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Collateral, a review by KinkyCyborg

Collateral



Title:Collateral
Year: 2004
Director: Michael Mann
Rating: R
Length: 120 Min.
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 2.40:1
Audio: English: Dolby Digital: 5.1, English: DTS: 5.1, English: Dolby Digital: Dolby Surround, French: Dolby Digital: 5.1, Commentary: Dolby Digital: Dolby Surround
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish

Stars:
Tom Cruise
Jamie Foxx
Jada Pinkett [Jada Pinkett Smith]
Mark Ruffalo
Peter Berg

Plot:Extras:
Scene Access
Audio Commentary
Bonus Trailers
Deleted Scenes
Featurettes
Production Notes
Closed Captioned


Even though I had seen this before I put it on late in the evening and ended up watching the whole thing keeping me up until past 1 am.  

Great movie and I think one of Cruise's better performances. As thrilling as the action was, just as fascinating were the discussions in the cab between Vincent and Max as they psychoanalyzed each other while passing the time, traveling from one hit to the next. The third kill, was totally unexpected the first time I watched it and a very memorable scene for me.

Michael Mann is masterful at telling stories of men who have been pushed to their limits and finally push back which Jamie Foxx's character does here and like James Caan did in Thief.

Loved how it ended, with Vincent which was the very event he spoke about with such derision not long after getting into Max's cab.

KC

Rating:

(From KinkyCyborg's Random Reviews 2011 on February 28th, 2011)

American Beauty, a review by Jon

1999
American Beauty
5 out of 5



be

(From Jon's Best Picture Oscar Marathon on February 22nd, 2009)

Tom's Random Reviews, a review by Tom

Title: Life On Mars: Series One
Year: 2006
Director:
Rating: 15
Length: 472 Min.
Video: Widescreen 1.78
Audio: English: Dolby Digital TrueHD, English: Dolby Digital Surround, Commentary: Dolby Digital Surround
Subtitles:

Stars:
John Simm
Philip Glenister
Liz White

Plot:
Sam Tyler (John Simm) is an ambitious young detective determined to keep the streets of 21st Century Manchester safe. However, the hunt for a serial killer becomes a personal vendetta when Sam suspects his girlfriend has been kidnapped by the very man he's tracking down.

But after a near fatal car accident, Sam wakes up, dazed and confused, in 1973, struggling to understand what's real. Has he gone back in time? Is he in a coma? Or has he simply gone insane? His new boss is hard-nosed DCI Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), a man who gets results by trusting his gut instinct and using a 'fists first question later' policy.

Thrown head-first into this new world, Sam faces some of the hardest cases he has ever known. He has no idea why he is in 1973, but maybe if he can work out the reason, he can get home...

Extras:
Commentary
Featurettes
Interviews
Outtakes
Scene Access

I didn't really warm up to this series. As I said before, the time-travel element is only an excuse to set the series in the 70s. This series could just have been a series about a big city cop coming to a small town police force like it has been done many times before.
As a matter of fact the main character Sam reminded me very much of Simon Pegg's character in Hot Fuzz (okay, maybe Simon Pegg was influenced by this series, as it was first aired, when Hot Fuzz started filming). For one thing his attitude is very similar. And the fact, that we have a big city cop believing in a lot of procedures the police force he has been transferred to do not follow. Both characters feel like they have to bring morale to their new home.

I could have accepted that the time-travel is not a big part of the series, but I found the rest of the series to be a rather average cop show.

Only two episodes have shown potential what the series could have been. The fourth and the last episode of this series. Both are about Sam interferring with his family.
For the rest of the series, you wouldn't know that he is from the future if he wouldn't make certain comments from time to time, or him hearing voices of doctors and family calling for him to wake up from the coma (which he is in the future).

I will leave the second series on my wish list but I am not sure if I will buy it.

Episodes:

#	Episode	Rating
01	Episode 1
02	Episode 2
03	Episode 3
04	Episode 4
05	Episode 5
06	Episode 6
07	Episode 7
08	Episode 8

(From Tom's Random Reviews on May 24th, 2009)