TM2YC's 1001 Movies (Chronological up to page 25/post 481)

[TM2YC]

Do you have a Best War Movies list? Either of these qualify?

Definitely qualify. Without giving it too much thought, these are some of my other favourites:

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
Paths of Glory (1957)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Das Boot (1981)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Where Eagles Dare (1968)
The Dam Busters (1954)
Memphis Belle (1990)
Cross of Iron (1977)
The Cranes Are Flying (1957)
Bat*21 (1988)
Salvador (1986)
La Grande Illusion (1937)
Hope and Glory (1987)

...and any of original sixteen 1990s ITV Sharpe TV movies would go on the list.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^You've got a lot of the classics on there. I've recently added the Sharpe movies to my list, which I think are still pretty unknown in the US.
I'd add Platoon, Black Hawk Down, The Last of the Mohicans, 1917, Inglourious Basterds, Braveheart, Hotel Rwanda, We Were Soldiers, Schindler's List, Grave of the Fireflies, Three Kings, Casualties of War, Born on the Fourth of July, Dances With Wolves, Glory, Last Days in Vietnam, Hacksaw Ridge, and Ran... to name a few.

 

[TM2YC]

^You've got a lot of the classics on there. I've recently added the Sharpe movies to my list, which I think are still pretty unknown in the US.
I'd add Platoon, Black Hawk Down, The Last of the Mohicans, 1917, Inglourious Basterds, Braveheart, Hotel Rwanda, We Were Soldiers, Schindler's List, Grave of the Fireflies, Three Kings, Casualties of War, Born on the Fourth of July, Dances With Wolves, Glory, Last Days in Vietnam, Hacksaw Ridge, and Ran... to name a few.

I've not seen 'We were Soldiers' yet but I liked the rest of those films to a greater or lesser degree. I didn't rate 'Black Hawk Down' that highly but everyone else does, so I should probably give it another go. Similarly I didn't think 'Three Kings' was that good but it's on the 1001 list so I'll be giving that one another chance. Gibson's 'Braveheart' and 'Hacksaw Ridge' are a bit silly dramatically but the man sure knows how to direct a war! A couple more I forgot:

Hamburger Hill (1987)
The Dirty Dozen (1967)
Their Finest (2016)
The Cruel Sea (1953)
Zulu (1964)
The Great Escape (1963)
Spartacus (1960)
Babylon 5: In the Beginning (1998)

Some films are difficult to classify. 'Gladiator' has one of the all-time great movie battles at the beginning but the film is about what happens after the war has ended. The Star Wars trilogy are technically war movies too, more so RotJ because after the opening rescue sequence the main focus of the plot is war (unlike the other two where war is the backdrop for adventure).

If you're going to watch Sharpe you'll have to decide if you want to stop at 1997's 'Sharpe's Waterloo' the original end to the series (and to that historical war), or also watch the two India-set movies they came back and made in 2006/2008. They're nowhere near as good but it's a few more hours with the two main characters.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^Man, you do love the classics. "Their Finest (2016)" is the first film you've listed made within the last 30 years, and I hadn't even heard of it. Gibson for sure goes for emotion and a character arc first. He creates heroes rather than complicated, balanced overviews. Damn if I don't dig it though. His influence is definitely felt on We Were Soldiers, where there are rumors of him virtually co-directing with buddy Randall Wallace. It's a hidden gem, imho.

I thought about how to class some movies, for example Spartacus, which I decided was more about starting a revolution than fighting a war. Same reason I didn't mention Les Mis. Also decided against any sci-fi. But whatevs, good films are always welcome. I love me some Sean Bean, so I'll give Sharpe a go, though I've gotten several recommendations to definitely stop at '97, if not before. We'll see how it goes. You'll have to update your war list after you revisit Three Kings.

 

[TM2YC]

^Man, you do love the classics.

Not just war movies, I generally prefer the classic, analogue, 35mm era of film on every level. Although this preference is especially felt in the war genre because nobody is going to let a modern director have 10 jets, 20 helicopters, 40 tanks, 50 megatons of stage explosives, 100 gallons of fake blood and ten thousand extras, when it can be done more cheaply, easily and safely in a computer.

Dunkirk was very good but has little actual warfare and 1917 was a fine movie but suffered from being made in the digital era. If 1917 had been shot in the mid 90s when digital FX would've allowed them to stitch together those long takes seamlessly but still have to shoot everything else for real, I would have liked it better. Something like 'Saving Private Ryan' was probably made at the peak moment, when you still had the best of the old and new film-making techniques.

