Most of us will be familiar with the sports agent, fighter pilot, the sex driven doctor, American fighter and flesh eating vampire who would have thought Cruise could play an unrecognizable assassin. But the persona this time around almost the nullifies the Tom Cruise in him finally. It is finally a character driver actor who feels he is stuck in the wrong part of the town with several death assignments on his hand. His name is Vincent and he skims the whole city executing his assignments with utmost precision. Meanwhile takes a liking to the cities plan and the several shots that add to the drama of the whole film.
But this time he meets up with a cab driver who is not your run of the mill cab driver. He has set a 13 year plan for himself, but is impended with his mother stuck in the hospital and his own self-awareness. The film gives into the several mindless action set pieces filled with beautiful choreography and some interesting dialog writing. Vincent is a vile and merciless killer who does not think twice before killing his victims who he calls his stops. There are some beautiful close ups of each of the characters that givesus a ticket to some of the beautiful action shots.
Vincent begins to lose his cool because of the anger and restlessness exhibited by Jamie Foxx. Everything begins to change after Vincent makes a visit to Jamie‘s mother in the hospital and presents her mother with a bouquet of flowers. This almost changes the whole tempo of the film and also some characteristics of Vincent that wouldn’t have been brought to light if it wasn’t for Jamie‘s character. But Vincent feels lot like someone who has grown to hate humanity and is yet humbled by a coyote that runs down the streets when both the cab driver and he meets up. This is one of the vaguest yet magical moments in the whole film. It feels like the director wanted to put the breaks on the whole plot and use the city as another character. There is also some interesting choice of music with the upbeat Ready Steady go in the now famous club scene. The whole sequence shows what Vincent had to sacrifice as a human being with some of the action shots in this part of the film.
This whole film will be nothing without some of the strongest dialog written for a thriller. It speaks to us in a more psychological way even giving glimpses at how mankind has lost its sense of caring for one another. But there is probably a new dawn that Michael Mann sees in Vincent a sense of direction he wants to show us of a totally new human who might probably in the vaguest way show us to care. He surely chose Tom for a reason and I think it will be fulfilled the more you watch this film over and over again.
