…and movies. Especially movies. I love watching a film, digesting it, then having a good, indepth conversation with someone about it.
For instance, last week, for the first time, I watched Collateral, with Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. It took me a few days to realize that it is now one of my favorite films, and why. Aside from outstanding performances from Cruise and Foxx, it’s a fascinating character study both of the psychopathic assassin Vincent (Cruise) and Max, the taxi-driver (Foxx) Vincent hijacks into a night-long odyssey of killing.
The two characters keep stepping into each other’s roles — Max when he’s forced to pretend he’s a hit-man to Vincent’s employers, Vincent when he forces Max to confront Max’s exploitative boss. Much of the mystery in the film centers on the kind of past that created this handsome, well-dressed, smiling, utterly remorseless and hollow killer, who appears the embodiment of facile white-boy privilege. We get hints in Vincent’s description of his drunk, abusive father, a childhood in and out of a foster care system. In one especially pivotal line, a likely echo of that childhood, Vincent advises Max, “take comfort in the fact that you have no other options.” By the end of the movie, Vincent’s final line in the film is almost heartbreaking.
That’s what I like talking about.
Pam Troy 