Collateral (2004)

Mr Deans. Represents a clear and present

danger of national security of the United states you have no.

Idea what the Hello and welcome to season 2 of Clear and Present

Dudes, your thriller movie podcast.

We are back after our Christmas hiatus.

So happy New Year to all our loyal listeners and welcome to

our new listeners. I am Mike Tabar.

I'm joined here by our friend Rory O'Toole.

Hello. And our third, Sonya Bjorkson is

only here, but he could make it this evening.

But nevertheless, the show must go on.

We've got a few new updates, we've got a new sub stack, and

we'll start pumping out some sort of newsletter type posts to

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something called Podcast on in March, which is a big charitable

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which is a home for a feral cats.

So more information on that in due course.

This month we are doing Michael Manury, which we alluded to the

end of last year, a celebration of the films of Michael Mann,

hence why we are starting today with Collateral.

Next week we're going to be talking about Manhunter, and

then after that, we've got a few more episodes lined up ready to

go, but I'm not going to tell any more than that.

Subscribe to Sub Stack and find out for yourself.

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greatly, greatly appreciated. Cool.

Roy, how was your Christmas New Year?

Decent. Yeah, it was decent.

It was relatively, relatively trouble free and I've still got

significant amount of Boxing Day party food in the fridge.

It's still edible because it's all stuff like salami and stuff.

So I've got like enough to stock a couple of cheese boards going

forward. It was nice.

It was nice to recharge and think deeply about the films of

Michael Mann and keep repeating and keep repeating phrases like

nobody should cities like Michael Mann and holy shit, look

at that skyline and all those other things and.

LA is a really a character in the movie.

I know it's like I'm I'm terrible to say that it's a good

film. Blah.

The city's a character, but it is, yeah.

So I've, I've, I've watched this film three times recently.

I'm, I'm really excited by it. I am absolutely charged off for

Christmas of resting, recuperating, forward planning

for this excellent podcast and just getting really excited

every time you put in the group chat that you've seen like a

listener from another country. We've, we've just added Mexico

the the list, I believe. So as you said, we've got our

Mexican listeners got the foot of the floor in preparation for

Sicario. So that's going to be excellent.

I am excited. I'm excited for more potting

this year. Excellent.

So, without further ado, shall we head straight into our movie

of choice this week, Collateral. Absolutely.

Let's go, I got. Five stops to make.

What's your name? Max.

Max, I'm Vincent. I'll meet you in the alley

behind the building. You killed red light Max.

Hold on, hold on, and. You were going to drive me

around tonight and never be the wiser.

But we're in the Plan B. Yeah, We got to make the best of

it, improvise, adapt to the environment.

Whatever, man. We got to roll with it.

You just met him once and you kill him like that.

But I certainly kill people after I get to know them.

I'm not up for this. What are you going to do about

it? There's.

A man named Vincent. I got another DOA.

He's already killed witnesses. He's coming to kill you.

Welcome back. So we are discussing Collateral,

a 2004 American action thriller film directed and produced by

Michael Mann, written by Stuart Beatty and starring Tom Cruise

and Jamie Foxx, with the supporting cast including Jada

Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo and a relative early rule, Peter

Berg, who is more of a producer than an actor, but we'll get

into that in a bit. Javier Bardem, really early rule

and Bruce McGill, a recurring Michael Mann regular.

The film follows Max Drucker, a Los Angeles cab driver, and his

customer Vincent, played by Tom Cruise.

He was offered a really high fare for driving to several

occasions in one night. Max agrees, but Simpson finds

himself taken just by Vincent. He turns out to be a sociopathic

hit man on a contract killing spree.

An incredible setup for a movie. Absolutely.

It's Tom Cruise in in villain mode.

Tom Cruise in scumbag mode. Really, you can.

You can tell that he loves being a Dick in this film.

You can tell that he's really enjoying being an absolute turbo

bastard. I hope to see more villainous

Tom Cruise performances now that he's kind of seemingly going

down the more independent kind of film route again with things

like Digger and stuff like that. So that's going to.

Be I was cast off the shawl of Ethan Hunt's The World's Goodest

Guy. And he's going to be making

making film bro films again. Which this is definitely one of

those big film bro movie like. Like if you think about if Heat

is the peak film bro movie, this isn't the it's up there.

It's up there with Heat. Isn't it also Michael Mann, Of

course, In fact, yeah. Let's let's talk about the Tom

Cruise little now. So Tom Cruise, Michael Mann, a

combination we didn't know we needed until it happened.

Yeah. Two guys who both have got an

incredible work ethic and if both got that that big push for

for realism and their films in slightly different ways.

I think like Michael Manners realism, I want this to be and

sound and look real and Tom Cruise very much.

I want to really do this, whatever it is.

And that drive together, it's a bit like, it's a bit like if you

have a boss and like you're second in command at work and

they're boasting off the same name sheet and it's just a it's

a nightmare because they just bounce off each other.

That's just good Izia's club after good Izia's club.

And that's just that's just what happened with this movie.

Like Michael Mann made Vincent Vincent, there's Tom Cruise go

around LA as a like a like a career dropping off you.

Guys like a FedEx delivery guy? Yeah, that's yeah.

What? So yeah, like to, to like go,

well, you're like the biggest star in Hollywood.

Can you, can you get around and detect an Ellie like a Hitman

would? And Tom was like, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I love how this is like up there

with how I forget who was who directed Jordan of Arc, but like

he purposely made Billy Jovovich go out in like I think Paris on

the piss with like a bad Jordan of Arc bull cut just to get

paparazzi to some kind of a fucking humiliation ritual.

And it's like, what? It's that it's not that

humiliating because she's so Mila Jovovich, right?

And you're like fuck. And also like just the fact that

it's like you go out with humiliate yourself and get

daughter, sort of say you Tom Cruise, go out and be among the

people and hide yourself among them and somehow covertly be a

FedEx Courier. It's wild to me.

There's a couple of homework assignments that Michael Mann

had with the cast doing this. You had you had Jimmy Fox drive

an actual LA cab around and take fares for like 3 weeks or

something before filming started.

So just just spent, you're going to be a cab driver now.

Did he keep, did he have to keep tips?

I don't know. He's more efficient than the job

centre on getting people employed, to be honest, Like I

think really is Mr is Mr Colon with I mean, I mean would have

lost a significant amount of films, but also more people

would have found work really quickly.

You know, it's like. Sign on for a Michael Mann movie

you got like. Back when work experience meant

something, yeah. The other big one for Michael

Mann is this is the all the arms training he had everybody do

before the movie as well. So we had like months and months

of they got a former SAS guy called Mick Gould.

I probably shouldn't have said the name, but it's on the

Internet so who cares. But yeah, as as the weapons

trainer and he had obviously Tom Cruise all over it, loves it.

Jimmy Fox obviously got into it as well.

My interesting one I thought was that Mark Ruffalo had to do the

training as well. Three months of marksmanship

training, live ammunition with A9 mill pistol and he doesn't

even discharge a firearm in the movie just just so you could

convincingly carry it. Attention to detail, man.

Attention to detail, you know. Yeah.

Michael Mann is my guy. Honestly, attention to detail.

Everyone in the film looks really competent with the

firearms except for obviously for Max.

Because he's meant to not be confident and meant to be meant

to be like unaware of how to use it properly and stuff.

And yes, and he has terrible fucking for muddy shooting for a

reason, you know, And it's perfect.

Brilliant. Yeah, it's great.

We'll come back onto firearms in a bit as we get through the

film, I think. But yeah, big time.

The other big thing I think people, I'm just going to take

off all the film real talking points before we get started, so

we're not like tripping upon ourselves as we go.

You know. The big one about this movie, of

course, is that it was shot in a combination of 35 mil for the

endorse sequences and famously quite early digital for the

outdoor. And the reason for that is that

they filmed it actually at night, obviously.

Yeah, in real locations around LA.

So they wanted a compact camera set, but they could carry

around, I suppose, but primarily going to a camera that could

handle really low light situations with digital at the

time. And I think nowadays it doesn't

look that different. And I don't want to get into the

proper nerdy, like what kind of camera it was and what kind of

stuff it's not this is not that kind of podcast.

But yeah, the the digital cameras could handle a lot lower

level light, give it that kind of grainy look though.

And it gave it that kind of like, I'm going to say this and

I'm and I don't, I don't mean to like sound like dismissive when

I say it, but it looks like a bit like a student movie in the

sense that it's made with like Sean Digital as opposed to real

film because and and it has like kind of the not motion

smoothing, but there is a bit of motion blur because it's low

light. Yeah.

And then pumped up the brightness afterwards.

Suppose. Yeah.

So the way that the motion on the screen looks is

fundamentally different from how it looks on film, and that

effect is now predated because of advances in digital

filmmaking. That's where I'm going with

that. So what that does is it gives

this movie a really unique look, and that wasn't really

replicated too much. The only the film I can think of

at the top of my head that looks a bit like it is Inland Empire

by David Lynch. Yeah, yeah.

Deliberately wants to have an ugly greedy look that was that

was part of the language of the film in that particular

instance. Film bro out but but.

Film Bro now cancelled. Yeah.

But what what I want to say is that looks, the look of the

camera work on this, not camera work, because that implies the

movement of the camera and that's not what I'm saying.

The look of the visual information on screen from the

camera looks a bit like lower budget and amateurish, but that

hides so much of incredible craft in this film.

So the stunt work is incredible. The actual lighting of inside

the cabin and stuff to make the movie look the way it does.

Incredible. All the action sequences,

including the shortened film sequence inside the club later

on, great. But how they've shot that to

make it look with it as if it's in the same film as this, also

genius. Yeah, So God, right.

I'm speaking it out about it, but it looks amazing.

No, it'll be right, especially about the kind of the kind of

student film thinkers obviously haven't have haven't worked on

student films as a composer. Loved it by the way.

