Collateral

           Tom Cruise plays a most excellent role as hitman Vincent in this amazing action thriller. Jamie Foxx plays a cab driver who has never caught his break. He has big business plans and ideas, can’t cope with his ailing mother and has never truly connected with a woman. He is the man to get things done behind the wheel of a cab. He plays by the rules and takes life one passenger at a time.

            After meeting the girl of his dreams and demonstrating his smoothness, his next fair is Vincent. He coerces Foxx to shuttle him around all night, but shortly after their first stop, He realizes what business Vincent is taking care of and who’s old friends he’s visiting.

            Cruise is stellar in what I consider to be his best role of all time. Foxx dazzles as the cabbie who pulls smoothness out of every orifice as a man just trying to cope, and who finally snaps under the pressure.

            The portrayal of real people and character development through dialogue is amazing and endearing, considering the farfetched Mafioso surroundings, but it is done quite elegantly. The performances are worth watching more than once, particularly Cruise, who has finally broken the pretty boy mold in a dynamic role. A 2.

Coach Carter

           Samuel L. Jackson Movies will always get a 2, pretty much no matter what, I like his style so much, and the way he delivers the lines, and just his whole attitude toward acting. It’s phenomenal. I could listen to him talk for a while. He’s just that Good.

            Here he triumphs as Coach Ken Carter, a coach who steps into a losing inner city basketball program in hopes of not only turning the program around, but turning the boys themselves around, and shaping them and molding them to be the men of tomorrow. It’s rather similar to The Emperor’s Club, or Dead Poet Society, except rather then centering on history or philosophy, it centers on basketball and getting into college. The message itself is rather mediocre, a poorman’s Boyz in the Hood. And butchering of a Nelson Mandela quote summing up the theme particularly bothered me.

            But all in all, it is a showcase of the immense talent of the actors, Rob Brown and Samuel L Jackson as well as the kid who played Spanish in Old School all turn in dynamic performances.

            And of course the basketball action and flow is very realistic, and I liked it a great deal. A good movie to take a girl to.