Director Michael Mann situates Tom Cruise under a silver-fox hair dye in the back seat of a taxi cab crowned by an ad for Bacardi Silver. That matching-color fashion statement says a lot about this sleek, cool, preening, glamorous thriller in the Mann-ly manner (Thief, Manhunter, Heat, not to forget the TV series Miami Vice). The philosophical, nihilistic, sociopathic contract killer who hires an off-the-meter cab for $600 to drive him around to five hits in a single night in Los Angeles, and who peppers his conversation with far-flung references to Darwin, the I Ching, Charlie Mingus, and recent events in Rwanda, is a bit of a stretch for Cruise. Then again, anything more flexible than a mannequin is a bit of a stretch for Cruise. The film, and in particular Jamie Foxx, does a good job of establishing the hapless cabbie as a nice guy: the "cleanest cab in L.A.," a photo of a Maldives island fastened to his sun visor as a meditational escape, pipe dreams of his own privately operated fleet of limos, speaking Spanish to a convenience-store clerk, offering sage counsel to an overstressed federal prosecutor in the back seat. And although a couple of the stepping stones are unsteady (the cracked windshield, after the very first hit, immediately draws the attention of a patrol car but doesn't prompt the hit man to revise his plan; and hospital visiting hours seem to extend past closing time at a jazz club), the storyline makes its way to an exciting convergence on a nightclub called Fever, a collision course for a team of FBI operatives, a free-lancing cop, a couple of mob torpedoes, and of course the hit man and his chauffeur. The messy result on the dance floor derails the film if not the unstoppable terminator, who has by now been built up so big that his ultimate takedown cannot help but be a source of disbelief. Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo, Bruce McGill, Javier Bardem. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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