Another one I could mention...

The Killing Fields (1984)

...which has a real power because your brain just knows there isn't a single frame of SFX but you're still watching a full-scale war going on screen.

Have you seen 1970's 'Waterloo'? I've not but I keep hearing how jaw dropping an vast the battle scenes are. I do own it on DVD in an Orson Welles boxset but haven't got round to it yet.

"Their Finest (2016)" is the first film you've listed made within the last 30 years, and I hadn't even heard of it.

Highly recommended home-front movie about a woman trying to write a propaganda film about Dunkirk while London is being bombed. So it's both a war movie and a movie about war film-making.

I love me some Sean Bean, so I'll give Sharpe a go, though I've gotten several recommendations to definitely stop at '97, if not before.

Yeah that's right. Sharpe tales off a bit when the Napoleonic war winds down but it comes back strong for the final 'Waterloo' film. I was rewatching this great Waterloo scene of Sharpe being furious with Marvel's Paul Bettany (one of many idiot ruling-class officers he has to contend with):

EDIT: Also...

Crimson Tide (1995)
The Hunt for Red October (1990)

...are some terrific submarine warfare movies I forgot about.

 

[mnkykungfu]

The Killing Fields is def on my list. I know it's going to be a hard watch, as I had a really hard time being there, walking around. Seeing the photos and mountains of skulls is burned in my memory.

Have not heard of Waterloo. A great amount of British cinema simply isn't widely known to Americans, and honestly I think I'm one of those that can't quite access it the same way that Europeans do. So much of it just comes off as incredibly slow and dry to me, much like most films pre-New Hollywood. I'm working to cultivate appreciation for it though, so I'll have to add Their Finest to the list.

 

[Gaith]

In terms of recent war films, I'd like to salute Testament of Youth, a harrowing and devastating, but also strikingly beautiful, adaptation of a memoir, in which no weapons fire is depicted.

 

[TM2YC]

This one is technically a war film I suppose (although it has no actual warfare in it) and it's definitely genius, so throw this on the list too...

M*A*S*H (1970)
Director: Robert Altman
Country: United States
Length: 116 minutes
Type: Crime, Drama

I can never choose between the cast of the film and the cast of the TV show, they're both so perfect. I'm a big Marx Brothers fan and their style is all over this Robert Altman comedy. It's not got Alan Alda doing a 1-to-1 Groucho Marx impression but the irreverent surgery scenes are straight out of 'A Day at the Races', the crooked Football match is just like the one in 'Horse Feathers' and the way our anti-heroes ridicule and frustrate authority figures, as if insubordination was a sport is like 'Duck Soup'. Altman plays most of the humour like the Martinis, exceptionally dry, so if you blink you might miss some of the gags. For some reason, I always love the beautifully casual and slightly sozzled way that Donald Sutherland's "Hawkeye" rolls off the line "tracheal-esophageal fistula". If I had to find fault, the shower prank on "Hot lips" is mistimed and unearned, so feels a bit mean spirited as a consequence. It comes right after "Trapper" tells her "Hot Lips, you may be a pain in the ass, but you're a damn good nurse" but before she gets swept up with the team spirit of the Football match and gets romantic with "Duke" and unlike previous pranks, it's not preceded by her doing anything deserving of revenge. I wonder if it could be moved slightly earlier in the film, to when her and Frank are still causing trouble?

I think I first got into the film and TV show via Manic Street Preachers' 1992 UK top-10 single cover of the theme song:

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The American Friend (1977)
Director: Wim Wenders
Country: Germany
Length: 127 minutes
Type: Noir, Crime, Drama

With Bruno Ganz playing terminally ill, would-be assassin Jonathan Zimmermann and Dennis Hopper playing serial killer Tom Ripley (of 'The talented Mr...' fame), I was expecting thrills and wild performances. So I wasn't sure about the sedate start to Wim Wenders' film but it's taking time to setup the two characters. After Zimmermann slights Ripley at a chance meeting he secretly schemes to get him killed by involving him in mob assassinations but when Zimmermann later graciously apologises for his rudeness, an unusual friendship develops. So Ripley is forced to decide if he wants to save Zimmermann from the danger he's been put in. This frenemy dynamic between the two is subtly and sensitively played by the two actors. As the drama and action ramps up, so does the directorial style, low key and documentarian at first, then bringing in more elaborate camera moves and neo-Noir atmosphere towards the end. The two assassination sequences are incredibly tense, not least because Zimmermann is so bad at it. Since he was casting fellow director Hopper, Wenders choose to have film directors play all the mobsters, including Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller.

