Collateral

—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections

I know what the word “collateral� means. I also think I know why the filmmaker chose the title—it fits with the premise of one character basically “holding� another character throughout the movie, as one holds something as collateral.

Still, when I started thinking about Collateral’s spiritual significance, it struck me that “collateral� reminds me of two other words: “collide� and “lateral.� Now, I’m not saying that the title is secretly meant to be a combination of these two words. But I am saying that these two words, upon reflection, really do have a lot to do with the film at an in-depth level.

First the plot. Collateral is a dark, quiet, gritty tale of Los Angeles, all shot at night. In the beginning, we meet Max (Jamie Foxx)—a good natured, but insecure cabdriver. As Max picks up fares, we peer in on his night from reality show-esque camera angles, and listen in on intentionally mundane dialogue. Before long, he scores a phone number from a beautiful young lawyer (Jada Pinkett Smith), who then disappears just as the audience gets interested.

Enter Vincent (Tom Cruise). Vincent needs to make multiple stops throughout the night. Vincent will pay Max extra to chauffer him around. Vincent, it soon becomes clear, is a hit man on a multiple-mark job. When Max realizes this, he tries to get away, but can’t. He destroys Vincent’s means of finding his hits, only to be forced into getting the information for him another way. As the night progresses and the victims multiply, Max eventually runs out of options and crashes the cab—getting rid of the hit man, who escapes as the police come, but discovering that the last target on Vincent’s list is the beautiful lawyer from the beginning of the movie.

From this point, to me, Collateral lapses into action/suspense movie clichés. Max saves the girl just in time. There’s a final, climactic gunfight. The end. This formulaic finish, along with the artsy, slow pacing of the earlier part of the film—despite good acting—makes me not care for the movie too much, purely as entertainment. However, at that deeper level of “collide� and “lateral,� there’s a lot to be appreciated.

“Lateral� means “to the side.� And that’s the kind of story we have here. A story about a cab driver on the night shift, whose insignificance in life is emphasized by his failure to live out his entrepreneurial dreams, and his lying to cover it up. A story about an everyman, who always seems to be “to the side,� figuratively. Even the camerawork tends to focus more on the environment than the characters, as if to say that where this is happening is more vital than whom it’s happening to.

For this reason, Max’s story would be Seinfeldian—about nothing—if it weren’t for that other word, “collide.� Max collides, as it were, with characters and events that force him to become significant for the first time in years. Max is not a warrior, or a president, or a rock star. He’s a regular guy who’s “in the wrong place at the wrong time.� Fate or chance (the movie wonders) causes this collision, which makes Max the unlikely hero by movie’s end.

In his final scene, Tom Cruise’s character muses about whether train passengers in L.A. would even notice a corpse in their midst. This ends up being the fundamental question of Collateral: am I significant? Do I matter at all, in such a huge, alienating, random place, or am I just “to the side?� And the film’s existentialistic answer is: yes, you can make yourself significant by how you respond to the situations you happen to collide with.

This movie reminds us of everyman’s sense of insignificance, but also his longing for significance. And we can appreciate, yet question, its answer. After all, Max could’ve not picked up Vincent. Max could’ve lived the same life of “quiet desperation� until he died. All of these lateral characters didn’t have to collide in this way at all—and then what?

It is at this point that the answer comes in like a splash of color to this dark picture: you are not insignificant to God. However, with Christ, you are significant, and you can live with significance, because to him, you are never “to the side.� Even when we feel like specks of nothing—faceless people wandering the streets of L.A., New York, wherever—even if our lives never give us the opportunity to be the hero, we can be comforted by the fact that we still matter to God. We can hear the question, “would Angelinos notice the corpse?� and answer, “maybe not . . . but God would.� And that’s what counts.

—Overview
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections