Collateral - 4K Steelbook Review

Movie
Michael Mann may not be the king of action/dramas but he has made one massive name for himself over the years, and while I LOOOVE Collateral it has very large shoes to fill considering Heat is such an incredibly hard film to top. I love his attention to detail and desire to use raw and gritty tactics to the gunfights, as well as his very methodical way of creating likable villains. He creates characters you love to hate, but also hate to love, and does it in such a way that you feel pity for the bad guys, even though you know full well that they’re despicable people. Collateral is one of his mid range works, and while it’s never as epic or intense as Heat, he manages to make a taught thriller that gives us a rare opportunity to see Tom Cruise as a bad guy for once.

Everything is business as usual for cabby Max (Jamie Foxx). He’s got a few fares, and even finds a spirit of kindness in Assistant District Attorney Annie (Jada Pinckett-Smith) who marvels at his desire to start an upscale limousine service, and even offers him a hand of friendship. However, Max’s night takes a turn for the worse when his next pickup is a man named Vincent (Tom Cruise), who offers the cabby a few hundred bucks on the sly to take him to 5 different stops and then back to the airport so he can get back home. A little suspicious of the man, Max decides to take the money and complete the 5 stops, but soon figures out that he’s over his head. Vincent is actually a hitman, and the 5 stops he wants to make are going to add up to 5 dead bodies as well.

Desperate to get out, Max soon finds himself the unwilling chauffeur for the out of town hit man. Hot on their tails is undercover detective Fanning (Mark Ruffalo) and as long as the duo can keep ahead of the cops, it looks like it’s going to be a bloody night.

Jamie Foxx is near flawless as Max, a regular guy who’s suddenly caught up in a world of violence, death and intrigue, and his attempts of getting out come across as extremely believable. His novice nature is the perfect foil to Tom Cruise’s cold and precise professionalism. Cruise absolutely steals the entire movie with his likably evil hit man Vincent persona. Cruise just revels in the opportunity to play a psychopath, and does it with gusto. Vincent is so delightful and charming his speech patterns, to the point where you almost don’t realize how disturbing and twisted what he is saying actually is until it’s too late. I hate to say it, but Cruise as a villain is almost better than Cruise as a hero.

Collateral lives and dies by it’s characters, but Michal Mann is so incredibly detail oriented with his film making process that all of the mundane experiences and scenes in the film add up to one of the most incredibly realistic hit man films. The acting is raw and emotional, while the action is so grounded and realistic in the tactics, that it just doesn’t feel like a traditional action movie. Even the final gunfight is so unstylized and raw, that it’s over before it has a chance to begin. It’s a talent of Michael Mann that makes his films so relatable and watchable, even some 16 years later.




Rating:

Rated R for violence and language




4K Video: Video:

Collateral is never going to be a movie that is going to be seen as eye candy. Michael Mann has a very distinctive look to his films, and Collateral is no different. It’s shot digitally in the early 2000s, showcases lots of digital noise during the night time filming, and has a rather desaturated gray look that is tinged with blue and yellowish hues. Now, that’s not to say that the disc looks bad by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it looks excellent in many ways. It’s just that the visual aesthetics of the film don’t lend itself towards the pop and glamour of HDR UHD. The visual clarity that the film boasts is nicer than the Blu-ray by far, a we can see much more intimate detailing of faces, as well as the background objects such as Max’s cab. The real benefit of the film happens to be the HDR in it’s subtle ways combined with the extra bitrate and space that the HEVC codec allows for. The digital noise and black levels had some issues in 1080p, but in 2160p they are much less of an issue. Blacks still show lots of noise, but it’s less swarming, and the black levels aren’t nearly as crushed. The dark nature of the film and the obvious desaturation don’t really allow for color outside of yellow street lamps, and cool blues of the night, but there are the occasional splashes of bright colors, such as the yellow and red cab, or the purple glow of the night club. While it isn’t ever going to be a show stopper, Collateral is a very real upgrade over the Blu-ray and well worth the watch.







Audio:

The same 5.1 DTS-HD MA track as the Blu-ray is transported across (no Dolby Atmos this time) and my thoughts on it are the same as when I watched the Blu-ray a few years back. It’s a good track, but not a stellar one. The film is very dialog intensive, with long stretches where nothing but the score and the two lead characters talking come through. The sparse moments of violence are usually brutal and intense, with gunshots ringing out, and the sounds of a train or night club rumbling at full power. Bass is good, but I’ve always felt that it’s a bit lacking for the type of movie it is. It’s always present and noticeable, but it just lacks that raw visceral power that I would expect. Vocals are always nicely placed up front, and even though this is a very dialog heavy film for a lot of the runtime, it still showcases plenty of mild to moderate sound activity due to the hustle and bustle of down town Los Angeles.






Extras:

• Audio Commentary by Director Michael Mann
• City of Night: The Making of Collateral
• Special Delivery
• Deleted Scene with Commentary
• Shooting on Location: Annie's Office
• Tom Cruise & Jamie Foxx Rehearse
• Visual FX: MTA Train







Collateral is an underrated Michael Mann gem that may not be one of the Oscar greats, but contains on e of my favorite Tom Cruise performances of all times. It’s gritty, raw, violent, and completely absorbing every time I watch it. The heavily stylized film wasn’t one that I was expecting to be a great 4K UHD disc, but it turned out to be much better than expected. Now, if you're wondering if their is any difference between this and the 2020 "standard" release, then the answer is "the steelbook case", that's it. The discs are literally identical in every way except for the silk screening, and the steelbook case is geared directly for collectors. so my reccomendation would be to get whichever version of the 4K you like package wise, or simply get the cheapest one. BOTH discs are very good, and make for a good watch.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Tom Cruise, Jamie Fox, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Peter Berg, Mark Ruffalo, Bruce McGill
Directed by: Michael Mann
Written by: Stuart Beattie
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 HEVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, French, German DD 2.0
Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, German
Studio: Paramount
Rated: R
Runtime: 120 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: August 6th 2024

Michael Boeker said:

I just purchased Collateral yesterday on Kaleidescape.

This is a fascinating article that goes into great depth on how Michael Mann and Paul Cameron (director of photography) made their camera choices and how he filmed Collateral:
https://theasc.com/magazine/aug04/collateral/page1.html

Click to expand...

I rememer that article from YEARS ago. it's a good read on Mann. He was certainly different, but definitely an aueter in how he filmed his movie. There's a reason why I think this is one of Tom Cruise's best acted films, and part of it was MIchael Mann