 

[TM2YC]

Rushmore (1998)
Director: Wes Anderson
Country: United States
Length: 93 minutes
Type: Comedy

Jason Schwartzman's performance as uber-eccentric 15-year old Max is the highlight of Wes Anderson's 2nd feature. He's 100% a pr*ck and 100% lovable at the same time. The rest of the cast are wonderful too, including Bill Murray doing the trademark deadpan, sarcastic thing he does so well (when he's trying). I'm pretty sure I first watched it after loving 'The Royal Tenenbaums', so I was a little underwhelmed by this more low-key film. However, watching it again after growing occasionally tired of some of Anderson's unrelentingly whimsical later films and stylistic ticks, I really savoured the pleasures of this emotionally grounded and subtlety witty comedy-drama. As per usual, the soundtrack provided by Mark Mothersbaugh and an eclectic list of 60s pop classics is to die for. 'Oh Yoko!' by John Lennon and 'The Wind' by Cat Stevens are two of my all time favourite tracks. Max's Vietnam war school play is hilarious in it's scope and not all that outlandish given the subsequent efforts by the North Bergen kids who put on 'Alien'.

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The Housemaid (1960)
Director: Kim Ki-young
Country: South Korea
Length: 108 minutes
Type: Erotic, Thriller, Horror, Drama

I was only a few minutes into this early South Korean classic when I thought "Hey this seems a bit like 'Parasite'" but of course Bong Joon-ho is a fan. An aspirational middle-class family employ a live-in maid to help while the wife is pregnant but when the husband has an affair with the maid the family begins to disintegrate. The presence of a steep set of stairs and a bottle of rat poison are highlighted early on for the audience so they can spend the rest of the film glued to the screen wondering when they are going to come into play. The way Kim Ki-young films the 360-degree house set from outside and within felt very Hitchcock, accentuated by the unsettling Herrmann-style piano score. All the occupants of the claustrophobic house are deeply flawed and complex (even the cruel children) so your sympathies constantly shift between characters. It's tempting to call it a perfect psychological horror masterpiece but I'm really not sure about the 4th-wall-break ending.

 

[TM2YC]

Paris, Texas (1984)
Director: Wim Wenders
Country: Germany / United States
Length: 147 minutes
Type: Drama

Harry Dean Stanton plays Travis, a man who mysteriously walks out of the Texas desert after 4-years absence. At first he's mute and unresponsive but his brother comes to pick him up and bring him back to his old life. For most of the film it's not explained what caused his disappearance, it could be trauma, madness, a breakdown, or even aliens. What starts as a delightful and whimsical story of a hesitant amnesiac father bonding with his estranged 7-year old son, then turns into a dark exploration of a doomed past relationship. Both halves work powerfully but do feel mismatched in tone somewhat. The 2.5 hour runtime felt stretched and Ry Cooder's slide guitar sounds great at first but gets repetitive. Despite some of those little flaws, I really liked the film overall, the off-kilter characters and dreamy atmosphere are particularly strong. Plus of course Stanton is incredible as usual.

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The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Director: Mel Gibson
Country: United States
Length: 127 minutes
Type: Religious, Drama, Horror

I remember this being very controversial and massively successful at the time but I'll leave aside questions of it being antisemitic and racist because if it is, I don't think it was intentionally so, despite Mel Gibson's subsequent drunken outbursts. I didn't like the film at the time and I still find it boring. I toyed with re-watching this without subtitles, as Gibson had originally intended when he conceived the project but it doesn't work without them. You could easily follow the story and meaning of the scenes because it's so well known but it's edited in a way that needs you to understand individual lines, in order to understand the actor's emotional responses to them. It's a shame he wasn't more bold and went with that idea, a modern "silent" film with everybody speaking dead languages and no subtitles would have been a unique experience. At over two hours it's way too long and annoyingly repetitive. If you took out all the slow-motion, the movie would be 90-minutes (I doubt that is an exaggeration), then if you took out all the reaction shots of the disciples looking sad it would be an hour and finally if you took out all the shots of Jesus being whipped, kicked and stabbed it would be 15 minutes! You don't get any sense of poetry and awe out of Gibson's "torture porn" telling of the story, you just feel that his blood-lust cannot be slaked. It's like Gibson is getting off on how much he can cinematically defile and punish Jesus. The performances are all excellent, especially Hristo Naumov Shopov as Pontius Pilate but the decision to make the Roman soldiers be so insanely and joyfully cruel becomes laughable. I think the most powerful moment in any crucifixion film is usually the repentant thief next to Jesus on the cross and so it proves here, a rare moment that Gibson handles with subtlety (until a crow pecks out a man's eyeball in the next shot).

