming out of a gym at 7 a.m. and feel somebody slap something on his back—and it would be Tom, who had just put a Post-it on their back. In our virtual world, that was a confirmed kill.”

There’s also an odd-couple comedy vibe to the film at times. There are several funny moments in Collateral , like Vincent prompting Max on how to tell his dispatcher to get the hell off his back. Franich again, in one of his twelve “interpretations” of the central relationship of the film: “There’s an anti-authority, middle-finger-to-the-grown-ups vibe to that scene that runs throughout the whole buddy-cop genre: Nuts to those crusty old police chiefs! Except that Collateral takes the buddy genre to its logical extreme. These two characters don’t get along. They learn from each other, and, in learning, they become worse enemies than ever. Imagine if Lethal Weapon ended with Mel Gibson, finally going full-crazy, and Danny Glover has to put him down.” Also, Vincent’s response to Max’s demanding to know why he killed the first guy who’s falling body so rudely interrupted his lunch: “Did you join Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Whales, Greenpeace, or something (in response to the massacre in Rwanda)? No. I off one fat Angelino and you throw a hissy fit.” Mann studied Billy Wilder comedies such as The Front Page to nail Vincent’s sarcastic tone and delivery.

At one point Max has to impersonate Vincent, after tossing his briefcase, to get fresh intel on the hits from the man responsible and potentially going down if Vincent doesn’t succeed, Javier Bardem’s “Felix”. Max is out of his cab, out of his comfort zone, but with the threat to his mother he rises to the challenge, removing his glasses, posture changing, cockiness creeping in. He even agrees to a cheeky discount for Vincent’s services, for the trouble he’s caused. This time Max is playing for real stakes; when he snatched Vincent’s briefcase at the hospital where Vincent made him take him to meet his mother, that act felt almost impulsively out of spite at this woman who he barely tolerates hitting it off so well with the charming interloper, who bought the flowers Max brings her.

Collateral is also about architectural space and seeing parts of the city that you don’t normally. Franich: “He (Mann) never shoots any recognizable landmarks—and so Collateral is the rare Los Angeles movie that seems to have something to say about Los Angeles but nothing to say about Hollywood. The movie arrived in theaters one year after Thom Anderson released his towering video essay Los Angeles Plays Itself , a film which analyzes (and pointedly criticizes) how Hollywood cinema presents the city onscreen… Or maybe it’s just an anti-anti-Los Angeles movie. Everything Cruise says about the city is anti-Angeleno boilerplate—‘too sprawled out, disconnected’—and the ensuing journey through the city’s cultural worlds is a stern rebuke.”

“As for the scenes in the [Korean] club, I had a floor plan the size of a large dining room table and plotted out every single actor’s move and camera position,” Mann told EW . The choreography of that action, with customers freaking out as Tom shoots the guys after him—there were 600 Korean extras kept in a state of hysteria 12 hours a day. We were all wiped [laughs], but they were terrific.”

After that club shoot-out , Max thinks he’s now safe until Detective Fanning (Mark Ruffalo), who’s the only law enforcement agent on Vincent’s case that night who gleams the truth, is suddenly, shockingly gunned by Vincent. He then beckons Max to get in the cab like nothing’s happened, and he drives off like an automaton. Vincent chuckles that everyone but “the Polish cavalry” is after them, then tosses out some more existential bullshit that flips a switch in Max. “I think you’re low, my brother, way low. Like, what were you, one of those institutionalized raised guys?” The camera focuses on Vincent in the back seat: Max has hit a nerve. He reacts by purposefully hurting Max back, taunting him about his lack of drive, how he’ll never call that girl, “As if he’s the ghost of Christmas Future,” says Mann, “telling him that his evasion is chronic and he’ll never achieve any of his dreams.” Max responds by deciding that if fate is fickle, he’ll choose his own. The cab that has been his prison for twelve years becomes his means of liberation, as he accelerates and flips it. Now Vincent is on the back foot, as Max endeavors to warn Annie, the lawyer he’s after who Max connected with before fatefully picking up Vincent.

Mann: “One of the first images I had in my head was guys stalking each other as near-silhouettes against the city at night. That could not have been shot on film; the aesthetic does not exist in the photochemical realm—it only exists in high-def video.” He further elaborated on the scope of digital film-making at night to Vanity Fair : “When we did Collateral , it was the first photoreal film shot digitally. You cannot capture night photochemically. Very shallow depth of field, very pretty, diffused, defocused lights; exposure-wise, you can’t get that crazy magenta sky you have in L.A., when the sodium vapor lights are bouncing off the marine layer that’s about 1,200 feet at that time of year, and the soft illumination of magenta and orange is very alienating, very attractive, and lonely at the same time. As if the whole movie takes place in Northern Europe someplace.”

By this point Vincent has become almost Terminator-like in hunting Annie, shot in the same frame in a pitch black office building like Nosferatu sniffing out blood in the castle, whilst Max is a thumbprint on the window or cliff face below, standing on a lower rooftop to the edge of the frame–film stock could never have picked them both out.