It was absolute class working with like some students doing

music for them. A kind of unifying like theme of

like a lot of student films is like your film again night in

the city that you know, because you know, most universities are

in an urban setting. Most students are doing stuff

through the day. So it makes sense that you're

shooting stuff for nights. So that again, it kind of pales

in on the whole student film kind of vibe that it has like

and it works it that's like this film, right, with the way it's

shot, it digs in to every memory of a night out you've ever had

in the city. You know everything.

It's got that kind of like a little bit like dreamlike kind

of feeling. This film, the night time scenes

to me feel like all at about half three in the morning.

And another narcos of the film obviously has like has a

chronology that follow us, but all the night time scenes feel

like 3 in the morning. It's like half, three, half

three in the morning. The scene when he's at the

petrol station, it's like hardly anyone about and he's getting

given some shit about, you know, getting people killed in that.

It's fantastic ways of making this incredibly populous city

with its huge economy, the eighth biggest in the world or

whatever, as he says in the in the in the taxi, making this big

city seem empty at times. And it's absolutely class where

it's put together. It's and you get the feeling

like only someone who knows that that place knows the spots to

make it just look so frigging barren yet also full of people,

if you say what I mean. Yeah.

Oh, totally. I think this movie is pretty

well regarded by people from LA, as well as a great LA film.

I think there's a documentary called What's It called, LA

starring as itself or something it's called, which is about the

history of LA in film. A lot of people talk about it

predates this film by a couple of years.

But one of the criticisms of movies up until this point, and

I suppose if you include things like the nice guys and stuff

that would come later and maybe LA confidential to a certain

extent. A lot of films about LA to LA in

a very different light. A very, very, very positive,

very clean palm trees. You know, since a bit about all

ice and don't go into the CD in the belly.

Don't talk about crime as much as they do.

Obviously Predator 2 doesn't do that, but.

Oh my God. The.

Auto slum, that is for that too. It's.

A story of story of two halves, isn't it?

The office? But I think what people really

love about this is like there you see bits of the city that

you don't necessarily always see.

But I say that because despite the fact that this film is kind

of like a bit of a patriot quilt of LA geographically.

Like when he's driving for one place to the next and you're

seeing all the shots in the over the, was it the I-10 or whatever

it is Hwy that they're going across.

And like, I think geographically it doesn't physically make sense

to go from this location to this street to this street to this

street. And if you were watching it and

you were from LA and you like ingested LA and you lived there

and you were big in the film culture and stuff and you

watched it and you were as nerdy as we are, you'd probably go,

oh, well, you know what? That isn't that route doesn't

look right. However, it looks amazing

because it's great. He's he's found all these great

shots and there's all these great moments and actually it

transcends that. OK, cool, right.

Should we? I'll just get into it a little

bit. So Carroll was released in the

US on August the 6th, 2004. Bruce, over $220 million

worldwide, received critical acclaim, in particular for

performances of Cruising, Fox Man's directing and editing, And

it was one of the top ten films of 2004, according to the

National Board of Review. And the 77th Academy Awards.

Fox received a nomination for best supporting actor.

He also won that, Yeah, for best actor in Ray, but he got a best

supporting actor nom for this. And the editors, Jim Miller and

Paul Ruble, were also nominated for best film editing, but also

won, I think, a BAFTA for best cinematography.

Max Drocker is Ala Cab Driver, and I'm reading this from

Wikipedia, and it says he's trying to save his earnings and

start his own limousine business.

But I think the fundamental truth of this film is that he's

not really doing that. Yeah, it's as he cops, isn't it?

It's like, I mean. It's the lie that he needs to

believe that sticks him in his current life.

One of the evenings fairs, though, is federal prosecutor

Annie Farrell Jada Pinkett Smith, who works for the US

Attorney for the Central District of California.

They start the conversation and they have a bit of floating and

it's kind of great. It's important.

I think it's a pivotal scene at the start of the movie as a

fundamental character beat for for Fox and also gives the the

film it's kind of hard that we that it needs to rely on in the

very back, the very back end of it.

Yeah, totally. What do you think?

So bear with me here, but I've seen a lot.

I've seen not a lot, but I've seen a few reviews of this film

on Letterbox to have gripes against the fact that Max has

the second kind of badass transformation later in the

film. Obviously for all our new

listeners slash viewers, this is a spoiler cast.

We do talk about the films in details.

We are we are going to spoil things.

If you haven't seen the film, we're still going to be here in

two hours time. Let's get this film watch it's

key. No, man, it's really good.

So this opening scene, the opening kind of banter and stuff

that he has on, like the way he speaks to about the personality

that he reflects with her is not reflected again in the film at

the charisma level. And the conference is not

reflected again for quite some time.

And then later Bunny has this, that kind of badass reveal.

He locks right in and he starts being a badass, you know, and

I've seen reviews saying that this is like this, this is one

of the worst parts of film because he has this like great

transformation, but you see the roots of it in this particular

opening scene. And when we do get the bit, when

he shows himself as being proper, proper steely, I'll cut

into why I think this underlines it.

So that's a bit of a spoiler for 45 minutes time or whatever.

It's brilliant though. That's a really good point.

I'm glad you raised that because I was going to.

If you weren't going to do it, I was going to lose to it

actually. Because you do see him.

You don't know him yet. Really.

Yeah. What we do see is he's like

super Uber clean. He has his little routine.

He's a little bit dowdy looking, looks like someone's dad and

he's got like, he's got like a little hoodie on.

And he's not, he doesn't. He doesn't turn himself

absolutely well, but he's taking a lot of pride in the appearance

of the cat is what I'm getting from it.

He's close to Careworn, is what I'm saying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he transcends that to become

like this really charismatic operator when when he starts

talking to to Annie. Absolutely.

And you see this, this is that kind of transcendence again

later on. I mean, so prior at the scene

with Annie, part of the film that I loved was just the bits

when he's kind of getting ready for his shift.

When you see him getting ready for his shift when he's at the

garage, when there's a little bit of a dust up between between

the between a couple of drivers over one of the cars or

something. And then you see you see Max

getting in his vehicle and he's slipping his little island photo

in there. And he's just and and yeah, he's

he's a fastidious clean guy. But just the way, the way that

that whole sequence is shot with the kind of close up Sonic, the

tool kits and people work on things.

And it's like, it's again, it's it's Michael Mann's kind of

realism. It looks, it looks like it was

shot in a fully working like taxi garage.

You know, I mean, maybe. And it's Michael Mann.

You know, I mean, I mean, you might have really made Tom

Cruise work as a hitman for six years.

Who knows? It's Michael Mann.

Nobody knows what he can do. No one knows what Michael Mann's

capable of. It's this attention to detail

again that just makes everything pop massively.

Things about Max's taxi as CD collection on the sun visor.

You've seen that one, one of those like, CD caddies from back

in the day when when, when the world moved slower and was less

insane and we all had like, Cdr fucking burned mixtapes in this.

Yeah, there's a lot of storytelling about Max within

his car. And it's not even his car.

It's a Cardstone by the company, right?

But like, you see him take ownership of it and you see him

put his little brand on it as as an island thing.

And yeah, then we're seeing him have that awkward drive with a

quite shouty couple and then straight away gets he gets Annie

and it was car. He reads a he reads a

personality. He's aware of what she does.

He identifies the kind of bag that she's wearing to a he works

out that she's a lawyer, you know, and she wasn't as

incredibly a shoot at sets a lot of drone work for how the film's

going to go. And I think it really shows this

film is from a time that we'll never have again.

I mean, I know kind of pretty much every film is is like,

that's every film's like a snapshot, isn't it?

What's made and when it's set? This is the time when GPS

exists. Mobile phones that can receive

emails exist, but it still takes a really good cubby to tell you

it's going to be 12 minutes to your destination.

And here's the. Way to go.

You know, it's it's like 2000s kids will never understand.

You know, I'm going to say go up there with with with like

regular taxi company, be told he's just from the corner even

in a minute. These things probably don't

happen anymore. But yeah, so Max is a real

everyman hero and he's, it lays down a lot of groundwork for his

development in this opening, the opening sequences in which he's

saying pick Annie up. Yeah, it also if you're equalise

you'd you'd kind of, I think you'd be able to infer from

looking at that, that because he doesn't say it out loud, but you

can tell by the way he's like got that cab that is it's not

really a temporary job for him. He says to Annie, it's

temporary, but we can tell already that he's pretty well

established in this cab. And it's not just like a short

term thing where he's just got into a random cab and it's taken

it for the day. Like he's got his cab and he's

got his stuff on there and he looks after it and it's like,

yeah. So when you hear later on in the

movie that he's been doing it for 12 years, you're not

supposed to say what actually we've missed a really important

point before we get into this. The very first opening shot of

this movie, the very first scene is the arrival into LAX of Tom

Cruise's Vincent. And there's A and he has a

briefcase swap with A1 Mr Yeah, Jason.

Statham. Holy crap.

Yeah. And you know, the guy who did

the Transporter films has, has like probably said that he

believes that's actually Jason Statham's character from the

Transporter. As well.

That's just a little. Read on.

That's his kind of head. Kind of.

I love that one. Very strange.

Yeah, Really weird. Really weird.

Very jarring to see. Yeah, it's it's a baller move

opening a film with with Joyce and Styphin, who's never seen

again after that. Like, it is an absolute baller

move. There's like no kind of Jason

Statham comes back in the third act to snap some decks and cash

some cheques. He just appears for a few books.

It could have been anyone doing that bag drop.

It could have been literally someone from Central Casting any

kind of random extra that didn't even need dialogue.

Yeah, Michael Mann chose to Michael Mann all over the place

and just pull Jason statement. You're all right, mate.

You're all right mate. He's like.

Oh, sorry to bump into you. Oh, it's all right, mate.

No, don't worry about me. You enjoy your day, mate.

You enjoy your day. I'm the transporter.

I am. You enjoy it, I'm going to go

get a Taco. Jesus Christ, I don't know where

that came from. Cool.