 

[TM2YC]

Dances with Wolves (1990)
Director: Kevin Costner
Country: United States
Length: 181 minutes
Type: Western

I can't remember which version I've watched before but this time it was the Theatrical Cut (not the 4-hour Extended Cut). Director/writer/star Kevin Costner crafts a true old-fashioned Western Epic, which unfolds at it's own poetic pace across three engrossing hours. Costner leaves long passages for John Barry's magnificent score to work its magic. It's amazing that Costner made a film this huge in scope and rich in character on his first try. I should really check out his other two movies, the infamous mega-bomb 'The Postman' and the better reviewed Western 'Open Range'. His film-making might be classical, referencing shots from 'Gone with the Wind' and 'The Searchers' but the subject of the story was modern and revisionist for the time, focusing on the historical persecution of Native Americans, set in 1863, with the "indians" as the heroes and the "cowboys" as the villains. Costner plays disillusioned Union Lt. John J. Dunbar, who requests a posting to the furthest extreme of the frontier, so he can see it "before it's gone". He actually ends up finding the people that live in the vanishing space beyond, a Sioux tribe. The emerging friendship between Dunbar and Graham Greene's 'Kicking Bird' is the heart of the movie.

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Natural Born Killers (1994)
Director: Oliver Stone
Country: United States
Length: 122 minutes
Type: Crime, Satire

Quentin Tarantino has disowned 'Natural Born Killers' because his script was rewritten but he should watch it again because it's very him in a lot of ways. The intercutting of different size film formats, extreme high-contrast back and white, next to saturated colour, plus a few animated sequences, is like 'Kill Bill' 9-years early. What it does lack is his touch for beautiful dialogue (which is probably what he felt was cut from his vision of the film) and his good taste framing and editing. Oliver Stone's shooting and editing is frenetic and chaotic (deliberately so), framing 90% of the film in Dutch-angles. The amount of visual style thrown at every scene and line is impressive but it looses a lot of it's initial "wham bam" impact after an hour or two. The scene in a motel room where a TV screen is superimposed on a window is extraordinary, the perfect expression of the media satire Stone is going for. When our outlaw killer anti-heroes 'Mickey & Mallory' finally do get captured the movie grinds to a halt, lacking that forward momentum that the 'road-movie' genre injects. It then turns into a cacophonous mess of Tommy Lee Jones, Tom Sizemore and Robert Downey, Jr. screaming and babbling over each other. I'm sure I've only seen the censored BBFC Theatrical Cut before (even that had problems being released) but this time I watched the Unrated 'Director's Cut' but it doesn't differ significantly. Despite some flaws, I think 'Natural Born Killers' slots in well to Tarantino's expanded filmography alongside 'True Romance' and 'From Dusk till Dawn'.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^Excellent reviews. Totally agree with all your insights (though I'm warmer on Stone than most, and probably on his NBK direction, too.) For Costner, I think Open Range is such an underappreciated gem... a real throwback to gorgeous, slow build Westerns with strong, silent types. For The Postman, may I suggest you watch @bionicbob 's Expedited Edition first? It's one of the few fanedits that totally turns around a bomb, imho. I fear if you watch the theatrical first, it'll take you years to gather the strength to watch the fanedit (and I say that as a begrudging fan of the theatrical film.)

 

[TM2YC]

^ 'Open Range' is on Amazon Prime so I might give that a watch soon. When a film is a notorious bomb like 'The Postman' I want to watch the version that bombed first from a historical point of view but I've no doubt that @bionicbob 's edit is better (they always are!).