Michael McLennan has an interesting parallel edit on Vimeo of the climactic scene from Collateral with the Shanghai sequence from Sam Mendes’ Skyfall . Michael draws attention to visual parallels and pacing in each scene:

“In this exercise, the Mann sequence has been more substantially re-ordered and trimmed down to match the Bond set piece (especially at the start, which draws on the whole film). The purpose of the exercise is to draw attention to the visual parallels between the sequences. When I first saw the Bond film I felt this sequence was Mendes and Deakins’ chance to ‘do their Collateral ‘, and even if they weren’t there’s some interesting parallels to the sequences, particularly once both films turn their key lights off.

Both directors and their lensers (Dion Beebe (he replaced Paul Cameron) and Roger Deakins respectively) pushed much of the storytelling into a wordless space, showing great confidence in the power of underlit or silhouette images. It’s the Mann sequence that relies more on dialogue, but is also the more adventurous in its exploration of the low light threshold. Skyfall is unmistakably the more stylish (nice callback to the title sequence with the backlight from jellyfish graphics), Collateral the more immersively-real with its underexposed grain and sparse practicals.”

During the Metro rail chase, Mann shot mostly for real, apart from the sequence where Vincent shoots at Max and Annie through the carriage door. For that point, he wanted the rectangular patterns of light in buildings flashing behind, a suitably symmetric vibe for a story coming full circle–earlier, Vincent seemed to foretell his own death with a shaggy dog story about a dead guy riding the circle line for six hours before anyone notices. “17 million people. This was a country, it’d be the fifth biggest economy in the world and nobody knows each other.” Vincent, in the strobing light, goes for the two in the chest first, then one in the head coup de grace, but misses, hitting the metal part of the door. Max shoots blindly and gets lucky. Vincent sits down, Cruise’s direction “to be irritated at the absurd outcome.” Max improvised; Vincent didn’t. “Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it.” I think on some wry level he’d appreciate the outcome.

Tim Pelan was born in 1968, the year of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (possibly his favorite film), ‘Planet of the Apes,’ ‘The Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘Barbarella.’ That also made him the perfect age for when ‘Star Wars’ came out. Some would say this explains a lot. Read more »

“I went to film school. I did screenwriting school. The best thing for me was reading scripts.” —Stuart Beattie

Australian screenwriter Stuart Beattie is credited with having written the role no one ever thought they’d see Tom Cruise play: Vincent, the riveting homicidal hit man in Beattie’s original screenplay, Collateral , directed by Michael Mann. After 15 years in the business, Beattie has learned a thing or two about how to make characters and plots sing (or sting) on the page. Listen in as Beattie describes what it feels like when Tom Cruise looks like he wants to kill you, where the best story ideas come from, and how to stay passionate when you can’t even get your mother to read your screenplays.

Screenwriter must-read: Stuart Beattie’s screenplay for Collateral [ PDF ]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only ). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Collateral is on the way to physical 4K Ultra HD later this year, at least in Europe. Absolutely our highest recommendation.

Michael Mann’s Collateral is a great example of how a protagonist’s facade is slowly stripped away as their inner self is forced to rise, and what happens when these two sides of the character collide at the midpoint of the story.

HELL ON WHEELS

Paul Cameron and Dion Beebe, ACS push hi-def video to its limits for Collateral , which chronicles a hit man’s nocturnal killing spree.

“Michael is an incredibly demanding director,” Beebe says in conclusion. “He’s very demanding of everyone, especially his camera crew, but it’s inspiring to work with him because he has such a clear vision of what he wants, and he’ll pursue that without compromise.” He adds with a chuckle, “Before I started working with him, he was described to me as ‘a director who prepares like Rembrandt and executes like Picasso,’ and I felt that was pretty insightful.” — Hell on Wheels

In this video essay Storytellers explore the notion of (symbolic) masculinity in Michael Mann’s Collateral , through the lens of psychologists Dr. Carl Jung and Robert L. Moore. How do we deal with masculinity in the modern world? Is it a harmful construct that only brings about toxicity, or is it an inherent and inescapable part of humanity and can, and should, it be harnessed for the good of oneself and for society? These questions and more will be discussed in this analysis.

MICHAEL MANN ON FILMMAKING

How does Michael Mann make films? And what are his influences in that approach? What does making films mean to him?

AN EVENING WITH MICHAEL MANN

Michael Mann is a master of the modern urban noir, with a unique brand of pulp poetry that is pure cinephiliac pleasure. He defined cool in the 1980s, directed some of the most highly regarded thrillers of the 1990s, and pioneered digital filmmaking in the 2000s. BAMcinématek presents this career retrospective showcasing the visionary auteur’s intelligent, stylish, and intensely entertaining films, which mark an uncompromising commitment to aesthetic perfection and an almost obsessive exploration of his key archetype: the renegade antihero who plays by his own rules. Watch the entire conversation between director Michael Mann and New York magazine film critic Bilge Ebiri from February 11, 2016 event, part of the full-career retrospective Heat & Vice: The Films of Michael Mann .