So that actually happens is Max picks up a new passenger and it

is one Mr Tom Cruise as Vincent's already kind of a bit

of a weird jarring. We've always seen him, of

course, but now we're getting a proper look at him and it's a

weird sight, isn't it? Tom Cruise?

Pretty jarring at the time, I think.

Tom Cruise, grey hair, Yeah. And an old beard.

And he starts up a conversation with with Max and he's probing

for information pretty quickly. Like he's, he's feeling him out,

you know? Yeah, yeah, like he's kind of,

he's kind of social engineering to like get to get us a bunch of

information as he can, isn't he? Yeah.

And I think Max is a little bit in on it because he he doesn't,

he gets a little bit a little bit reserved.

He doesn't want to answer all the questions.

Yeah, I don't want he starts getting proved about the

limousine thing. He doesn't want to talk about

the limousine thing, even though he was super happy to talk about

it with Annie. Yeah.

So there's a bit of cool twitching as he is less

comfortable around Vincent. Yeah, I think in general the

taxi driver is probably going to be a bit more cautious from

some, some weird dude, you know, and then then like, alas, I

think it's like Kenneth is what it is.

I mean, obviously the if what it goes like signs.

Haven't you seen? Our driver only carries like $5

and change. I mean, being being robbed like

the back of a taxi from the back of a taxi.

Sorry is something that's a real thing that happens.

And I think maybe he's less suspicious of a woman than a

dude kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They've in in. They've got a bulletproof

partition because fellas draw heat, but the driver has got a

pick of one up under his seat. I'm sorry, but yeah, like, yeah,

like, you're right. Like he feels himself being

needled and he's like I. Think, I think what screws him

in the end is however, he's a God damn professional and when

he gets asked how long it would take to make their first trip,

he says it's precisely 17 minutes.

And Vincent catches on to that. And again, contrasting with the

the the chat with Annie, they have a similar thing where

they'd argue about the the best route to take.

That kind of is brought up again by by Vincent.

He wants to do a similar thing but he's like, I've already

given up my free ride today. Yes, that's not part of a line.

Yeah, And he's like, I'm not doing it, which has already

shown you like the rapport is not there.

Like the initial rapport is not there.

There is there is something weird good on here.

And it's a bit weird and not, not not comfortable.

However, he does make it in exactly what, 17 minutes?

And then he tries to like blow it off like modestly like, oh, I

gotta look at the lights. It's not a big deal.

That's when he gets offers the opportunity of a of a lifetime

to make a, to make a lot of money by being on retainer for

the rest of the evening, which is he's not going to do.

But then he gets flashed a big verge of money and we have our

first stop. Vince goes in the first

building, Max drives his car into the alleyway, and then a

pretty quick reality check occurs.

Yeah, when? What?

He just hands on the rant on the car, Yeah.

It's a guy got damn are. You OK?

Are you OK, buddy? You're OK.

Man, you're OK. It's like, no, no, no, he's

extremely dead. He's incredibly not OK.

Yeah, yeah, that is the first victim and I think his name is

Ramon. We don't.

What I like about this movie actually is that we are just

dropped straight into it with this stuff and there's no wider

grip. The conspiracy.

It's not like Heat where we meet like 30 odds different key

players over the course of the movie and understand the the

size of this particular criminal enterprise.

There are people all over the place on this and we see some of

them and we don't understand the full picture.

We never understand the full picture at the end of the movie.

It's really tightly focused. That's not a bit wanky.

But when I say it's focused, I mean we are in that car.

We are either in that car or we are following Mark Ruffalo

around and that's it. That's all we see.

We see, we see it from the ground.

We see it from the LAPD, the one good detective in LAPD, and we

see it from this one taxi driver.

And that's all. That's all the.

One good one. Yeah, everyone did get.

One every city gets, 1 you got. One observant, like mortal

detective. It was OK and the rest are all

like dirt bags, right? Yeah.

Mean the sport with Bruce Willis and striking distance, you know.

Yeah, Bosch, man. So it's a Bosch?

There we go. Yeah, Bosch.

Probably gets takes over from a. What's he called Fanning is a

mocker. For Fanning.

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, yeah.

So yeah, this is the reality check, the big wake up call cats

out of the bag. And then Vincent comes down and

I tell you what I also like about this is, and we're going

to see it as we go through all the all the different hits is

the movie isn't shy about it being a bit of a it's almost

like a play in times because you've got this, you've got this

really like you've got these plot actions taking place.

And there's a bunch of like real life human emotions and

reactions you'd have to all that stuff.

And every now and again, the movies kind of steps away from

that and goes, well, let's have a philosophical conversation

about where we're each in our lives as well.

Yeah. And the way that would never

happen if this was really happening.

Yeah, I know. It's, I mean, if this really

happened, everyone's adrenaline would be up so high that it's

just the real. The real film is just Max

driving round, fucking screaming, screaming, sweating

the death, gibbering, shaking, screaming, crying, throwing up

and just just Vincent telling me shut up for the entire film.

Most of most of Vincent's style would have shut up.

Max casually double back to what you said about how kind of

sparse the storytelling is regarding the targets for for

Vincent. Can you imagine like James Gunn

made this movie like that? They'd be like a three or four

minute sequence when each of the guys who's getting hit gets gets

short and like there's, there's, there's like a freeze frame, but

the guy's name comes up like a Ramon El Gordo, whatever.

I always have been like smoking is.

It's like Joe Collagen smoking. Yeah, like, like like Suicide

Squad or something. Like that?

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's like a freeze frame

and there's like the name and some factoids about the black

Golf handicappers and stuff like that.

And I like that you don't really see any kind of real

introduction them. Like you said, Michael Mann has

the ability to like cut the fat off things and still have a big

sweeping, expansive film. Mission focus on this is is a

key is key driver for the plot. Do you never feel like the

progression of time? Weirdly, it feels like you're

stuck in stasis, like, like this guy is trapped and there's one

never ending night. And yet there's also a ticking

clock on it at the same time. Because come sunrise, there's

going to be the Mac Guffin of the movie, which is the grand

jury indictment with the evidence being given as, as we

later learned in the movie, that the people on the on the hit

list of witnesses in a, in a, in a, in a large federal case.

Yeah. So at this point, Vincent

reveals himself to be Hitman, forces Max to hide the body in

the trunk, and then they kind of clean up the car a little bit

and they're going to continue driving already.

Like this is a massive set back because the car is dinged up.

Max has obviously found out that he's a hit man, which he

probably wasn't intended to at all, never mind any point during

the night. And now, yeah, cats out the

back. So off to the races as I like to

say. Yeah, it also features a great

incredibly cooled lane from from Vincent, which was perfectly

about when he says you promise not to tell anyone, right?

And it's just like he just, he just puts that tiny bit of

naivety, that false naivety in the way he says it enough to

kind of build just enough trust in Max and Max to say, yeah, you

know, and it's like, Max, you're going to get killed at the end

of this night. You're going to get murdered,

you know? And it's such a hard line.

There are so many great lines. Tom Cruise lovers in this film.

It's like he's fucking with him as well.

He's like, he promised anyone, right?

Yeah, yeah. Get the car.

Like you idiot. Of course we're doing this.

This is happening, man. This is happening to you now.

He's got the programme. You have a cold lining to lives

on. This bit is when Max says, like,

you killed him. He's like, no, I shot him.

The bullets in the fall killed him.

And it's like, OK, edge Lord. Edging man, it's honesty.

Be careful man, you might cut yourself on the edge of like 90%

of his dialogue. But yeah, it's like I'm a deal

as baby. Quite by chance, Mark Ruffalo's

character A You don't even recognise him when you first see

him because he's got his slicked back hair.

He's got his goatee. Yeah, a leather jacket.

He's got a little earring. He's.

Earring, yeah. He's like Mark Ruffalo in

earring scumbag mode. He's like a pirate.

Yes, he's like, he's, he's, he's, he's like a pirate of the

streets. Heard of the streets.

And he just happens to be going to see one of his CIS who was

the first victim, obviously for like other stuff, not just this,

this big case, I guess. Yeah.

And he just so happens to not be available because, you know,

he's quite dead. Yeah.

But that's how he gets into the story.

So we have this one LAPD detective who's like, oh, I

smell a rat. And he shows his chops.

I I like, I like how he calls on the phone for a night detective.

Yeah. And that sounds like that's a Oh

yeah, You see, it's your crime protection, but.

Yeah. Oh, it is.

It's like, it's like it's a sexy version.

Man, dude, I need to get you into Bosch in a big way.

Yes. Like, I mean, obviously a night

detective is probably a thing. I imagine elucidating me as to

what a night detective is, because you'll probably know I

don't. From my from only from my my

knowledge of watching Bosch and I don't even know how here is

Bosch happens to also be set in LA, right?

And he works in like West Hollywood and there are

different ranks of detective in the LAPD.

So like D1D2D3 increasing in seniority as they go.

And Bosch is like AD 3. The junior ones, they obviously

get partnered up with like a more senior one.

But when they get in their details, he can also pull like

one of the jobs can just be like a night detective like so

there's always someone who's got like the the shit like it's

like, it's almost like you like you've got to pay your dues.

You've got to do your times of the night detective.

That's it's exactly what it sounds like.

So yeah. And actually sounds like one of

those like job titles that's like really cool.

But as you've just like Lucidated, there is actually

kind of the shit end of the stick as far as network goes.

It's like. Shit jobs on.

Yeah, yeah. It's like, what do you do?

I'm a note detective. Oh, that's cool.

Yeah. No further questions about that.

Just imagine, the job's really cool.

Right. Yeah.

All those Michael Connelly novels, they all have like a

little section where it's like the detective on watch and

they're like dripping about how shit it is.

Like one of these characters is is called Renee Ballard and

she's got her own like TV series now, like spin off series on

Amazon. I think it is.

But like the one I've just started reading was like here on

New Year's Eve as a night detective, like fucking kicking

off there. So not not glamorous.

We came up to one of the coolest bits of the movie.

However, second stop Vincent has not yet developed a rapport of

trust with Max, quite reasonably so.

