Photo:
Characters
from the "Star Wars" films join writer and director George Lucas, center
left, Carrie Fisher, center, and Mark Hamill at the world premiere of "Star
Wars Special Edition" in 1997, in the Westwood section of Los Angeles.
Chewbacca is at top left with robots C-3PO, foreground left, and R2-D2.
Photo credits: Rene Macurra.
When it comes to Star Wars,
maybe there's too much gravity in space. Fans invariably take Star Wars too
seriously, but the people behind the sci-fi series recall the experience as
a surreal comic opera. Training a monkey to play Yoda? Studio complaints
that Chewbacca was pantsless? The only thing that worked on R2-D2 was the
dwarf inside? As the original trilogy arrived on DVD for the first time
Tuesday, the madcap tales told by those who lovingly toiled on Star Wars,
The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi demystify three of the most
revered sci-fi films of all time. Not that kind of movie: Some films can be
endlessly dissected and debated. But Luke Skywalker himself says Star Wars
was just meant to be fun. Twenty-seven years after the first movie debuted,
actor Mark Hamill said he is amused by all the fact-checking fans do. One
recent Web site shocked him. "I think it was speculating on the
administrative cost of the janitorial staff of the Death Star, taking this
hard-edged reality to something that's fantasy," Hamill joked. "But I was
that way myself. I remember saying things like, 'Well, wait a minute. I just
got out of the trash compactor. How come my hair's all perfect?' And
Harrison (Ford) would go, 'Hey kid. . .it ain't that kind of movie."
User Rating
Killing people is what Vincent (Tom Cruise) does for a living. And in Collateral, he's working overtime. An assassin on a flying visit to Los Angeles, he forces a cabbie called Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him from hit to hit. The pair play out a battle of wills and wits; the go-getting cold-blooded killer and all-talk everyman influencing each other as the bodies pile up, in this slick, stylish thriller from Heat director Michael Mann.
The beautifully-shot LA we see here is a dark, dangerous, compelling place - tinged with every hue of grey and blue, matching the prowling presence of its star. Cruise, hair flecked grey, is obviously meant to be wolfish, but his character is perhaps closest to a Great White Shark: killing is nothing personal, it's just what he does.
"FUNNY WITHOUT BEING FLIPPANT"
"You killed him!" exclaims Max over a body once the first job goes down. "No, I shot him," is Vincent's rational reply. "The bullets and the fall killed him." It's a great dark laugh - one of several in Stuart Beattie's script, which manages to be funny without being flippant, giving Vincent wicked one-liners without turning him to a cartoon. For despite (or perhaps because of) its high concept conceit (being cabbie to a killer), Collateral could easily have been just another action movie. Here, though, there are ideas, even if the survival-of-the-fittest, do-or-die theme is eventually rather one note. It isn't the only thing that's obvious, with the amusing, exceptional first half undermined a touch when things Get Serious and race towards the expertly executed - but somewhat mechanical - Tom as The Terminator conclusion. Still, for Vincent's sharp-witted command of the cab and the echoes of The Third Man and Heat, Collateral is well worth targeting. CREDITS: Director: Michael Mann. Writer: Stuart Beattie. Stars: Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo and Peter Berg. Genre: Thriller. Length: 120 minutes. Release: September 17, 2004. Country: USA.-Neeve Reeves.