LES RÉALISATEURS: MICHAEL MANN

“An excellent documentary of key scenes with Michael Mann and actors. For as long as these videos are available online, you can treat yourself to some old but powerful Michael Mann interviews with some of our best loved Michael Mann scenes. This is wonderful footage, including actor interviews about the Tiger scene from Manhunter and that extraordinarily charged cliff scene in Last of the Mohicans . It includes scenes from Heat , and also The Insider . Actors speak about who they feel Michael Mann is, with some superb quotes to take away that sum up our favourite director. Get Michael Mann’s inside story. Essential viewing, enjoy.” — Michael-Mann.net

THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR: MICHAEL MANN

Robert Rodriguez talks to Michael Mann about his career as a director.

Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Michael Mann’s Collateral . Photographed by Frank Connor © Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, Parkes+MacDonald Image Nation, Edge City. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.

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Hollywood actor Tom Cruise (L) is welcomed by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo, 28 August 2003. During a press preview in Tokyo today, Tom Cruise unveiled some clips of his latest film "The Last Samurai", which portrays Japan as a nation in an historic struggle to maintain its warrior traditions. AFP PHOTO / Kazuhiro NOGI/POOL (Photo credit should read KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/GettyImages)

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Tom Cruise's Collateral Role Flipped A Hitchcock Classic On Its Head

Collateral tom cruise vincent gun in club

One of the reasons 2004's "Collateral" was so successful critically and commercially is due to its classical nature. The film's premise is winningly old-school in its structure: Lifelong Los Angeles cabbie Max (Jamie Foxx) is hired by Vincent (Tom Cruise) to take the man to several different locations over the course of one night. Only two stops into the arrangement, Max discovers Vincent is a professional assassin, and the stops represent various targets the killer has been hired to hit. When the truth is revealed, Vincent not only holds Max hostage by continuing to make him drive him to his victims, but becomes involved with Max's life as a way of toying with, as Max fearfully realizes, the person he'll kill last.

While Michael Mann directed "Collateral" with professional grit and precision, there's another reason the film feels positively Hitchcockian: Vincent acts as a contrasting figure to Roger Thornhill, the character played by Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's classic "North by Northwest." While the two men couldn't be more different in terms of their demeanor and ethics, their characters are connected in some intriguing ways. One involves their tastes in clothing.

The 'O' stands for nothing

In "North by Northwest," Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is a victim of Hitchcock's "wrong man" scenario, wherein a character is mistaken for someone else (whom we typically never see), forcing them to become involved in the plot. In Thornhill's case, his calling for a waiter at the exact wrong time causes some goons to believe he's really George Kaplan, a United States government agent who has become the target of Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), a spy working for the other side during the Cold War. Thornhill can't convince Vandamm or anyone else he's just a mere advertising executive, the baddies believing the man's plea of anonymity is simply an act.

Hitchcock and writer Ernest Lehman's deliciously layered joke is Thornhill's anonymity is both his weakness and his strength: It turns out there is no George Kaplan, as he's a fictional figure created by the U.S. government to distract Vandamm from the real American spy in his midst. When asked what his middle initial, "O," stands for, Thornhill shrugs and admits it stands for "nothing." It's a telling indication of the character's blank slate nature, which he'll have to change if he's to survive the mystery he's caught up in.

Thornhill's lightweight single-breasted gray flannel suit (which Grant allegedly picked out himself ) perfectly encapsulates his character: stylish and charming enough to befit a leading man, but anonymous enough for him to be believably Everyman, the better to be mistaken for a nonexistent spy.

'Collateral's' Vincent flips the anonymity script

Where Roger Thornhill is a nobody plucked out of the crowd who becomes somebody, in "Collateral," Vincent is intentionally trying to remain anonymous, especially because his work really is covert and deadly. Thus, Vincent is wearing an updated version of Thornhill's gray minimalist suit. As BAMF Style observed in 2012, Thornhill "is supposed to be an innocent nobody being chased by assassins ... in 'Collateral,' Cruise plays an assassin tormenting an innocent nobody."

The contrasts between Vincent and Thornhill don't end there. While Thornhill's initials being "R.O.T." ("my trademark," Thornhill says ironically) are an indication that his anonymous lifestyle would ultimately be more damning and deadly than his adopting the identity of George Kaplan, Vincent uses his poisonous existential philosophy of being anonymous to both manipulate Max and justify his murderous job to himself.

Just a few minutes after hiring Max, Vincent espouses on the way anonymity pervades a city like L.A., telling the cabbie about how a man once died on the MTA and was riding around for six hours before anybody noticed his corpse. From there, Vincent keeps using such existential comparisons to further justify his actions, and the more he speaks the more he sounds like his entire personality comes from the books he reads and music he listens to rather than from himself. Eventually, the machine-like assassin loses control of the situation, underestimating Max — the "nobody" becomes somebody, a man he's ironically mentored during the whole night — and ends up an anonymous corpse riding on the MTA.

Cruise and 'North by Northwest' have more overlap than you realize

Of course, "Collateral" isn't the only Tom Cruise movie to reference Alfred Hitchcock. While the pioneering director died long before the actor became a star, Cruise's films have taken inspiration from Hitchcock in other sly ways as "Collateral" does. For instance, "Knight and Day" takes the "wrong man" idea and makes it into a "wrong woman," with Cameron Diaz's average citizen caught up with Cruise's superspy. And "Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation" contains a sequence that pays homage to the concert hall assassination attempt in "The Man Who Knew Too Much."

Yet one set piece in 2002's "Minority Report" not only references Hitchcock's work, but realizes an idea the director originally had for "North by Northwest." According to Ernest Lehman, Hitchcock had a desire to do "the longest dolly shot in cinema history" with a sequence that would follow a car assembly line as a vehicle was constructed from scratch, and when the car was completed, "it's driven off the assembly line, and there's a dead body in the backseat."

While the scene never made it into "North by Northwest," director Steven Spielberg decided to include a version of it in "Minority Report," in which Cruise's on-the-run cop John Anderton (a "wrong man" character with a sci-fi twist) attempts to escape from his pursuers inside a car factory. When Anderton falls inside a car as it's being constructed, his enemies believe he's likely been crushed inside the body of the vehicle, only to see him sit up and speed away in a brand-new car.

While it's unlikely that Cruise would ever flat-out remake "North by Northwest," it's fun to consider what other remixed aspects of the film — and Roger Thornhill — might turn up in one of his future projects.

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FILM REVIEW

FILM REVIEW; Killer in a Cab, Doing His Job

By Manohla Dargis

Aug. 6, 2004

IN ''Collateral,'' the edgy new thriller from the director Michael Mann, the city never sleeps; it doesn't even relax. Set in Los Angeles mostly after dark, after the city's sunshine has given way to cool noir, the story centers on a taxi driver, Max (Jamie Foxx), and the assassin Vincent (Tom Cruise), who hops a ride with him deep into the night. As the pair cover the city, looping over interchanges and down wide open boulevards, they travel a landscape alive with wild animals and wilder men, noisy with unfamiliar music and chatter, and punctured by the hard pop of occasional gunfire.

Following a few preliminaries, including some flirty minutes with Jada Pinkett Smith as a harried passenger, the story gets down to its dirty business with Vincent jumping into Max's meticulously clean taxicab. Nattily turned out in a gray suit and matching salt-and-pepper hair and light beard, Vincent takes the story precisely seven minutes east of downtown.

With the meter running, Max waits for his fare, fetishistically poring over luxury-car brochures and fantasizing about the limousine company he hopes to start. Then a body lands splat on the roof of the taxi, shattering the cabbie's nerves and a large section of his front window, and Stuart Beattie's screenplay kicks into overdrive. Vincent, Max discovers to his horror, is a killer for hire, and this is only the first stop on what looks to be a very strange trip.

Wired for action, ''Collateral,'' which opens nationwide today, initially seems like a return to basics for Mr. Mann, as exemplified by ostensibly straight early films like ''Thief,'' about a safecracker in love, and a retreat from the more self-consciously serious films like ''Ali,'' his underrated movie about the legendary boxer.

The new film takes place against a backdrop that pits a drug cartel against law enforcement agencies presumably intent on shutting it down, and to that end features big, beefy men wielding big, scary guns and the jolting image of Vincent hitting his marks, specifically with two bullets to the chest and one through the head. But because Mr. Mann makes thrillers the way that John Ford made westerns, using genre as a way into meaning rather than as an escape, ''Collateral'' bears little relation to the usual Hollywood blowout.

That becomes evident as Max and Vincent drive through the emptied-out streets and the story shifts from a two-hander to a road movie, a tourist-board nightmare and a bloodied valentine to the director's adopted hometown. A portrait of radically different souls clinging to radically different paths, ''Collateral'' hinges on the moment when fate intersects with choice.

Vincent is clearly a nutcase, seething with inarticulate rage and locked-down demons, but he's also a man seemingly in charge of his destiny. For Max, who's been hanging onto his well-tended fantasy for years (''this is just part time,'' he repeatedly insists of his hack job), his passenger represents an imminent threat, but also a necessary wake-up call. For Mr. Mann, it always seems, there is nothing worse than a life on automatic pilot, not even death.

Mr. Foxx can't have had an easy time playing foil to the world's biggest movie star, but he holds his own gracefully. For his part, Mr. Cruise, whose famous self-discipline has helped turn him into a bankable personality and a less-than-believable regular guy, makes Vincent scarily convincing. Underappreciated as an actor, Mr. Cruise is most at ease when he can deliver a good portion of his performance through his body. He's an intensely physical performer, one whose jumping muscles and athleticism often express the inner workings of his characters more plausibly than any scripted line. Clad in the sort of form-fitting, slightly too-short slacks favored more by modern dancers and Gene Kelly than (I assume) contract killers, he plays Vincent from the outside in, as a citadel of physical perfection and ability.

