Presentation Outline - Collateral

I.               Film Introduction:

Collateral is centered on a taxi driver named Max, played by Jamie Foxx, and a contract killer named Vincent, portrayed by Tom Cruise.  Set in Los Angeles, mostly after dark, Vincent catches a ride in the back seat of Max’s taxicab.  Unbeknownst to Max at first, he is unluckily taken deep into the night as a hostage and involuntarily forced to be Vincent’s accomplice in eliminating five key witnesses in an impending federal prosecution of a drug cartel. 

II.             Classic Film Noir Elements:

a.     Protagonists

a.     Vincent

                                                                                       i.     A contract killer, who is hired by a Colombian drug cartel, takes on a job that involves assassinating five people in the course of one evening. 

                                                                                     ii.     Though his appearance is portrayed almost as a predator, he can easily be mistakenly viewed as the story’s antagonist.  

                                                                                   iii.     As Roger Ebert perceptively notes, “Vincent is not what he seems, but his secret is not that he’s a killer; that’s merely his occupation.  His secret is his hidden psychological life going back to childhood, and in the way he thinks all the time about what life means, even as he takes it.”  Similar to the position as Walter Neff was in James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, it is not because of Vincent’s destructive nature that we come to identify with him, but it is with his moral and ethical standards by which we measure his character.

                                                                                   iv.     Throughout the film, he remains the same heartless assassin at the end as he was in the beginning.

b.     Max

                                                                                       i.     An ordinary routine-oriented everyday type individual who has been on the same job for about a decade; driving taxis as an occupation.

                                                                                     ii.     Struggles with his own identity.  He is a dreamer at most, imagining his sanctuary of an island on a postcard and bidding for time until he can open his own limousine service.

                                                                                   iii.     In the span of the film, his character changes from being a dreamer into a realist.

b.     Low-key lighting:

a.     Urban night scenes of Los Angeles

                                                                                       i.     Collateral takes us on a nighttime excursion through the center of Los Angeles amongst the towering skyscrapers down in to dimly lit back alleys of the city.

                                                                                     ii.     Los Angeles at night, as portrayed in the film becomes almost like a living breathing character in which is almost an eerie out-of-this-world feeling.

                                                                                   iii.     Establishes a type of cinematic realism, where the visual style is met with a noir-like feeling as the city is seen at its bare bones, desolate and removed of what is known for, the liveliness of its crowds.

b.     The cab

                                                                                       i.     A great deal of the story in Collateral takes place inside the confines of the cab

                                                                                     ii.     In most scenes throughout the film, Vincent is seated in the backseat, while Max is seated behind the wheel, leading to sequences where Max is seen gazing into the rearview mirror looking back at Vincent.

                                                                                   iii.     Sense of claustrophobia.  The film’s effective use of deep shadows and low-key lighting combined with the changing camera angles inside the tight confines within the cab help set the mood of the ever-increasing anxieties between the two characters.

c.     Sense of Fatalism

 a.     Vincent attempts to convey to Max, his negative thoughts about Los Angeles by telling a story he heard about a man who got on the M.T.A., died, and was not noticed for several hours. 

 b.     Irrelevant at the beginning of the film, but turned out to be a fatalistic indication of what was to come. 

 c.     “Think anybody will notice?”  A quote from Vincent bringing to mind the same story about the corpse on the M.T.A. that he told to Max at the beginning of the film and ironically aligning the story that mirrors his exact situation as he dies at the end of the film.

III.           Elements of Neo-Noir:

a.     Double Protagonists

                                                               i.     The film itself reveals an unconventional approach to noir by introducing double protagonists in the characters of Vincent and Max within the story.

                                                             ii.     Though both characters are entirely different, coming from separate social and ethnic backgrounds, there is a comparable connection amongst both characters in the way where both men are just struggling to do their jobs by doing it in the one way they know how.

b.     Line between criminal and hero is blurred

                                                               i.     The relationship between Vincent and Max developed into an unexpected bond.

