I quite enjoyed Collateral, but it reminds me too much of a video game; True Crime: The Streets of L.A. comes to mind specifically. The video game allows you to drive around Los Angeles, get out of your car and beat the crap out of bad guys.

The same idea applies to Collateral – expect the one doing the beating isn’t a policeman but a hired assassin. The assassin is question is Victor (Tom Cruise), who needs to knock off five people before the night is over. He’s unfamiliar with L.A., so he finds Max (Jamie Faxx), a taxi driver well acquainted with the area to escort him around the city. Max is a good guy who doesn’t want to be an accomplice to the killing spree and makes attempts to put a stop to Victor.

What follows is a film that is often fun, appropriately intense and even occasionally scary. We do get a fairly cliché subway chase and some stupid behavior on the part of the good guys that makes the film run on longer than is necessary. But, as an action flick, Collateral is as strong as Lethal Weapon or any other of its particular genre. It’s particularly engaging with a mood setting atmosphere from director Michael Mann and solid performances from both Cruise and Foxx.

Most of Collateral’s dialogue comes between Max and Vincent in the taxi as the film tries to inject some intellectual content into the extraordinarily base story. In a way that’s almost reminiscent of The Silence of the Lambs, Vincent messes with Max’s head to keep him submissive. Vincent’s weak existential ideas hardly redeem what is really a standard Hollywood gunfire flick. Collateral is not a film that will survive the ages, but it’s not a bad pass of the time for the moment.