That makes the star an ideal fit not merely for this role but for this director, whose male characters inevitably express themselves more through their deeds than their words. One of the signatures of Mr. Mann's films is that while his male characters tend to be tight-lipped (if often very loud and certainly dogged in their beliefs), the director's visual style and musical choices verge on the extreme, at times the operatic. Filled with incessant rhythms, washes of gaudy color and heartbreaking beauty, the films boldly convey the passions and deep feelings the director's men rarely voice. It's the sort of expressionistic gambit that pointedly makes the case that movies create meaning both with what's on the scripted page and with images of palm trees bobbing against a moonlit sky and the everyday Los Angeles surrealism of coyotes prowling an otherwise urban street.

Pitched between interludes of anxious intimacy and equally nerve-shredding set pieces, ''Collateral'' scores its points with underhand precision. The film is about a lot of different things, about how Los Angeles lights up at night, how cars become prostheses of ourselves and how driving with the radio on can be bliss. But as with all of Mr. Mann's movies, ''Collateral'' is finally about men and work, and about how being a man is itself a kind of job. (It's no wonder the director gives the Sears ''Craftsman'' logo a loving nod.) Whether chasing fictionalized serial killers or those serial killers who run tobacco companies, Mr. Mann's men risk everything -- happiness, women, life itself -- to get the job done, which explains why these fastidiously executed commercial films are not just entertainments, but statements of personal faith.

It's in this sense that despite the spent bullets and fallen bodies, ''Collateral'' is very much the product of a distinct vision, one as eager to push technological limits (the film was shot with the most advanced video cameras) as to upend the usual studio white-hero/black-villain formula. For the director, such casting isn't a sop to political correctness, but a reflection of his city's demographics. Unmistakably urban, Mr. Mann's Los Angeles is a city where not every black man knows how to handle a gun, where Korean and Latino revelers jam dance clubs rarely seen in pop culture and where a light-rail line nicknamed the Ghetto Blue promises salvation after a really, really bad night behind the wheel. Best of all, it's a city where, if someone asks with corrosive incredulity, ''Do you like it here?,'' the only plausible answer is, ''It's my home.''

''Collateral'' is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). The film includes a lot of very intense gun violence, some phony corpses laid out in an autopsy room and strong adult language.

Directed by Michael Mann; written by Stuart Beattie (the film has some Spanish with English subtitles); directors of photography, Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron; edited by Jim Miller and Paul Rubell; music by James Newton Howard; production designer, David Wasco; produced by Mr. Mann and Julie Richardson; released by DreamWorks Pictures. Running time: 115 minutes. This film is rated R.

WITH: Tom Cruise (Vincent), Jamie Foxx (Max), Jada Pinkett Smith (Annie), Mark Ruffalo (Fanning), Peter Berg (Richard Weidner) and Bruce McGill (Pedrosa).

The Truth About Tom Cruise’s Hair: Is He Bald or Not?

Tom Cruise is undoubtedly one of the most iconic actors in Hollywood, known for his charismatic performances and handsome looks.

However, over the years, there have been numerous speculations and rumors about whether the superstar is bald or not. In this article, we will delve into the truth about Tom Cruise’s hair, separating fact from fiction while exploring the various stages of his hair journey.

Tom cruise’s hair evolution.

Tom Cruise’s hair has been a topic of fascination for many, with fans and critics alike scrutinizing every change in his hairstyle. To understand the full story, we need to take a closer look at the different phases of Tom Cruise’s hair evolution.

Young and Luscious Locks

In the early days of his career, Tom Cruise sported a head of thick, luscious locks that made him a heartthrob in Hollywood. Whether he was playing Maverick in “Top Gun” or dancing in his underwear in “Risky Business,” his hair was an integral part of his on-screen appeal.

Thinning Hairline

As the years went by, keen observers noted a receding hairline, which led to widespread speculation that he might be experiencing hair loss. While it’s true that his hairline receded, Tom Cruise never reached the point of full baldness.

Hair Restoration Rumors

Rumors about hair restoration treatments and surgeries have circulated in the media. Some sources have suggested that Cruise might have turned to these procedures to maintain his youthful appearance. However, he has never openly confirmed or denied these claims.

A glimpse at a bald Tom Cruise

In 2008, audiences were in for a shock when Tom Cruise made a jaw-dropping transformation for his role as Les Grossman in the comedy film “Tropic Thunder.”

This character was far from the suave and charming leading men he was known for. Les Grossman was a brash, vulgar, and rotund movie executive with a penchant for shouting, dancing, and flaunting his chest hair.

To fully embrace this character, Tom Cruise took on a drastic change in appearance, shaving his head completely bald. The sight of Cruise as Les Grossman, bald and unrecognizable, was a revelation for many fans.

Tom Cruise’s Dental Issues

One of Cruise’s trademarks is his dazzling white smile. However, he wasn’t born with this pearly smile. In his early career, keen-eyed fans noticed that Tom Cruise had a less-than-perfect set of teeth.

Specifically, he had misaligned teeth with a noticeable front tooth misalignment. This imperfection, however, didn’t deter his rise to stardom, as his charisma and talent shone through.

Tom Cruise underwent several dental procedures: teeth alignment and teeth whitening. Apparently, this wasn’t enough, as the devout member of the Church of Scientology has since had dental veneers fitted.