                                                             ii.     Throughout the film, Vincent continuously threatens Max, but oddly enough, in one scene for example, when Max’s gets into trouble and his life is in danger, Vincent is the one who saves him from harm.

                                                           iii.     As with Max, he in a way takes on some of Vincent’s persona, resembling himself as an assassin in one scene where he asserts his supremacy in order to obtain information.  Nick James illustrates it best in his article, Twenty-First Century Noir, by stating, “To be a success in the Collateral world, you need to become a reluctant killer against the grain of your conscience – a classic noir conclusion.” 

                                                            iv.     Though Vincent is doomed at the end, we identify with his character as an ethical subject.

c.     Numerous occurrences of violence and crime

                                                               i.     Vincent’s inherent evil comes in the form of killing five people as well as murdering innocent bystanders, murdering them in a fashion where he is able to escape and go unpunished, but in the end, he falls victim from the hands of Max.

                                                             ii.     Max is not doomed in the end.  He is able to walk away not only from Vincent’s destructive nature, but also from the crime of killing Vincent.

d.     Use of digital video cameras

                                                               i.     The use of the digital cameras in Collateral allowed us, as the audience, to perceive and capture images of the city at night, providing scenes that grasp the essence of Los Angeles.

                                                             ii.     See into the shadowy areas with birds eye views of the city down to cinematic close ups.

                                                           iii.     Captures the essence of an urban jungle.  Slow motion coyote scene. Los Angeles is an urban jungle where the line between predators and civilization has been crossed. 

Blog Entry #8

Assignment One

Option Two:

            The authors of the short stories Kidnapper Bell and City of Commerce both utilize familiar settings that are representative to the landscape of Los Angeles. 

Jim Pascoe, the author of Kidnapper Bell, uses the backdrop of the Los Angeles River as the main focal setting for his story, illustrating it as a concrete channel laden with graffiti, “In the dim light of the riverbed, he has trouble seeing the graffiti on the drain covers… The large painted faces hang perpendicular to the ground.  During heavy rains they will swing up, releasing torrents of run-off into the violent river come to life.  Now they are silent, each recessed into an individual hollow in the channel’s cement wall” (220).  The author’s depiction of the Los Angeles River wields the reader to a sense of familiarity that distinguishes it as an iconic landmark in Los Angeles.  People who are familiar with this landmark recognize it from its distinctive features of concrete walls that are ravaged with litter and vandalized with countless graffiti.  For those people who are not familiar with it but have seen or heard of it, be it through numerous Hollywood films or the news, they are able to identify it as a unique landmark that separates it as being solely Los Angeles. 

In City of Commerce, the author Neal Pollack distinguishes the Los Angeles area by centering his story mainly on the City of Commerce and by utilizing various locations throughout Los Angeles area, mentioning multiple known freeways.  “I prepared for my meeting, in my mind, as I whipped the Acura down the 110, and then onto I-5 as I moved through Downtown” (231).  He goes onto describing Commerce as “This town, to me isn’t most notable for its candlelit, leather-bound nightclubs or fancy Valley gallerias.  Like anywhere else, it’s the outlet malls and truck-stop Arby’s, pathetic little trees dwarfed by ten-foot freeway sound wall” (231-232).  The author’s use of various locations and freeways represents the vastness of the Los Angeles area and his illustration of the city portrays a simple visualization for people who are familiar with the region.

Assignment Two

            Out of the four short stories in “The Gold Coast” section, the story that I felt to exemplify the best example of noir would be The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones while on the other hand, the story that I found to be the most difficult to classify as noir is Kinship.