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Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
Director: Barry Levinson
Country: United States
Length: 121 minutes
Type: War, Comedy, Drama

Compared to 'MASH', 'Good Morning, Vietnam' is considerably less anarchic, daring and funny but it makes up for some of that with more emotional sincerity, character complexity and effective story telling. I've never found Robin Williams' brand of manic motor-mouth comedy all that funny but I love him as an actor, gifted with enormous range, so the parts of the film that leaned into the former tested my patience sometime, while the bits that relied on his acting skills worked were bang on. However, when he slows down, Williams delivers some zinger sarcastic one-liners directed at his character's superior officers. He's almost out done by Bruno Kirby, the less funny his pompous character was, the more I laughed. The big plot twist totally took me by surprise, I wasn't looking out for that kind of depth in a rambunctious comedy. The 'What a Wonderful World' montage is beautiful and sad. I'll definitely be watching 'Good Morning, Vietnam' again some time.

 

[bionicbob]

^ 'Open Range' is on Amazon Prime so I might give that a watch soon. When a film is a notorious bomb like 'The Postman' I want to watch the version that bombed first from a historical point of view but I've no doubt that @bionicbob 's edit is better (they always are!).

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I highly recommend OPEN RANGE, an excellent and often over looked western. As for THE POSTMAN, I of course, have a real soft spot for the flick. While it is imperfect, I think critics of the time where unfairly savage about it.

 

[TM2YC]

^ Dammit, 'Open Range' has gone from Prime now .

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Fargo (1996)
Director: Joel Coen
Country: United States
Length: 98 minutes
Type: Comedy, Crime, Thriller

'Fargo' is still as good as it was 25-years ago, back when it felt like the world sat up and really took note "You know, I think these Coen boys might be geniuses". It made Indie stars out of everyone like Frances McDormand, William H. Macy and Peter Stormare (Steve Buscemi was already a star). McDormand's Police Chief Marge Gunderson is such an amazing character, she has the crime solving ability of Sherlock Holmes but with the "matter of fact" demeanour of somebody doing their weekly shop. It's an unusual choice to not introduce her, your main character, until a third of the way in but it works perfectly. Macy is the standout, playing a tragic and pathetic man who has somehow engineered a web of financial fraud and deceit without any ability to lie convincingly, or to think ahead. The theme of the movie is "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men, gang aft agley" but Macy's plans are not the best and he's definitely a mouse. His actions are despicable, w reckless and callous on paper but the way Macy performs it, you feel nothing but sympathy for the naive fool. I always feel there is a cold, brutal 'Silence of the Lambs' vibe to the film, beneath the blackly comic exterior. The awkward meet-up between Marge and an old school friend is one eccentric diversion too many, it's funny and captivating but has little to do with the plot. Other than that, this is a damned near perfect movie.

 

[TM2YC]

Das Boot (1981)
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Country: Germany
Length: 308 minutes
Type: War, Drama

This time I re-watched the 4.5-hour TV version which you can get on blu-ray from Germany (with optional English dub if you're a philistine and English subtitles). It's divided up into six episodes but it's one continuos unbroken narrative like the other two shorter versions. Despite it being almost exactly double the length of the original 1981 Theatrical Cut and full of long extra dialogue sequences, I found it more intense and exhilarating. The runtime flies by! You get to know so many of the crew, their personalities, their fears, their hopes and how they cope in a crisis, so you really feel the terror along with them. The opening and closing sequences aside, nothing is shot for real, it's all on a set, or back projection and models. Yet the submarine interior set is so richly detailed, enveloping, atmospheric and claustrophobic that you can't believe it's not shot on a real vessel, the illusion is complete. Steven Spielberg rented out the exterior full-scale sub and re-used the submarine pen setups for 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' while 'Das Boot' was still being shot. Klaus Doldinger's synth score is incredible and the sound mix is so important, using every creak of the hull, drip of water, fearful breath and hum of enemy propellers to build suspense.

The cast are faultless. Of course Jürgen Prochnow's stern Captain in the centre. It's all about "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown", the weight of carrying out orders he doesn't believe in, from leaders he hates, the lives of his crew and the literal pressure of death around him is written on his face. Martin Semmelrogge plays my favourite character, the vulgar mischievous Enigma coding officer. Erwin Leder is mesmerising as the obsessive mechanic Johann, the quivering, hyperventilating horror on his face when he snaps from fear is truly disturbing. This time I felt sorry for the new young 1st Officer (played by Hubertus Bengsch), he's a Nazi party true-believer at the start, having come from his family in South America to join the "glorious struggle" he's heard about. This leads to him being distrusted and isolated from the rest of the tightly knit crew. There's this tragic shot where only we see him wake up and for a moment his guard is down and he looks as exhausted and dishevelled as everyone else, then he catches himself and straightens himself out, back to the image of upright purity he still believes in. It's a ridiculous and pathetic moment for the character. You slowly watch him become disillusioned with the lies he's been told, until he finally lets himself go and loosens up but he'll never be a part of the crew by then. In the later scene where the officers go onto a resupply boat, it's notable that when greeted with an enthusiastic "Heil Hitler" he just looks blankly and doesn't return the salute. I have to say, in the opening bordello sequence the drunk-acting by all the cast, especially Otto Sander, is some of the best and funniest put on film. 'Das Boot' just might be the best ever WW2 film but it's got a lot of competition.