Porcelain veneers are the ideal solution for a radiant smile. They are placed to mask discoloration and whiten teeth. This cosmetic dentistry procedure creates a lifelike tooth appearance and a Hollywood smile.

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10 Most Iconic Video Game Bald Characters

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25 Best Bald Athletes in History

In the world of sports, we’ve seen many athletes who have made a significant impact not only with their skills and performance but also with their distinctive looks. One such distinctive feature is being bald. Here, we present a list of the 25 best bald athletes in history who have left an indelible mark in their respective…

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Alex Youmazzo is a young social media influencer who has made a name for herself on platforms like TikTok, where she boasts over 800,000 followers. But what really sets Alex apart is that she’s completely bald – and no, she doesn’t shave her head for style. Alex’s lack of hair is actually due to a…

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The hit Netflix series Stranger Things features a young girl named Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown, who has mysterious psychokinetic abilities. One of Eleven’s most iconic physical features is her nearly bald head, which was shaved extremely short. There are a few key reasons why Eleven sports this unique hairstyle throughout most of the…

Unraveling the Iconic Tom Cruise Hair in Top Gun

Welcome aboard, movie buffs and style enthusiasts! Today, we’re taking a flight back in time to revisit one of the most iconic films of the 80s, Top Gun, and delve into the equally iconic hairstyle sported by none other than Tom Cruise himself. Strap in as we explore the ins and outs of Tom Cruise’s hair in Top Gun, dissecting its significance, the meticulous process behind its creation, its lasting impact on pop culture, and much more.

Table of Contents

The Maverick Look: Deconstructing Tom Cruise’s Hairstyle

In the annals of cinematic history, few hairstyles have achieved the legendary status of Tom Cruise’s slicked-back locks in Top Gun. As Maverick, Cruise not only flew high in the cockpit but also set the bar sky-high for on-screen charisma and style. The hairstyle itself is a masterclass in effortless cool, exuding confidence, and a hint of rebellion that perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the character.

The key to Maverick’s hairstyle lies in its simplicity yet unmistakable allure. With its short length and slicked-back finish, Cruise’s hair in Top Gun strikes the perfect balance between rugged masculinity and suave sophistication. It’s a look that says, “I mean business, but I’ll still steal your heart.”

Read More: Unveiling the Johnny Depp Middle Part : A Stylish Icon’s Look

Transitioning from the technicalities to the symbolism, Maverick’s hairstyle serves as a visual shorthand for his character traits. The slicked-back style reflects his disciplined nature as a pilot, where every strand is in its place, ready to take on the challenges of the skies. Yet, the slight dishevelment hints at Maverick’s rebellious streak, his refusal to conform to the norms of authority, and his willingness to push boundaries.

The Making of the Tom Cruise Hairstyle Top Gun

Behind every great hairstyle is a team of talented hairstylists, and Tom Cruise’s Top Gun look is no exception. The process of crafting Maverick’s signature style involved meticulous attention to detail and a keen understanding of character dynamics. From the initial concept sketches to the final touch-ups on set, every step was carefully orchestrated to ensure that Cruise looked every bit the part of a maverick pilot.

To achieve the desired look, hairstylists employed a combination of cutting-edge techniques and time-honored traditions. Cruise’s hair was trimmed to perfection, with just the right amount of length to achieve the slicked-back effect without veering into greaser territory. High-quality styling products were then applied to give the hair its trademark sheen and hold, ensuring that it stayed in place even during the most intense aerial maneuvers.

One of the challenges faced in creating Maverick’s hairstyle was striking the perfect balance between authenticity and stylization. While the film aimed for realism in its portrayal of naval aviation, it also sought to capture the essence of 80s machismo and Hollywood glamour. As such, the hairstyle had to be carefully tailored to fit within the aesthetic sensibilities of the time while still feeling grounded in reality.

Impact on Pop Culture

Tom Cruise’s hairstyle in Top Gun didn’t just make waves on the silver screen; it also left an indelible mark on popular culture that continues to reverberate to this day. From its initial release in 1986 to its resurgence in the 21st century, the Top Gun look has become synonymous with a certain brand of rugged masculinity and effortlessly cool.

The hairstyle’s influence extends far beyond the realm of cinema, permeating various facets of popular culture, including fashion, music, and advertising. It has been emulated, parodied, and immortalized in countless tributes and references, cementing its status as an enduring icon of 80s nostalgia.

In the realm of men’s grooming, Maverick’s hairstyle remains a perennial favorite, with countless individuals seeking to replicate its timeless appeal. Whether it’s for a themed party, a cosplay event, or simply everyday wear, the Top Gun look continues to inspire men of all ages to channel their inner maverick and embrace their unique sense of style.

Evolution and Legacy

As with any cultural touchstone, Tom Cruise’s hairstyle in Top Gun has undergone its fair share of evolution over the years. From its initial conception in the 80s to its reinterpretations in contemporary media, the Top Gun look has continued to evolve while retaining its essence of rugged charm and timeless appeal.

