Includes the films Collateral, Days Of Thunder, Minority Report,
Top and War Of The Worlds.
.com
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Collateral
Collateral offers a change of pace for Tom Cruise as a ruthless
contract killer, but that's just one of many reasons to recommend
this well-crafted thriller. It's from Michael Mann, after all,
and the director's stellar track record with crime thrillers
(Thief, Manhunter, and especially Heat) guarantees a rich
combination of intelligent plotting, well-drawn characters, and
escalating tension, beginning here when icy hit-man Vincent
(Cruise) recruits cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him
through a nocturnal tour of Los Angeles, during which he will
execute five people in a 10-hour spree. While Stuart Beattie's
screenplay deftly combines character study with raw
bursts of action (in keeping with Mann's directorial trademark),
Foxx does the best work of his career to date (between his
excellent performance in Ali and his title-role showcase in Ray),
and Cruise is fiercely convincing as an ultra-disciplined
sociopath. Jada Pinkett-Smith rises above the limitations of a
supporting role, and Mann directs with the confidence of a
master, turning L.A. into a third major character (much as it was
in the Mann-produced TV series Robbery Homicide Division).
Collateral is a bit slow at first, but as it develops subtle
themes of elusive dreams and lives on the edge, it shifts into
overdrive and races, with breathtaking precision, toward a
nail-biting climax. --Jeff Shannon
Days of Thunder
With Days of Thunder, director Tony Scott tried to do for the
Indy 500 what he did for the U.S. Air Force with Top . But
without Top 's go-go soundtrack and visual feats, Scott merely
ends up with a Tom Cruise vehicle that's out of .
Cruise plays (what else?) a cocky, upstart stock-car racer who
faces down ruthless racing nents. Nicole Kidman, Robert
Duvall, Cary Elwes, and Randy Quaid do the laps around this
movie's tiresome track with Cruise, while director Scott attempts
to propel the action along with his trademark visceral, gritty
but glamorous visual style.
Days of Thunder is notable, however, as a turning point in
Cruise's then one-dimensional career. After this film--having
tired even his most devoted fans by playing a bartender, an air
force pilot, and a stock-car driver--Cruise was forced to take on
real character parts. --Ethan Brown
Minority Report
Set in the chillingly possible future of 2054, Steven Spielberg's
Minority Report is arguably the most intelligently provocative
sci-fi thriller since Blade Runner. Like Ridley Scott's "future
noir" classic, Spielberg's gritty vision was freely adapted from
a story by Philip K. Dick, with its central premise of "Precrime"
law , totally reliant on three isolated human
"precogs" capable (due to drug-related mutation) of envisioning
murders before they're committed. As Precrime's confident
captain, Tom Cruise preempts these killings like a true action
hero, only to run for his life when he is himself implicated in
one of the precogs' visions. Inspired by the brainstorming of
expert futurists, Spielberg packs this paranoid chase with
potential conspirators (Max Von Sydow, Colin Farrell), domestic
tragedy, and a heartbreaking precog pawn (Samantha Morton), while
Cruise's performance gains depth and substance with each passing
scene. Making judicious use of astonishing special effects,
Minority Report brilliantly extrapolates a future that's utterly
convincing, and too close for comfort. --Jeff Shannon
Top
Jingoism, beefcake, hardware, and a Giorgio Moroder rock
score reign supreme over taste and logic in this Tony Scott film
about a maverick trainee pilot (Tom Cruise) who can't follow the
rules at a Navy aviation training facility. The dogfight
sequences between American and Soviet jets at the end are
absolutely mechanical, though audiences loved it at the time. The
love story between Cruise's character and that of Kelly McGillis
is like flipping through pages of advertising in a glossy
magazine. This designer action movie from 1986 would be all the
more appalling were it not for the canny casting of good actors
in dumb parts. Standouts include Anthony Edwards--who makes a
nice impression as Cruise's average-Joe pal--and the relatively
unknown Meg Ryan in a small but memorable appearance. --Tom Keogh
War of the Worlds
Despite super effects, a huge budget, and the cinematic pedigree
of alien-happy Steven Spielberg, this take on H.G. Wells's novel
is basically a horror film packaged as a sci-fi thrill ride.
Instead of a mad slasher, however, Spielberg (along with writers
Josh Friedman & David Koepp) utilizes aliens hell-bent on quickly
destroying humanity, and the terrifying results that prey upon
adult fears, especially in the post-9/11 world. The realistic
results could be a new genre, the grim popcorn thriller; often
you feel like you're watching Schindler's List more than
Spielberg's other thrill-machine movies (Jaws, Jurassic Park).
The film centers on Ray Ferrier, a divorced her (Tom Cruise,
oh so comfortable) who witnesses one giant craft destroy his New
Jersey town and soon is on the road with his teen son (Justin
Chatwin) and preteen daughter (Dakota Fanning) in tow, trying to
keep ahead of the invasion. The film is, of course, impeccably
designed and produced by Spielberg's usual crew of A-class
talent. The aliens are genuinely y, even when the film--like
the novel--spends a good chunk of time in a basement. Readers of
the book (or viewers of the deft 1953 adaptation) will note the
variation of whom and how the aliens come to Earth, which poses
some logistical problems. The film opens and closes with
narration from the novel read by Morgan Freeman, but Spielberg
could have adapted Orson Welles's words from the famous Halloween
Eve 1938 radio broadcast: "We couldn't soap all your windows and
steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night, so we did the best
next thing: we annihilated the world." --Doug Thomas