He cable ties Max hands to the steering wheel as he goes

through his second hit of the evening.

I can't even remember if we even see the hit.

I don't think we do. We see nothing of the hit.

We'll see the guy going downstairs after being told

someone's. It's the it's the attorney and

he and the cover he has to get there.

As he says he's a notary to somebody off screen.

Yeah, yeah. So you seem going to meet him.

That's the last we see of the guy until we see his body in the

morgue. I like the like super late at

night notary. He's like the night notary.

It's a significant about the jobs this little bit, just like

Job Taylor with night in front of it.

It's a night notary, the night witness.

Hate witness. I like it.

Weird, but the true story's happening in the cab with Max.

Yeah. So he is trying to get

attention. He's trying to try to get

himself released from the cab, obviously wants to do the right

thing, talk to the police, all that kind of good jazz.

But he didn't count on LA being against him.

Yeah, he's not even at this point because, because, because

I will say he does like swing around a bit of naivety at the

start. Sometimes it seems quite

switched on. But the first act of the film he

seems to pivot from naive to actually quite astute.

And he's naive here when he thinks these, these these lads

will help. Or maybe maybe he's aware that

Ellie has got dirt bugs in it, which probably is, and he's just

hoping for someone nicer, which again, is very optimistic.

And it is is poorly placed optimism in the people of the

City of Angels. They are real scumbags.

They do not hesitate to rob him. And one of them is tweaking hard

because like, he's like, give me a wallet.

And he's like, dude, can't you see my hands are fucking cable

tied to the steering wheel? He's like, I don't give a cat.

I don't give a fuck what they're cable tied to.

Give me the wallet's like. I say the fact that the cable

tied to anything you doylum means that I can't access

anything. You fucking clamp it.

Yeah, absolutely moron. Then he's like jackpot.

And he grabs, grabs Tom Cruise's briefcase, the iconic briefcase.

And they and those guys just start walking away.

And man, I've watched this movie a few times in my life, but I've

watched this clip probably dozens upon dozens of times.

And it's weird when you watch a clip so often that that you you

kind of lock into it when it when it starts happening in the

movie, you're like. Yeah.

But you know, like that bit is like so much clearer in my in my

memory. Yeah, it's those guys walking

away from the car in the alley and then crews appearing.

Yeah. And then delivering the iconic

line. Go hold me that my briefcase.

Yes, yeah, man, and I want. Your fucking wallet.

Yeah, and that obviously just leads into one of the greatest

short little nasty, brutal gunfight sequences.

Brilliant. It's already gunfight because

it's just like no one fights back at all.

It's just incredible cinema gunplay.

It's amazing. Brutal execution, yeah.

Going above and beyond any reasonable force that the

situation requires. Which which I've done my fair

share of research and it was we may discuss later.

Brutal sequence, but just elevated by the the Yoho me that

my briefcase. Where did it?

Where did that come from? Just again, it's code switching

and it's and as a way of my, my, my, my personal read on it is we

talk a lot about. But if you see like if you read

like a lot of discourse online, a recurring subject that I see

in my feet. I don't know why is self defence

and what people do in situations where they're getting like

mugged in the street. Probably because this is a dummy

and diamond of the state of the world today, but it's advice and

people's observations about what to do if you're approached at

night in public and that kind of thing.

The key one I see is people who want to commit violent crimes of

any nature and including sexual crimes or whatever, they

rehearse it and rehearse it in their heads over again and they

fix it on it and they have a way that they think it's going to

work and they have and it's a bit like they have to do like

the whole you ever like relived an argument in the shower.

It's like that, but fucking evil.

They like go through like every single bit of the scenario they

can imagine and, and, and have this power fantasy of how

they're gonna fucking handle it as, you know, these thugs and,

and sometimes deeply evil people do.

And the big bit of advice that I've seen online is, yeah, fuck

with that. Do do something that they

wouldn't expect. And they're just short circuits

their brain because they expect you to fight or they expect you

to assault, healing abuse. They expect you to yell help.

They probably expect you to yell fire.

What they don't expect you to do is to like, fucking start

singing the national anthem, you know, like, or pretend to be

like loudly drunk in the street or, you know, like, there's,

there's. I'm not suggesting like I'm not

going to advocate for anyone particular course of action

because I've not been trained in that and I think it'd be

irresponsible to say that. But but what I what I read from

this is Tom Cruise is a is a white man in a suit yelling Yo,

homie, that my briefcase. It's like a what the fuck?

Straight away makes it a weird situation.

It's like, I mean it like it make it it's it's a weird line

to deliver in general. It's a weird line for Tom Cruise

to deliver in specific. And it's just great because

yeah, like you say, like the way the other characters react to

it's like, what the fuck is going on here?

And there's just enough kind of confusion and weirdness set

aside because it's not like, oh, no, give them a briefcase

packet. Take your homies that mine.

It's like draws the one with the briefcase in the move in for

confrontation. He's kind of he's already

showing us like lack of willingness to kill Tom Cruise.

We haven't a gun on him and not fucking shooting them.

Yeah. This this is great and.

Think of weakness that is exploited by Cruz.

There's this great bit in season 2 of the Punisher, the Netflix

one when when this when like the front castle's like instructing

this last that he's with on. If you disarm someone, shoot

them straight away and like, and this is great scene when she

like struggles have gone off a guy and he's got about half a

second said no and that she just domes him And it's like that's

cinema. But I said, yeah, he he, he's

he's not shot Tom Cruise yet and Tom Cruise has him like he's got

him on the ropes and doesn't even realise yet.

Then there's just that great offhand punch pistol drawer,

Bang Bang pivot, Bang Bang bang, turn around, failed dead check

on the first guy. I love that you've called that a

dead check and I'm like, but I was told how to do a dead check.

It was like you put a thumb in someone's eye.

You're not or you're like, you lean on their chest and you put

a thumb in the right. You don't shoot them again.

I mean, both of these do it. Sure, right?

They're like someone's. Confirmation.

I was going to say, you're a professional officer in His

Majesty's Royal Navy. You want a scumbag mode assassin

on the streets of LA Man? Yeah.

Dead check does, dude. Different, different sport.

Yeah, man. The bit we didn't talk about was

they get pulled over by the cops pretty early.

Yeah. And I think they did this.

There's a functional bit of the script to say, look, this what

would happen if we get pulled over the cops?

And clearly it, it doesn't go well, it starts to go awry

pretty quickly. But some major incidents, some

on off screen, we never hear anything else about it.

Some major incidents occurred somewhere else in town and a

whole bunch of exactly. And everyone's been pulled away

to it. And it's the kind of thing that

happens. You have a Bosch reference

because we're doing LA. It's very much a case of like if

there's an officer involved in a shooting.

Yeah, everyone drops and runs to it from all around and busy

floods the place with cop cars. So it's implied that something

like that has happened and that is why we don't get any more

interactions with the police until after the the car crashed

pretty late in the movie. But yeah, it was worth

highlighting as to like it kind of deals with it.

You have to extend your suspension of disbelief that we

can have this thing where he goes around all all night with

this fucked up car because, you know, people get stopped for

having a taillight out and he's got his windscreen as fucked and

like the door taxi bit on the top as fucks and yeah, yeah,

this. But the next hit is Vincent.

My God, man, as says to Max, Hey, you know what?

We've been for all this. Let's just go for a drink.

And Max is like, yeah, sounds good.

So they go to this jazz club. It's such a good sequence, Oh my

God. Holy crap.

This is so good. So you see this brilliant jazz

sequence and the guy playing the trumpet?

Yeah, it's a prison officer in rush hour.

It's just just worth flinging out.

Yeah. So anyway, they they watch this

performance at Vincent's, talks to waitress, says who's who's

the guy playing? Oh, that's the owner effect.

And someone come to our table afterwards.

You'd like to have a drink with him and stuff.

So then you get this really nice sequence without having this

great conversation about freaking like Miles Davis.

And this time, he played with Miles.

Miles Davis impressions are so good.

Yeah, it's so good. Just like, just just to me.

Tell us a story about that one. Like hip guy and his girlfriend

tried to talk to Mel's Davis and Mel's is like get the fuck out

of here, drive motherfucker and take your silly bitch with you

just to live on so perfectly. Yeah, that's awesome.

Great scene. You know, very different vibe.

And this is sacrilege, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Like if you were to compare the diner scene in Heat, Pacino and

De Niro, 2 Titans of cinema sharing this one scene, this

iconic movie like this isn't that far off actually in terms

of tension. Like what's going on.

It's incredible that everyone at the table plays it really,

really well. The second that Vincent drops,

he references like the location of like where his employees are

from. Cartagena, yeah.

That's it, yeah. So he says like regards from

Cartagena, something like that. And that's when the penny drops

to the Jazz man who's actually like an ex-con.

That's that's also kind of implied for the story that he

was going to be a good dazz player and he got some trouble.

He. Got drafted and then afterwards

shit happened, yeah. But yeah, exactly.

Going to a life of crime, went to prison for like 20 years or

whatever. But still managed to end up

managed to end up owning A nightclub, which was pretty

cool. But I guess that was probably

his cartel connections, you know?

That's exactly it, yeah. So once the penny drops, we get

this really brutal sequence where he's like, right, Max is

really keen to like give a chance, man.

Like we're having a good night. Like what's going on?

Like what, you know, is there anything you can do, like to get

away with it, you know? And then Vincent flexes on him,

this jazz thing, like, all right, let's do a let's I'll

say, well, I'll ask you a jazz question.

If you answer my jazz question, I'll let you live ask you a jazz

question about Miles Davis. He's like, I know everything

there is to know about Miles Davis.

And he asks him, where did Miles Davis learn music?

Yeah. And he replies the Juilliard

School of Music in New York. And then Vincent just fucking

shoots him twice in the forehead.

Yeah, despite it being factually accurate.

Yeah, and and that he kind of like actually someone he said,

well, actually, actually, actually you met you met Charlie

Parker and got actually got mentored by him.

