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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. |