            In The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones by Scott Phillips, we are introduced to a male protagonist named Tate, who is influenced with lustful feelings towards the story’s femme fatale, Cherie.  She is portrayed as an attractive middle-aged unsuccessful actress who is working as a waitress, “We get guys all the time with crushes on her, some of them very young;” (289).  Tate is driven by his sexual desire towards Cherie and states that he will do anything she asked from him, “like half the guys who walk into Burberry’s, though, I have a great big boner with Cherie’s name on it, and if she asked me to shovel shit I’d ask her how fast she needed it shoveled” (287).  Cherie uses her seductiveness to lure in Tate and once she has him in her hook, she then exposes the truth to him, in which he does not consent to, wanting nothing to do with her scheme.  This story, overall, encompasses the basic elements of noir, in which we have the protagonist who is seduced by the femme fatale and though ironically he does not fall for her felonious plot, she in the end is responsible for his downfall.

            In Kinship by Brian Ascalon Roley, we are introduced to the main character named Tomas, who throughout the story was, as if he was in a mission to uncover the truth to why his nephew, Emerson was being bullied.  Though, in my opinion, his character can be portrayed as almost a detective-like persona, his character was not detailed enough to a point where I can clearly view him as a noir type detective.  This short story, in a way, is difficult to classify it as noir as it does not have merely enough noir elements.   The story overall, in my opinion had a decent theme that was based mostly on vengeance, in which Tomas was seeking retribution for the hurt that was placed upon his family.

Blog Entry #7

Option Two:

Both The Method by Janet Fitch and Morocco Junction 90210 by Patt Morrison, in my opinion, encompasses elements of neo-noir.  In classic noir, a male protagonist normally narrates the stories and we view the story through his point of view.  Neo-noir, as we learned last week, contains elements of noir and gives it a twist to express the anxieties of a modern condition.  In both of the stories, the role of the protagonist is reversed, as it is now recounted through a female’s perspective.

            In The Method, we are introduced to a female protagonist named Holly, who is working as a waitress in an Italian restaurant hoping to make it “big” in the film industry.  There, she meets Richard, who in a way plays a role as the “male” femme fatale.  As the story continues, both characters begin a relationship and Richard takes advantage of this and convinces Holly into participating in deceiving a former well-known famous actress named Mariah, misleading her from within.  The scheme turns from a simple dog snatch and return into an ultimate plot for murder.  As the story goes on, Holly discovers that Richard has been manipulating her into committing his crime to even the score with Mariah, in which he formerly had a relationship with.  Holly, on the other hand, realizes Richard’s true nature through Mariah and, in the end, turns on Richard and murders him.  The Method embodies features that define neo-noir.  We have the protagonist, though this time is a female, who narrates the story and is seemingly manipulated by a male femme fatale into committing a crime.  However, Richard can in a way be seen as the “male” femme fatale, but as we learned about neo-noir last week, the neo-noir femme fatale is now viewed through her own point of view and isn’t always punished.  Holly’s character falls within neo-noir’s femme fatale, as the story is told in her point of view and in the end, she gets away with murder.  She, in a way, seemed to be manipulated by Richard, but it was her who used him to get closer to Mariah to gain some sort of status.  “Not bad, for in a mansion in Los Feliz.  Wouldn’t that look good on my portfolio” (111).

            In Morocco Junction 90210, we are presented with another female protagonist named Minerva.  She plays the detective character, a distinctive character to noir.  The story is also told through her point of view as she tries to disentangle the recent crimes of burglaries that are occurring in the city of Beverly Hills.  As the story goes on, she is committed to solving the death of her close family friend, Eloise Davis, who at first is thought to have been murdered due to the recent home robberies.  Minerva, through all her investigation comes to the conclusion that it was not murder that succumbed her friend’s life, but of suicide.  Minerva unravels the motive of Eloise’s suicide as it was generated from the effects of the death of her son that she had left for adoption.  Minerva portrays the prototypical detective in noir, as described in Raymond Borde and Entienne Chaumeton’s Toward a Definition of Film Noir, “The private detective is fulfilling the requirements of his own code and of the genre as well.”  Though she is female, she is still regarded as the story’s detective and protagonist.  She fulfills her own code by protecting her friend’s persona and by withholding the truth of her suicide.