Fuck. You, Vincent.

Vincent's a fucking edge Lord like this is this is I saw you

who you are right? This is the connection this

movie has. Vincent is the edge Lord of this

movie is who Tom Cruise in Magnolia thinks he is.

Yeah, it's that fucking scumbag picker biassed.

Yeah, it's a very good point. He thinks he's as like hard, as

cool and as like emotionless and has bits, you know, And then

Vincent is the actual has stuff missing.

Yeah. Like has fundamental parts of

his human faculty just not there.

He's just not there. He's a void that actually gets

said in the movie, I think, pretty much.

But yeah. But if he comes out with this

thing and then, like, Max calls on it straight away, he's like,

he's right. You got the right answer.

Yeah, you killed him anyway. And he's like, you didn't really

have a chance. Like he never, he was never

going to not do it. Yeah.

So he's just, he's like a cat playing with his, his food

really. Yeah.

Also evil. Deeply evil.

We've we've also missed the point when Max's boss is on the

radio to him giving him shit about damaging the car and

Vincent just fucking thins them out pretending to be an attorney

or something. And he just gets it, just gets

on comms and destroys him. And then it's like terrible,

terrible. Shove this Yellow Cab of this

fat ass. I'll just shove this Yellow Cab

up your fat ass. And it's like, I don't know,

it's like the like live, live wife reaction from Emma's like,

yeah, yeah, this guy fucking rules.

Actually it's like, yeah, he does been awful long.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it kind of it's

it's just, it is. There was no real need for that

to be in the film, really. You didn't need to say like a

scene when he actually acts like a fucking decent dude and

actually give us a guy shit for messing with the working man.

However, it's all part of his like, you know, manipulation at

somebody's done a lot. Probably.

I mean the talk about how there was a previous incident with a

taxi driver who drove around Laa.

Few people got killed, then he found then he was found dead in

his car. So you know, a similar thing

probably happened the last time he gets he gets in a car.

He gives me like 600 bucks or whatever.

And then once again, he's probably haven't like fend off

the guys dispatch challenges, give him shit down the radio and

say no, you know, listen, listen to me.

Don't mess with my guy. Don't don't don't tell my guy to

finish the shift and give his car to the next guy because you

know, me and him have got, I don't know, bonding and shit to

do I guess. Yeah, he's very much like in

survival mood, like the whole movie.

Yeah. All he's doing is he's doing a

job. Yeah.

Yeah. And he's, he's thinking his feet

the entire time. This plan goes off the rails

immediately. So everything he does from the

second that fucking body hits the roof of the taxi at the

beginning, yeah, is just him improvising Jazz I Ching.

Yeah, Darwin. Darwin fucking.

Jazz I. Ching to yeah to, to, to do what

he needs to do to like, get to the next step of the fucking

dance, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Even even we do things that are outwardly like potentially quite

decent, right? Like turn that guy off.

Really, all he's doing is getting getting that guy off the

radio, shutting him up. Yeah, basically because he's

getting in his way. Yeah, I'd say it was just a

shame because you know what we do see is that Max's Vincent is

incredibly capable. It's implied.

It's not confirmed but it seems like he's ex military.

Yeah. And for some reason, six years

ago went to private well, hitman Hitman.

It is is not a scene when they're talking about when when

the scene that he was like a former criminal attorney turned

turned attorney criminal. No, that's the that's the second

guy, the second victim. All right, sorry I fucked that

up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know. That's that's funny talks about

that when he IDs the body and he and he calls his boss and and is

talking about it, I think. All right.

Yes, Gotcha, gotcha. But no good, Paul.

Similar though, they they, I think he I think when he's

talking to Max, I think he gives away that he's been doing it for

six years. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

And and he's obviously like you don't, you don't, you know, you

don't pick that up later in life.

Yeah, to you, Like, like, you're right.

Like he's clearly been been doing some nasty stuff

somewhere. Was he in the death squads?

Well, that sport's going to. I was going to wait.

I was going to wait till we got to like the categories, but I

was going to say like, is this movie pro anti CIA?

Because this guy is probably fucking XCI.

Yeah. There's assassins, yeah.

I mean, it's high possibility, definitely.

I mean it's. Definitely something.

I mean it's like trade crafts are pretty good at times.

He seems competent, skilled. In places, but any any issues,

he's really scooped up the building that Annie works at.

I mean, Yagi's been inside, like a secure building at, like,

literally the start of the film. Yeah.

And it's like, I wonder he was really supervising the whole

hit. Is it the guys from Cartagena or

is it something someone much higher up because he's managed

to sworn into in there Like like.

Yeah, you do get the impression that maybe someone of the

federal government is on a very high levels, potentially signed

off the killing of all these witnesses because don't upset

the apple carts too much. Yeah, the math thing is you

wouldn't this like just end up in a mistrial anyway if like a

bunch of the witnesses got killed?

I mean like, I mean like they would probably just bring it to

trial again, wouldn't they just. Yeah, yeah.

For the. For the film and stuff, yeah,

forget it. Well, this is it.

This is well, this is the beautiful thing about the films

that we don't. So man, similar to Bosch, Bosch

has some similar stuff that happens, Bosch mentioned, but

something happens in Bosch and you see, but in that because

it's, you know, it's they're like 10 episodes long seasons.

You know, you, you talk to the District Attorney, you talk to

the Chief Police, you talk to the federal agents and they go

through the whole like, right, OK, can you talk to the judge?

And what was the judge going to decide?

Is the judge going to take that person's affidavit as evidence

and, and use it in the trial, even if they're not alive to

testify to the because, because they because they've clearly

been assassinated or, or they're not going to do that.

And then who's paying off the judge and blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah. You know, but we don't see that

in this movie because it's all about the cab.

Well, that's the thing again, it's like, it's just kind of

like, it's just kind of like writing that Sparse 1 needs to

be an expensive one. It needs to be as well.

I like it's a hints at obviously the criminal conspiracy going

on, hints the the the broader worlds and it does it to the

economy of the story just as much as you need.

And and not an ounce more, not an ounce more.

Like you get a shot of some helicopters flying to know

there's more people around. That's it.

Yeah. That's it.

Yeah, the next thing we get is the dispatchers grumpily calling

in Max again because his mum's been on the phone.

So. And this is when Max reveals to

to Vincent that he's got a mum who's in hospital.

And then Vincent says, well, you've got a nightly routine

that you've got to keep up with, We've got to go and do it.

So we get this fucking bonker scene where they go to the

hospital and Vincent's like. Flowers for her at her first,

like she fins her son out for buying flowers and he's like,

actually my cool handsome friends bought them.

Oh my God, they're beautiful. I love you, Tom Cruise.

Fuck me, man. And you see, like, you see,

Max's like, exasperated reaction, like who hasn't been

shown up like that in front of their friends?

Yeah. Incredible mugged mugged by Tom

Cruise ruined my my taxi Sal chud life Yeah I.

Love this sequence one because it gives us like really

important character information about Vincent that we see, you

know, we get some insight into Vincent's lack of a home life.

I guess because there's there's it's he's kind of like talking

to the mum really kindly. And you kind of get the

impression like he hasn't had a conversation like like this with

another person for like a long time probably.

So this is like novel and strange to him, I think.

So you get that a bit. The other thing we like about

this sequence is that there's some cool details in the

production design. So behind the mum is a

collection of head shots. And I was like, what the what is

that about? But it's because I think, I

think she says it eventually, as she says, like my, my Max, he

had nothing. He came from nothing.

Then he worked his way up and he's got his own company.

He drives all all the stars around in Hollywood.

Yeah. So I like that there's all these

cool head shots and I've got a I've got a highlight one in

particular because I did a double take when I watched it

last week and I was like, what the fuck?

And I stopped it and found it on YouTube and took a screencap and

everything. And one of the one of the head

shots is Mischa Barton, who was only just getting famous in 2004

for being in the OC Absolutely nuts.

Hang on pure Mischa Barton face. I was like, what the?

Fuck. Incredible.

The market is as well because it's Michael Mann.

You know, there's probably loads of thought and it just who's

who's headshots he was going to use for that, Yeah.

Crazy. So in Michael Mann's head, he's

had the conversation in his own head between Max and I'm saying,

you know, that's that show you like The OC.

Well, I drove that Marissa girl around in my limo and then the

mum's like, was Ryan there? Was Seth there?

Jesus bloody hell, there's that. It's not learning dialogue as

well. When she says all.

Max is always talking to himself in the mirror.

Yeah. And I like that for kind of

reasons that I'll go into later when I go in.

Like it's kind of like badass revealing stuff.

Well, yeah, I like that. It's it's also a hint that maybe

Max and Vincent are not so different had their lives gone

in slightly different directions.

They are not. You're not so different to an

eye. In another life I could be

driving the taxi. You could have the gun in the

back of my head. The hospital sequence ends with

this movie's Russian of Tom Cruise running the Max sees

opportunity, is pissed off with the rapport that has immediately

developed between Vincent and his mom.

Yeah, and in his frustration, steals Vincent's briefcase.

That's such a stupid move as well and say come on man and

say. You're a homie.

So he's picked up the people in the street field starts running

out the hospital, but there Vincent's chasing after him.

You get the whole thing running down the stairs, running,

running few corridors. Nobody runs like Tom Cruise.

He's absolutely nails it. And then Max gets onto an

overpass over the freeway. Yeah.

Vincent holds him at gunpoint, but it's hard enough.

Max Max hills onto the road where a perfectly timed 18

Wheeler smashes into it makes sense over like.

Like like it bounces off it, doesn't it?

And then like another vehicle hits it and it's like to shreds

everything destroyed. Yeah, yeah, if it been like a

Looney Tunes cartoon, like the road will come and stamped on it

five times as well, just to like finish it off.

And you see like bits of laptop and like bits of papers and the

extras and pictures all get all get all get destroyed.