While the hairstyle may have originated in the 80s, its legacy extends far beyond its decade of origin. In the years since its debut, it has become a symbol of rebellion, independence, and unapologetic confidence, inspiring countless individuals to embrace their inner maverick and chart their course in life.

In conclusion, Tom Cruise’s hairstyle in Top Gun is more than just a haircut; it’s a cultural touchstone that has left an indelible mark on the world of cinema and popular culture. From its iconic appearance on the silver screen to its enduring legacy in the realm of men’s grooming, the Top Gun look continues to capture the imagination of audiences worldwide, proving that sometimes, all it takes is a slicked-back hairstyle to soar to new heights.

FAQs about Tom Cruise’s Hair in Top Gun

Yes, Tom Cruise’s hair in Top Gun was his real hair, styled to achieve the iconic slicked-back look.

While there’s no definitive information on Cruise’s direct input into his hairstyle, he and the production team likely collaborated to create Maverick’s iconic look.

The exact styling products used to achieve Tom Cruise’s hairstyle in Top Gun haven’t been disclosed, but it likely involved a combination of hair gel or pomade to slick back the hair and provide hold.

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Celebrity Hairstyles

TOM CRUISE'S 14 BEST HAIRSTYLES AND HAIRCUTS

View yourself with Tom Cruise hairstyles. We provide easy "How to style" tips as well as letting you know which hairstyles will match your face shape, hair texture and hair density.

Casual Hairstyle

Short Straight Dark Brunette

Short Straight Black

Short Straight Brunette

Short Straight

Short Straight Chestnut Brunette

Short Straight Chocolate Brunette

Short Straight Chocolate

Short Straight Ash Brunette

Short Straight Light Chocolate Brunette

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Suri Cruise, 17, pictured with beautiful long hair as she heads off for last vacation with mom Katie Holmes before her 18th birthday

The daughter of tom cruise lives in new york with her actress mother.

Suri Cruise looked so grown up on Wednesday when she she was captured heading on vacation with her mother, Katie Holmes from New York.

The mother-daughter duo were pictured getting into a car with their luggage as they headed off for the Easter weekend. Suri's beautiful long hair took centre stage of the pre-holiday snaps. The 17-year-old donned a pair of fabulously vibrant red trousers covered in white swirls, a corduroy navy blue jacket with a shearling collar and black trainers.

The mother-daughter duo are heading off for the holiday weekend

Meanwhile, mom Katie oozed glamour wearing an oversized army-green jacket and beige trousers. The actress slipped on a pair of dark sunglasses, and opted for a pair of chunky black sandals for footwear.

The mother-daughter trip came just weeks before Suri turns 18 on April 18. Katie is exceptionally private about her daughter, and whether or not she will go to college has yet to be revealed.

However, Suri has been involved in two of her mother's movies, Alone Together and Rare Objects, where she can be heard showing off her impressive singing voice.

Therefore, it is likely that the youngster may want to follow in her movie star parent's footsteps for a career in Hollywood. Listen to Suri's incredible vocals in the video below.

Prior to their latest appearance in New York, the duo were spotted back in December for Katie's 45th birthday celebrations. The pair couldn't have looked more similar in the photos.

Katie looked effortlessly glamorous, sporting a grey and black leopard print maxi dress, which she paired with classic white boots.

Meanwhile, Suri was wrapped in a cozy grey tweed coat, oversized maroon scarf and black pointed-toe heels.

