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Tom Cruise apparently decided to temporarily abandon the pretty-boy look and flaunt gray hair (it's natural or made up? I really don't know ...) and an unshaven face when he came to play this role in a film by Michael Mann, which looks like it was tailor-made for Kiefer Sutherland and 20-30 years ago it would have certainly gone to his father, Donald Sutherland.
So what is going on here? Max, a carefree taxi driver and an occasional philosopher (Jamie Foxx in a dramatic role), whose leads a rather boring and mundane life but has dreams of a career owning a successful limousine company, picks up a fare, a beautiful young woman (Jada Pinkett-Smith), who turns out to be a successful lawyer in the middle of a major trial. The two hit it off instantly and exchanging phone numbers. As soon as she gets out of the taxi, another fare gets in - Vincent (Cruise), who presents himself as a businessman in town for one night (the city, by the way, plays in this Movie a role we haven't seen in Movies for a long time). This encounter seems completely random –Vincent, who apparently finds Max's response too slow, is already standing by the door of another taxi when Max sees him and calls him back. Vincent wants to hire Max for one night of errands in the city, with several stops along the way. Max hesitates but agrees, and Vincent turns out to be interesting to talk to and quite a philosopher in his own right.
When a body falls on the roof of Max's taxi after the first stop, things start to get complicated, and the mild mannered businessman turns into a homicidal who will stop at nothing in order to complete the job he was hired to do. All of Max's attempts to escape fail, and he even becomes a suspect in the killings, but when he finds out that the last victim on Vincent's list is the lawyer he loves, he decides to fight back...
The scene in which Max is forced to assume Vincent's identity for a while, and the scenes in which Vincent releases Max from his dependence on his obnoxious boss and his nagging mother (a little like Nicholas Cage and John Travolta in Face Off) are very amusing. The scene where when he finally manages to contact the lawyer and warn her, but she asks stupid questions instead of listening to him, but when she finally does listen the line goes dead, is especially annoying and cliche…
The suspense was there, and even a momentary attempt to misdirect, but once that moment was gone there were no more surprises and the only question left was who would kill who first.
Cruise is really excellent, Foxx a little less, and Pinkett-Smith is too feminine and helpless. But it's still an excellent action Movie that provides two hours of fun. |