I mean, again, it's like if, if, if this film was made today, you

wouldn't have that kind of issue because it'll be all on a

smartphone, wouldn't have got like a burner phone that he

picks up out of someone's. Encrypted cloud or something?

Yeah. Yeah.

You see, This is why the technology really matters in the

storytelling of these kind of films, these kind of eras.

And there's a certain things just really couldn't do to the

same effect to the same level and have the same kind of like

like kind of story beats around it, you know?

This occupies a very specific moment in in, in time where

technology that you you have mobile phones, which people

often talk online, like how many movies would be solved?

I mean misunderstandings in films would be solved without

people have mobile phones. You know, like any Shakespeare

play would probably be immediate resolved if people had

smartphones. Rumour and Juliet could go on

Snapchat. Like most of that would be

squared away. And if they went on TikTok,

they'd go viral, baby. Imagine they can imagine that

like they would like they'd have like influence a couple of like

Rd you or something like that. And they'd just be huge.

They wouldn't need to spoiler it for Shakespeare kill themselves

because they'd just be gigantic on TikTok.

They'd be getting like like sponsorships and everything.

Freeze board. Tibble going like shipping my

boy Romeo and his girls. You.

Yeah. Rude.

You forever shipping. My boy, good grief.

Yeah. You get like toxic fandoms like

you're like, Oh my God, Romeo deserves better.

So, so the point I was going to say was the mobile phone alone

is not enough to fix it. The mobile phone as we knew it

today, maybe like a smartphone, but just having like those

mobile phones that they have in the movie.

Good effort finding him with a rundown battery in those days,

by the way. We'll get to that later.

Hell fuck you was was was this personally robbed?

Like low key homeless Just hiding that fact.

I haven't. Charged it in like 3.

Weeks for like a month or something.

I love as well how like he has like goes upwards like the roof

of building to try and get signal.

It's like these things, just these these these things just do

not apply in boards. So I'll.

Be interested to see how this plays out.

This executive composition plays out when we do blackout

eventually. Many, many January's from now,

probably. Yes.

So that is to say that unfortunately, destroying the

briefcase is not enough to deter Vincent from completing his

task. He's a God stand professional if

nothing else. What he does mean though is he

has to send Max to go and meet the the client.

Yeah. Felix Reyes Torena, played by

Javier Bardem. And we obtain the information on

of the final two targets. He needs another copy of the

files, but it means we have this awesome sequence where Max has

to front up to to Felix's club and he's already a massive

disadvantage. So we talked about code

switching a lot in this movie because there's quite a lot of

it. Another topic I I, I think is

that clues make of the man to to a certain extent.

And we see that in the costuming.

Vincent's got a very sharp suit on.

Yeah, which gradually, like all good movies, gets a little bit

more dishevelled as like goes on as things happen.

So he starts with a certain tie all done up, grey suit very well

for tailors, all that kind of good stuff.

As the movie goes on, things go awry, he lose he loses the tie

pretty much immediately. Max by comparison, has been

cutting around in like some slacks and and like an old

hoodie and he's not wearing a put and underneath that either.

It's just AT shirt, I think. So he he's got a pill battle.

Going up to this exclusive club run by a cartel boss, getting

past security and sitting at the guy's table.

The fucking meanest security guys know the man as well.

It's like there's a lot of them and all of them look at psychos,

you know? It's like, yeah.

He rocks up to the door. He's like, I'm looking, I'm

looking to speak to Felix and they're like, there's no Felix

here, fuck off. Yeah, yeah.

It's like, sorry mate, sorry mate, it's not your night.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But you can't come in with those

those shoes on. Them she was a casual miss.

When was last time you even got told by bounce that's not your

nightmare? Yeah, I can't even remember.

For me it was maybe about 2008 or 9 when I tried again

somewhere in the big market and the bouncer took one look at

Mimi Mara and he's like it's not your night boys.

Thanks for saving as a beaten miss.

I don't think this happens anymore.

It does feel like that is just fundamentally different.

I think night out, nights out have fundamentally changed since

we've got to our advanced stage like this is going to.

If we had any young listeners, it would alienate them.

Luckily, luckily we don't. Right, So guys, fellow fellow

old people, do you fellow fellow elder millennials and Gen XS, do

you remember when? People by people, sons and

daughters of Gaviscon. Yeah.

You're saying, you're saying? Like, you know, if you went out

on a night out, even if you were going out as a group, you

wouldn't necessarily stay as a group.

You didn't have smartphones, so synchronising your movements was

like non impossible. Yeah, Yeah.

So you would just go off on side quests, wouldn't you?

You would, yeah. And then eventually you would

find your way back to like either like the one big club

that everyone knew, like that was going to be like the place

where we're going to end up. Wind up on that night, often by

accident. And you just like, see each

other. You have those moments where you

see each other from the dance floor, sort of spaced, sort of

spaced. Oh my God, they just wind up in

the same club at the end. Like like that.

That shit used to really happen. That doesn't happen anymore.

That's like I, I was speaking to.

So when I was working at one of the breweries I was at, we had a

guy from Ekeg who came to like and deliver and pick up like

rental kegs. And you would say that he used

to be a bouncer, but he had a big, uh, retiring and his whole

thing was like, umm, a lot like, it's gone beyond like doorman.

They don't want like kind of hard guys the door.

They want people who were polished mid-day kind of front

of house guys all coming and stuff.

But he was saying he realised he, he, he had to get out of the

game when he was, he worked in Yorkshire and he's outside some

bar and it's a courtyard area. And he's, the way he tells the

story. He's like, he's on the back of a

guy and he's like kind of pushing his face up in the

concrete with his hand. And he's been on the comms to

like the police. He's been comms, the police, the

police turn up. And if you said right, OK, can

you get off from here? And he's like, I can't.

And the cops, why? He's like, my back's gone out

and this guy threw his back out while while looking, pinning

your guy to the deck. This guy was an absolute

character. Yeah, I guess.

I guess the territory that the nightlife territory is very

different at least. Yeah, so I'm on Max man, just to

get into the club by name dropping that he's Vincent,

Yeah, which somehow much to settle off, which is weird,

isn't it? Like that the the security on

the door of the club are aware of the name of the hitman that

Felix is hired to this. That's weirds me that that they

would. Know like, like it's like, I

mean, I guess it's like God, like really a suspension of

disbelief thing because if I was like, Felix run this shit and

said right, OK, there's there's, there's like a pass phrase,

there's a code phrase that whoever needs to see me as a

priority can see. It's like, you know, I'm tired

of this orgasm kind of thing. So somebody.

Yeah, yeah, same, same. But like This is why I get all

the all of the cartel nightclubs.

I go up a bunch of incredibly militarised bouncers in just say

hi, man, I'm tired of this orgasm.

But but I think it's ex suspension, this belief to get

them in. But yeah, I wouldn't imagine

this one cartel guy who I mean, and he's surprised that he's

even physically in play in the city, right.

So it's it's hard to think you would just have a blanket thing

for someone turns up and says the Vincent.

Oh, let him in just in case it turns out with some random guy

who's I said, oh, it's me, it's Vincent.

You know, Can you imagine? Yeah, it's mental.

Absolutely crazy. I also should point out that at

this point, the LAPD hooked up with the.

The feds, yeah. The feds as well, and it's worth

pointing out because the FBI agent in charge is Bruce McGill.

Have you seen The Insider, also by Michael Mann?

I have not. It's a fantastic film about the

court cases to fight Big tobacco.

Yeah. With Brussel Crowe.

Bruce McGill plays a attorney from Mississippi and he has one

of the all time crash out scenes.

And lifts, ups and downs and middles.

So what? You don't get to instruct

anything around here. This is not North Carolina, not

South Carolina, nor Kentucky. This is the sovereign state of

Mississippi's proceeding. Wipe that smirk off your face,

Doctor. Waggon Deposition will be part

of this record. It's like, get that smoke off

your face. Yeah, it's so good.

Oh, you might have lefts and ups and downs and writes and middles

and oh man, it's so good. Audio through this one so bad.

Man, yeah, it's so good. He's incredible.

So ever since then I've watched from McGill.

Chris McGill also worked with Michael Mann very early in his

career. He had a two-part episode of

Miami Vice, which she's been executive produced by Michael

Mann, and his is great. He's like a bent cop who, like,

went off the rails after his partner died and like, got into

like, the drug trade and stuff. Like what goes with Vice?

And yeah, it's great. And there's like one of those

epic sequences, you know, like every Miami Vice had an amazing

music video that's like a great one of them.

But it's it's Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits and Oh my God,

it's. Not I have to say that.

Jeff's kiss, that's on YouTube. You can watch that on YouTube.

Just just the amount of like amazing guest stars that they

have in episodes of Miami Vice, it's just what a rock that what

an absolute roster, man. Boggles the mind man.

One of these days we'll do like a mummy vice part, but like

Jesus man, so many like people that you people are still huge

now get like their really early breaks in Miami Vice.

Feel like Lee Neeson Helmut Bonham Carter is like a is like

is like 2 episodes in season 4 or five or something.

Leonard Leonard Cohen makes a guest appearance.

Let's. Go Frank Zappa, is that it?

No way, man, No fucking way. Yeah, it's crazy, man.

Anyway, we've straight straight once again.

That's the Hyman, Mike. This is why we boast dozens of

listeners. So Max is struggling to to make

an impression on Felix. He explains that he lost the

list. Probably not the words I would

have chosen. I would have said maybe I

destroyed the list. Lost implies is out in the wind

and everyone can find it. Felix explains that, you know, a

very expensive surveillance operation had taken place to

compile that list. It applies that maybe there's a

different federal agency maybe involved in that.

Yeah, in order to prop up the cartels.

I don't know. Sicario.

Sicario. Sorry I got some.

Yeah, so slightly implied that that's happening potentially.