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COMMENTS

Collateral (2004)
Collateral: Directed by Michael Mann. With Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo. A cab driver finds himself the hostage of an engaging contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in Los Angeles.
Hey, that Collateral
Yeah, here's the Trailer. So, you've probably heard about "the Tom Cruise with Grey Hair" movie - which, if I was Tom Cruise would make me kinda mad. — But I'd probably go count my millions to make myself feel better. The Trailer. The movie's actually got a name, Collateral, and it actually doesn't look too bad. Nice Little ...
Collateral turned Tom Cruise into a villain for the ages
What if Tom Cruise was a monster, though? Imagine America's ever-young action boy with gray hair and stubble, breaking into homes and workplaces to shoot bullets into unsuspecting foreheads.
Why Collateral Is One of the Best Underrated Michael Mann, Tom Cruise
Collateral (4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital) Now 15% Off. $22 at Amazon. Watching Collateral again this week, the thing that surprised me the most about it was how amazing Cruise is playing a psycho ...
Collateral (film)
Collateral is a 2004 American neo-noir action thriller film directed and produced by Michael Mann from a script by Stuart Beattie and starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.The supporting cast includes Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Berg, Javier Bardem, and Bruce McGill.The film follows Max Durocher, a Los Angeles cab driver, and his customer, Vincent.
Collateral: Looking Back at Tom Cruise's Underrated ...
Of Cruise's gray look, Michael Mann told Entertainment Weekly: "I saw Tom as all steely, and the visual for that was silver hair and a tight gray suit. The man he's playing is erudite, well ...
In praise of Michael Mann's action odyssey,
It's a Tom Cruise movie, but also an Anti-Tom Cruise movie. ... De Niro is a chameleon; Cruise is a supernova. Cruise's gray hair glows neon-bright in the LA darkness. Cruise's gray stubble never looks real, but it looks better than real: It looks unearthly. Fifty-two now, Cruise has never really played old. Like, compare his career to Russell ...
Collateral
Aug 19, 2023. Jun 13, 2023. A cab driver realizes his current fare is a hit man that has been having him drive around from mark to mark until the last witness to a crime is dead. When the cabbie ...
Collateral: Is It Still Worth Watching Two Decades Later?
By David Grove. Published Dec 23, 2023. Collateral represents a brilliant achievement for director Michael Mann and stars Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. Summary. Tom Cruise delivers a memorable ...
Discussing Collateral
Tom Cruise and Michael Mann talk with IGN. ... Cruise's appearance in the film is a modest study in anonymity; salt-and-pepper hair sets off stubble and a grey suit no witness could pick out of a ...
Director Michael Mann discusses ''Collateral''
Published on August 13, 2004. Director Michael Mann's crackling new thriller, "Collateral," stars Tom Cruise as a hitman with a contract to kill five people and Jamie Foxx as the cab driver ...
Every Tom Cruise Movie Ranked (By the Magnificence of His Hair)
Every Tom Cruise Movie Ranked (By the Magnificence of His Hair) Matt Singer Published: July 31, 2015. Fox. There are many ways to rank the works of Tom Cruise. One might consider the quality of ...
Tom Cruise Hair: From Top Gun to Today
From Top Gun to Today: A Look at Tom Cruise's Iconic Hairstyles. Tom Cruise burst onto the scene in the 1986 hit film Top Gun, where he showcased his signature hairstyle - short, slicked-back locks. This look quickly became a trend among his fans, with many trying to replicate his impeccable style. Over the years, Cruise's hair has ...
'Collateral' Marked the Start of Michael Mann's Second Era of ...
The grey hair in the movie is intended to not look realistic as is noted in the novel. He is a professional hitman, he doesn't go to work with his natural hair. Reply series_hybrid ... I wouldn't consider him a loser just because Tom Cruise thinks he is. There's so many who admonish the work of lower wage workers out there as if they're ...
Tom Cruise's Villainous Turn in Michael Mann's ...
Tom Cruise Is a Terrifying Passenger in 'Collateral'. Cruise portrays Vincent, introduced in the first moments of the film sporting stark white hair, dark sunglasses, and a solid gray suit ...
L.A. Breakdown, a Hitman In Crisis: Michael Mann's 'Collateral'
"I went to film school. I did screenwriting school. The best thing for me was reading scripts." —Stuart Beattie. Australian screenwriter Stuart Beattie is credited with having written the role no one ever thought they'd see Tom Cruise play: Vincent, the riveting homicidal hit man in Beattie's original screenplay, Collateral, directed by Michael Mann.
Ranking Tom Cruise's Hair in Every MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE Movie
How It Looks During The Movie's Biggest Moments. Spoiler alert - Tom Cruise has great hair. 6TH. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (1996) Style - Young Ethan went with a much closer cut on the side with a ...
Tom Cruise Hair Evolution
The Cyclical Evolution of Tom Cruise's Fantastic Hair. Tom Cruise turns 53 today—though he doesn't look a day over 35 (or even 25 if we're being honest.) Here, we examine the way Cruise's ...
Tom Cruise's Collateral Role Flipped A Hitchcock Classic On Its ...
The film's premise is winningly old-school in its structure: Lifelong Los Angeles cabbie Max (Jamie Foxx) is hired by Vincent (Tom Cruise) to take the man to several different locations over the ...
FILM REVIEW; Killer in a Cab, Doing His Job
Nattily turned out in a gray suit and matching salt-and-pepper hair and light beard, Vincent takes the story precisely seven minutes east of downtown. ... This film is rated R. WITH: Tom Cruise ...
The Truth About Tom Cruise's Hair: Is He Bald or Not?
Les Grossman was a brash, vulgar, and rotund movie executive with a penchant for shouting, dancing, and flaunting his chest hair. To fully embrace this character, Tom Cruise took on a drastic change in appearance, shaving his head completely bald. The sight of Cruise as Les Grossman, bald and unrecognizable, was a revelation for many fans.
Unraveling the Iconic Tom Cruise Hair in Top Gun
The exact styling products used to achieve Tom Cruise's hairstyle in Top Gun haven't been disclosed, but it likely involved a combination of hair gel or pomade to slick back the hair and provide hold. Dive into the iconic Tom Cruise hairstyle from Top Gun. Explore its impact on pop culture, the making process and its lasting legacy.
Tom Cruise'S 14 Best Hairstyles and Haircuts
Tom Cruise is a complete icon and his long hair at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival is making everyone weak at their knees! This hairstyle's basic concept is short and scruffy. The lengthier length through the top is swept up and back for a simple finish, while the sides are swept back for a low-fuss touch to the edges.
Suri Cruise, 17, pictured with beautiful long hair as she heads off for
Suri Cruise, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise's daughter looks so grown up as she headed on vacation with mother ahead of her 18th birthday. See photos. The daughter of Tom Cruise lives in New York ...