I can't choose between Klaus Doldinger's ominous main theme...

...or his heart-pounding "chase" theme...

 

[Racerx1969]

Great, now you're going to make me go search for that version. I think I've only seen the English dubbed theatrical, and thinking that was all there was available (aside from the original German language version of course). But I recall it being the best submarine movie ever.

 

[TM2YC]

Great, now you're going to make me go search for that version. I think I've only seen the English dubbed theatrical, and thinking that was all there was available (aside from the original German language version of course). But I recall it being the best submarine movie ever.

This is the 2-disc version I got with the TV cut: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Das-Boot-Blu-ray/108871/

But this big 8-disc version has it too and the other 2 cuts: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Das-Boot-Blu-ray/219250/

 

[Gaith]

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Every scene is a comedy classic and I could probably quote the script verbatim but this time I thought the lack of a proper connected story/plot does sap some of the energy in the middle.

Hm. I agree the first half is filled with gut-busting scenes, but I admit I've never found the The Knights Who Say "Ni!" scenes particularly funny, and I'm by no means hostile to non sequitur humor. Indeed, the first half is so great, it almost sabotages the second half, in that one is tired of laughing by that point, but, unlike Life of Brian, one isn't particularly invested in the story or characters.

I once proposed a heretical fan edit cutting out the Ni Knights as well as the Lancelot/Swamp Castle scenes - not because I don't like the latter, but because I thought the ultraviolence of its resolution detracts from the violence of the Rabbit of Caerbannog stuff later on. I now think cutting all Swamp Castle scenes would be going too far, but would still be interested in trimming out the Ni Knights.

 

[TM2YC]

Manhunter (1986)
Director: Michael Mann
Country: United States
Length: 120 minutes
Type: Psychological, Thriller

Initial reviews of Michael Mann's 'Manhunter' were mixed and it bombed badly, then the utter genius, Oscar glory and stellar box-office of the follow up 1991 narrative sequel 'The Silence of the Lambs' overshadowed it some more but it's been critically reappraised strongly since then. I'd not watched 'Manhunter' since the 90s, so I was curious to see if did hold up well now. Sadly not, it's a decent serial-killer drama on it's own merits but nothing that special compared to the superior TSotL. The synth score is overbearing and the production design is very dated to 1986... and I love synth scores and 80s movies. Tom Noonan is the highlight as the serial killer, every movement of muscle in his body is creepy and awkward, yet he elicits sympathy too. William Petersen is a little too intense as the hero, Dennis Farina is horribly miscast and as much as I love Brian Cox, his Dr. Hannibal "Lecktor" is not in the same league as Anthony Hopkins. It's an interesting performance though, very relaxed and direct in an off putting way, as opposed to Hopkins' controlled and vampiric interpretation. I spotted Frankie Faison playing a cop at the end, before he also went on to memorably play 'Barney' in TSotL (and got a promotion to police chief in 'The Wire' ). I watched the Theatrical Cut, rather than the Director's Cut.

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Collateral (2004)
Director: Michael Mann
Country: United States
Length: 120 minutes
Type: Thriller, Action, Drama

'Collateral' feels like a B-movie script, elevated by an A-list Director (Michael Mann) and a quality cast. Tom Cruise plays a high-level assassin who forces LA cab driver Jamie Foxx to drive him around between kills. The premise is just about credible to begin with but keeps getting more outlandish and contrived due to the plot needing excuses for the two characters to stay together. The movie takes 20-minutes to really begin the thriller plot and then outstays it's welcome in the last act, so I think 90-minutes would've been better than the excessive 2-hour runtime. This was shot on early digital cameras and it really shows it's age as a result. Cruise's detached hitman Vincent is a fascinating character study, he might be simply a psychopathic killer, or it could be mild autism or obsessive compulsion of some kind. He seems to be reluctant to interact with other humans but is capable of at least feigning kindness and seems obsessed with routines, leading to some irrational decisions.