And then he obviously he's like, give me one more fucking kill

you kind of thing. And then Max finds a moment

where he does that, that like iconic code switch where he's

like, tell the guy behind me. Yeah, like put his fucking gun

away before I turn around and like put a cap in his bitch ass,

something like that. I think it's like he does bitch

ass to death with it. This right, this is what I'm

pulling back. A lot of the things I've kind of

hinted at and using them here. He is at his best when there's

something sketchy going on behind him because he's a taxi

driver and he's used to, we actually happened behind him.

He's used to controlling the conversation when he needs to.

When he's chatting up, chatting up Annie, he's used to years,

1212 years as a Satan for probably haven't we had freaks

and geeks and psychos in the back?

And when he talk about how he practises talking in the mirror

as well. He's good at exerting his

authority because he practises it while looking forward, you

know, when they look at someone else, but just like and it's and

it's sick. I think, I don't know, maybe

it's wrong, but I think it's all kind of feeds in when people

say, how does he have this big bad ass turn around?

How does he become such a cool dude?

Well, he's also really cool dude.

He can turn on and off and he needs to.

I mean, he's cool as fuck when he's chatting up.

I mean, he's he's a taxi driver who manages to get like federal

prosecutors digits. Come on, man.

Like like he's got charisma when he fucking needs to it he needs

to he needs to have it. He's he's he's practising

talking in the mirror, maybe intimidating people, Maybe he's

practising his business pictures and stuff.

And then it all clicks from and it isn't the fact that he

magically evolves into somewhat tough.

It's the fact that all these aspects of his personality, of

what he does in his day-to-day life click in just his excellent

moment. And the cherry on top, the final

bit, the best bit, is that he's downloaded enough of Vincent's

personality to just sharpen up with that last line.

Darwin itching all that quoting them.

You know. And it's excellent and it's just

two powerhouse performances because because you see the

brilliant bit about Humpty Dumpty and Black Peter.

Do you believe in it is? Have you bought them, man?

Seriously. Now, just a few years later, he

was signed up for No Country for Old Man.

And he's like, why have you? Why have you taken me on for

this film? But I don't speak English really

good. But it's like he has this

peculiar way of speaking in English that just adds, I think

like there's. An ever worldly sense about him,

isn't it? Yeah, he's like I've met an

ancient traveller on an abandoned Rd.

Yeah, like it's like something at somebody rights on a worldly.

It's like, it doesn't sound me like someone who speaks poor

English. It sounds like someone from like

another place another time. But the film seems like shift

it's reality a little bit as you get this fake philosophical talk

of folk tales and Humpty Dumpty and stuff.

And if it was, if it was some some American dude, like yeah,

you're here. But hubby, dubby, you believe in

that shit you believe in and it's wouldn't work but.

It's softly spoken. It's tranquil, is what it is.

Yeah. And because of that, it's like

so much more intimidating. Yeah, I think.

I think what all of this is to me is like the city is almost

like a a different realm at night.

It becomes a different place. It's a different.

And this is like a quest for these on.

Yeah, it stopped me from getting a bit mental, but like, you go

remember that Michael Mann also directed the keep.

He fucking so so so we can go there.

He can go right there, he can go psychedelic when he wants to,

man. Yeah.

And I do think there is something a bit of like an

episodic quest of this this thing, because it's five hits,

because there's the little journey between each one and

there's all these little side quests that he goes on.

It does feel like the the city itself is this like different

realm where different rules apply.

Yeah. What evidence is this weird

conversation about Humpty Dumpty and Black Peter?

And like I said, do you believe in Humpty Dumpty like that?

That's in there? That's weird part of it.

Another bit we're going to see, I think a turning point in the

movie coming up right after this is is the scene where they stop

and watch the coyotes crossing the road.

Yeah, that's like. Like this is a different realm.

This isn't, this isn't your daddy's LA.

This is like somewhere else, something else, a moment in

time. This is this is when you've got

to the point in the late night slash early morning when it gets

weird. This is like weird hours of the

city. This is like when.

Witching hour. It's the witching hour.

It's the point when the only people who were up rather up to

no good watching people who were up to no good, you know, and

it's accidentally. Yeah, the coyote scene, there's

so much. It's poor Horizon, the coyote

scene. From what I've seen on reviews,

some people fucking hate it. There's some people really angry

at it. It's like, no, it's cool man.

Like, like it shows to me, it's like it shows that the city for

all it's this big modern construction, it isn't too far

away from the wilderness. It isn't too far away from the

wild, from strangeness, from like, because I mean, a coyote

is violence personified, isn't it?

I mean, I like them. I think they're cute.

But also it's like you don't, you don't, you don't think of

them as like a nurturing animal. Like they're, they are much

like, much, much like Vincent. They're a hunter, you know?

There's a bit of mysticism around them as well.

Definitely, yeah. And I think that's fair.

It's important. It helps out there.

Fucking massive. It's, it's if, if, if this had

been like in London and it'd be like urban foxes.

Urban foxes. It wouldn't have hit the same.

They just say that's like turned down the corner and there's like

2 urban foxes having sex and just screaming.

Yeah, and instead of like. Noise to make.

Sort of sort of like, we still got Audioslave here, so we've

got Chris Cornell's incredible vocals.

Yeah, as much as, like, as much as that maybe dates the film a

little bit. Audioslave You can't say a bad

word about Chris Cornell Gold Rush he saw in his in his

incredible voice. And if this had happened in

Britain, what would you have had?

Gavin Rossdale from Bush or something.

Or would it be in the Libertines?

That was in London, right 2004. It's clearly the libertines to

say don't look back into the sun and there's two urban foxes just

brutally made and make a horrible like assault kind of

noises because he know that the time has come.

Distinctly worst film. Distinctly worst film.

But yeah, just shadow one son. Yeah man, fuck Audioslave.

It's a don't know if it's nostalgia, but I feel like maybe

we didn't appreciate Audioslave as much as we should when they

came out. Yeah, yeah.

Overall as a nation, I mean, my, yeah, my, my parents house, it

was on all the time. She had MTV 2 on all the time.

Yeah. My, my mum got really into

Audioslave actually. Oh yeah.

So she didn't. She didn't like it Against the

Machine, but she liked Audioslave.

She didn't like the rapping, but she didn't mind when Chris

Cornell came and did the soaring vocals.

Yeah, and they were soaring vocals.

Indeed, Chris Cornell. Also, here's my hot take for the

podcast. I did what I think is one of the

better Bond themes, actually. People don't give the people

don't give that as the credit deserves.

You know, you know my name. Yeah.

Awesome song. I'm I'm going to get in fucking

fights by saying that I think the trouble crow bond is is a

low key incredibly good bond theme.

That's one of dies. Yes, it is.

Then again, I would fight in the streets for Sheryl Cross, so.

I know you would. That's that's that's would I

songs in the Q of X. Yeah, songs in the Q of X Go at

it, go at it. Right here we go #4 is a target

called Peter Lim and he right now is in a nightclub, I think

called Fever. The FBI have been watching Max

at the other club. They think that Max is Vincent.

They think that that that's so. They think Jamie Foxx is the

assassin. Yeah, because that Fannings had

fannings had the the driver's licence emails to a cell phone.

It's like technology, technology.

I love what I think like e-mail it to my cell phone.

Like yes, get in. Yeah.

And so, yeah, but they believe that, that, you know, real

drivers floating in the river somewhere.

And it's like, who believes in them, God damn it?

Yeah, and there and all the FBI guys are saying like, Oh yeah,

this happens all the time. You get these ex KGB guys and

they're like super heavily trained operators.

They'll kill the guy and then they'll take over and they can,

they can blend in. They're like chameleons.

I'm like but it's not true in this particular case.

Like some like, like some fucking XKJP guy, like being a

fucking Los Angeles taxi driver. Yes, stop, comrade.

You like those? You like those dodgers?

It's. Like, you know, you know what?

Like sprungs of mind there. Yeah.

It was like Bob Hoskins was Mario in the Super Mario movie.

Like, I have to believe that you really are Brooklyn plumber.

Like, what the fuck? Oh love, where's your stop cock?

The fucking world's most cockney man.

Oh, I've. Got to go to the Bastion

Kingdom. Oh my.

Like. Literally.

Literally the world's worst cockney man somehow playing the

world's most Italian plumber. All right, love.

This is my brother, John Lucas Ronardo.

Don't ask too many questions, love.

Crazy film. Anyway, so Fanning Riflo is our

is our one good guy who believes that actually Fox is not the

guy. Everyone else is pretty keen to

shoot Jamie Foxx in the head, so we all converge.

Yeah, because Felix is. Felix has sent his guys after

them as well, hasn't he? So.

He has, yeah. So Felix guys kind of heading

behind the FBI tool and right up at Sarah.

That's right. So we have this like montage

where everyone convision in the club, everyone tooling up,

everyone check out the weapons, got the one like cartel guy,

like police fans in front of the laser.

Pointer. Yeah.

And it's such a big fucking chunky laser pointer as well.

It's like, oh, that was, that was a tame, that was an

aesthetic. Yeah.

And then we have this brilliant sequence in in the Club, Club

Fever. This this sequence I think took

about 3 weeks to film and they were long days.

They were like 12 hour days. Some of the sort of behind the

scenes notes I've seen Tom Cruise probably instrumental

keep people's spirits up. It was always very high energy.

So like same, same old, same old from Tom Cruise, a concert

professional. So the original DP left the

project through creative differences with Michael Mann

during this, because obviously very exacting about how you

wanted the sequence to go. If you look at the credit to the

movie, there's choreographers, there's about 90 stunt people.

So you've got a club full of people who've got to be dancing.

One thing I noticed quite early on in the sequence is you've got

like a handful of hands up together with trays of drinks on

them as well. Yeah, yeah.

Which obviously gives a bit of texture and sense of perspective

of the room as it goes down. But like, that kind of stuff

doesn't have my accident. That's that's important.

Otherwise there'd just be a bunch of people in the room

milling around. Well, yeah, and.

Then we have this this incredible sequence where very

crowded. And yet the geography it's this

is this is like fucking, I say this all the time.

Check please. But like the geography of the of

the of the fight, like still makes like pretty good sense.

