The only way I can start talking about this one is how it’s joined Proof over the past few days in my thoughts. It’s not a great movie, but there’s something about it that really got my thoughts churning. It’s Jamie Foxx’s character. On the surface, and it satisfies as such, this movie is a plain old action thriller. But there’s something Alice-in-Wonderland- or Peter-Pan-ish about it to me: Tom Cruise representing surreal harshness of the real world; Foxx, a young man ‘running out of time’, spending too much time in daydreaming, dragged into that world and forced to deal with it.

I imagine I’ll enjoy the movie more the next time I see it with this in mind; previously I think I’d been trying to take it as more realistic, and the plot just seemed a little too convenient to me, the way it all comes together in the end, etc. The way Michael Mann sometimes empties his scenes of all people but his key players doesn’t help much, it just comes across a little video-game-ish.

The whole thing is perhaps ultimately a little too hollow for my liking. Even though there are some really funny moments, in the end it’s just a bitch-slap from hyper-reality for anyone procrastinating their life away. Fantastically shot, scored, etc, though.

15th August 2004:

There’s something inescapably fascinating about movies as bare-knuckled as this. Sam Peckinpah did it all the time in the 70s, Michael Mann’s been building to it. It’s the last place you’d expect to find Tom Cruise, and his is the last character you’d expect to find cool. This is rock-hard film making 101 and from the moment Jamie Foxx starts up his taxi cab, you know you’re in for an evening where anything is possible.

Tom Cruise looks old in this movie – I’m not talking about the obvious hair thing that he did, it’s in the eyes, in the way he holds himself, everything. His character is like all of the best in Michael Mann’s movies – professional, haunting, frightening, frightened, someone maybe everyone but him wants to be. Together with the few other main characters in the movie, they all have one thing in common, they all have something missing – they’re all a little lost.

There’s so much going on in every scene that it’s a testament to Michael Mann’s skill how easy it all is to follow. He creates a chaotic L.A., but a coherent chaos, at least, and one I’ll be glad to revisit any number of times in the future.

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