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 LA. He must find a way to save both himself and one last victim. [TRAILER]

STEVEN SNYDER'S REVIEW

"Collateral" joins the short list of films that I have watched self-destruct before my eyes - a prestigious list of such titles as "Gangs Of New York," "Signs" and even "Cold Mountain." Just how the final ten minutes of this movie came to be are a mystery to me, and those who go to see this film would be far better served leaving around the time that hit man Tom Cruise and kidnapee Jaime Foxx emerge from a dance club.

Now granted, I expected a lot from this movie. Michael Mann is one of my all-time favorite directors, his "Heat", "The Insider" and "Ali" (to a lesser degree) standing as some of the finest films of recent years. But while "Collateral" starts promisingly enough, and untwists itself in a deliciously patient and observant cycle, the ending is so obvious, transparent, and trite that I left the movie incensed that Mann had let things get so out of control.

Just watch how delicious the film's opening moments are. The audience is given an abbreviated, obscured look at Vincent (Tom Cruise), a man we will learn little about but come to fear, respect and even pity to an astonishing degree. The film then cuts to Max (Jamie Foxx), a cabbie who is far from the stereotype. He loves his cab, keeps it in pristine condition, and makes polite conversation with his passengers. In one charming, extended sequence, he gives a female lawyer a ride to downtown Los Angeles, their banter gradually and believably growing into flirtations that culminate in her giving this cabbie her number.

Similarly, his more stilted and reserved interactions with Vincent, his next passenger, slowly reveal truths about both characters. Vincent is cold, calculated and, we quickly learn, a killer, who has paid Max to stay with him all night and drive him around to the five murders he must finish before sunrise. In perfectly paced performances, both Foxx and Cruise keep their characters withdrawn and restrained, driven to revelations through sudden bursts of action and violence that Vincent brings upon them both.

Incorporating digital video to brilliant effect, Mann gives the film an intensity that others would have failed to find in "Collateral's" cramped, confined spaces. This movie never feels more alive than when in the taxi, staring straight on or cutting between the equally suspicious and intrigued Max and Vincent. Much like a story by Patrice LeConte ("Man On The Train"), the heart of this film does not lie with Vincent, in his mission, murders or cat-and-mouse games with police. Rather, the acts of violence serve to facilitate character growth and interaction, and "Collateral" is most unpredictable when it is inside the cab, listening and looking.

I would then ask why, about halfway through the film, does Mann start to cut to so many other people. There are the local police, who start to connect the night's corpses, the federal agents, who are involved for reasons still indiscernible by me, and finally a ludicrous twist in the story that brings back the innocent passenger from the film's beginning.

It is hard to describe just how bad the ending of this film is. For the longest time, I watched as Mann almost channeled Quentin Tarantino in using violence to provoke and probe his characters. But then, just as the film becomes its most philosophical and just as Max finally, and inspirationally, takes control of his cab and his fate for the first time, Mann leaves the characters and their interactions in the dust, moving on instead to a stalker scene straight out of a horror film, a foot chase and a firefight.

And did I mention that all of this is fueled by - get this - a cell phone that cannot find reception for a good ten minutes and then dies as its battery runs out of power? Yes, in an age of hundred-hour cell phone batteries, and in the middle of the second largest city of the country, the climax of a 2004 film resides with a cell phone that won't work.

Michael, Tom, Jamie, and Stuart (Stuart Beattie, of "Pirates of the Caribbean" wrote the screenplay), why did you let this happen? Why didn't you stop things and set them right? This movie should have ended in the cab, not in a hail of bullets. The climax should have been about characters and dialogue, not blood and bullets. The ending you have given us is so bad that it ruins everything earlier in the film. It makes the rest feel like a setup, like a ploy, and at the end of the day this ending ruins what could have been another high-mark of recent American cinema.

It's heartbreaking, and even maddening when the first five minutes of a film are its best.

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