I think if you're if you're paying attention to it, kind of

kind of kind of a bit mad that like Max isn't there at all.

But but yeah, I mean, what did you think of it?

It's such a good scene. That's such a good sequence.

I've said the geography makes sense.

You got like a situation idea of where everyone is.

It's never confusing, you know, like what your lens approach

people use and stuff like that. The the camera work pulls you

in. It puts you really in the moment

when you see Tom Cruise obviously starting to throw

punches and kick people in, in the scene when he just downs

that guy. And then like it's inferred, he

stamps on his head or his neck and there's that look on his

that's like. I'm not sure if it's Vincent's

joy at killing someone or if it's Tom Cruise's joy at being

the bad guy, but there is something in that look on his

face like he's he's, he's feeling good, man.

He's it's excellent. There's when when the shooting

starts, it's brutal. It's gnarly.

And you see, I've seen people give this scene a lot of shit.

I've seen this scene get a lot, a lot of abuse and reviews on

letterboxings. I've had people saying that's

not realistic, it's a bad action scene.

And it's like, well, I mean, it's so story time.

I wasn't at this particular incident, but someone I knew was

at a rock club in Newcastle, probably around this kind of

time actually. And the DJ was told someone was

on the dance floor with a knife. And the DJ got on the make set,

Everybody get off the dance floor, someone's got a knife.

And this one kid in a corn hoodie thought the DJ said got

the life. And some people that leave on

the dance floor and this one kid runs out of the fucking corn

T-shirt corner hoodie, got the life.

I was. And it's like, so I think what

people look at that is that people don't believe that if

this kind of shit popped off at a nightclub, there wouldn't be

an immediate fucking Stampede. I agree.

I don't sorry. I don't agree because I've seen

the exact thing happened to me. I was in a Tiger Tiger at

Portsmouth in 2011 and a massive fight broke out about four feet

away from me and I didn't know about it until the jug of what I

was holding suddenly had like a different glass in it splashed.

And I was like what the fuck? And then like they turned around

and like one of the guys in our party had been like bopped in

the nose and was like pissing blood everywhere and I was like

what the fuck just happened? Yeah, exactly.

I mean, so yeah, I guess that's why to me, it's not an

unbelievable fight and it's not a scene that like ruins the film

or anything, as if anything could ruin this film.

But I mean, yeah, it's the the whole gunplay section of it

doesn't last super long. It's it's concise, it's violent.

It's it's very to the point and you don't see massive exoduses

because it's the first start in terms of storytelling.

Most of the people that are probably fucking high or drunk

anyway, right? And it's like the, the, the, the

music's booming. No one's running in and

screaming. This is a raid.

Put your hands up, turn off the music kind of shit.

So give. A stop still start fling when

they hear the gun the gun play. Yeah, yeah.

Which is when it would happen you.

Know. Yeah, yeah.

But it's not like kind of Tom-tom Cruise walks in with a

gun in his hand that everyone immediately disappears.

No, it's it takes it's when Chris McGuigan shot in the leg.

Yeah, yeah, I like about that is the build up to all this is

you've got people getting taken out by by Vincent as he's

stalking around the place like a predator.

You've got Max like panic looking around, you know, trying

to find anybody to help. I guess you've got Fanning

there. He wants to get to Max so so we

can get him out there safely because he knows that everyone

else is going to try and kill him.

And then you have Lynn with his own personal security trying to

like usher those guys onto this on slow.

He's he's getting like anxiety. And as soon as the shooting

starts, you can see that all that like coming to a head, like

you say, really short sequence. I think the thing that really

blows my mind about it is, and it's it hits more now because

Mark Ruffalo is a much bigger name than he was in 2004.

But seeing Fanning just get like summarily dispatched, Yeah,

like, fuck. Like the one little bit of light

in this movie that we was going to have, it was going to end.

All right. Just gone.

Yeah, right. Cavalry's not coming anymore.

Like it's everybody against Max and Vincent now.

Yeah, it's like what I was helping you, you know, kind of

thing. It's like I was like, no, you,

you were hindering by chances of surviving tonight.

Yeah, yeah, fucking fucking awful.

Because yeah, you have that sequence of Vincent, like, saves

his life, yeah, by shooting that guy.

He looks at him and he's like. Yeah, the one why you believed

him when he was trying to extract him from the whole thing

and he got him out of this mess. I do think.

I mean, all right, all right, pay a limb.

But I'm built different because I simply wouldn't have been at a

nightclub the night before. I had to be in court as a

witness. I've been literally, literally

anywhere else than a fucking nightclub in the early hours of

the morning, you know, with a talking amount of armed security

guys when I know that I'm up against a fucking cartel, you

know I would, I, I would be at home or anywhere else or out in

the home. Really.

Like, wouldn't you? You've got to go on the stands

more. Yeah, yeah, I've been a safe

house. Yeah, I've been a safe house

with federal fucking bodyguard. Yeah, like a bunch of like US

marshals just hanging around. Then again, if there is a higher

conspiracy, maybe there was, maybe there was no access to a

budget for. US, yeah maybe, but I don't

think then go to fucking Tokyo do it was on the High Street

either. I'm just going to treat this

like any other night and I'm going to go fucking club and I'm

going to sit in the fancy club in the friggin booth with me,

with me dudes. So we'll get a defenders and be

high fucking profile. Don't just literally go

somewhere else. Go go, go see a film, go watch

Bridget Jones five times in a row or whatever.

You know, just like find like find a cinemas open all night,

stay in the house. Yeah, mental.

Yeah, my, if I take on it is I'm not 100% sure what the date of

it is when the movie takes place.

I don't know if there's I haven't I didn't like comb

through it and do a freeze frame every single bit.

I happen to notice it passing at the very end of the film on

yeah, Sunday night, Sunday. So that means it would in

Saturday night when the night started Sunday early Sunday

morning when it's happening. So the court case starts on a

Sunday morning. Yeah, which is wild.

Wild, yeah. But I don't know.

Don't know because it's January 24th of 2004.

Yeah. And I'm just thinking like how

long it takes to do post production on on a on a film.

I don't know if that's when it was shot or if it was shot

generally a lot earlier. I need to like dig in some

behind the scenes details on that.

What I would say is that because of the way it's shot and that

maybe it hasn't had that much post production, maybe it did

come out within six months of being shot.

Yeah. Don't know.

Anyway, so, yeah, we have that sequence.

Banning rested. Peace is now dead.

We have the it's you What? This is over.

You lost out. You've done how to fucking count

5. You've got one more to go, Max.

He's just driving with him and he doesn't want to do it.

And he gets there's an argument with them and they have a bit of

a nihilistic argument about the the value of human life.

And they start having the whole kind of thing of like what's

because Vincent comes up with some very edge Lord points.

He's like, all right, OK, so like how many people died in

Rwanda? Did you fucking join Greenpeace?

Did you like join save the whales like or, or or have

killed like one? What does he call him?

He calls him. Angelino.

One fat Angelino. Goes out there, goes out.

And suddenly and now suddenly, you've got a moral imperative.

It's like, well, I think you've ever simplified the issue there.

There's a difference between deaths that were happening that

that have got to do with you and things that you've had an actual

participation. It's a trolley problem, isn't

it? Yeah.

So they have a bit of arguing about that.

Max decides heroically to deliberately crash at the cab.

Incredible crash, I think. A really good stunt.

Yeah. That's.

It's up there with like the maximum number of rules like

cars ever done on in Casino Royale and what kind of stuff.

What I like about it is he he crashes it by driving it into a

Jersey barrier around some Rd works a believable I mean right

stunt people, if there are any in the comments and probably

like pile in with like this is the world's oldest setup for a

stunt. But it happens to look like a

natural bit of the road works and isn't like just a car

crashing out of nowhere, which you sometimes you just see a lot

in like a lot of like 70s, sixties, 70s don't work.

You should see like cars crashing out of nowhere.

In fact, In fact, hang on a minute in 20 tens.

Unstoppable. Unstoppable.

Yeah, we saw a police. Car like randomly randomly roll

out of nowhere because it's like obviously what a tip to make it

do that is like concealed on the roadway.

But like, this makes perfect sense.

The taxi driver has seen a Jersey barrier on the road and

crashed into it to rule the car. Well, you see that.

That's because like modern day police vehicles have like, a

secret flip over a button that the government doesn't want you

to know about. Speed racing.

Yeah, there's like a special button you're pressing.

The vehicle just flips over. Governments don't want you to

know this. Man, I love how just obviously

as well when he's just when he saw just blowing through red

lights and you see him just flooring that thing and it's

like that's, that's the fucking power of a Crown Victoria baby.

That's a powerful car tearing through the city.

Like so when when when Vincent is kind of just really going in

like spewing his like nihilism Atom and stuff.

This is like the real height of his conflict with him.

He's spewing all this nihilistic shit.

Atom. I like how the taxi met out.

It's visible a few times and obviously it's fares reading all

zeros. Now it's Michael Mann.

Nothing happens for no reason and I love the fact that while

he's talking about or nothing matters, nothing exists, that

kind of thing. It's all bullshit.

Nothing's important, nothing's relevant to anything.

Would just would just like what specks the dust in a Galaxy or

some shit like that. This edge load stuff and this is

big fat red zeros on the screen. Like it's just like, that's just

that's just reflective. I think of it's nihilism and

it's disbelief in anything. And this comes just before just

before Max's kind of personal code and his beliefs kind of

come back swinging into the fight and he's like, you know

what, Vincent, go fuck yourself kind of thing.

Fuck you weapons. And it's like crash.

We get the closest thing that we have from Vincent of A Hint of

fear as well. Yeah, so obviously he sees the

car going faster and faster and faster.

Initially he's like, what are you doing, man?

What are you doing? Because he's only got stopped by

the police for running red light.

That's that's what I read it as. I read it as I was initially

being concerned about standing out by having a traffic

violation. And then that's how you get

pulled over and the boys found it, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah. Then as he starts taking those

like long down hills into those tight turns, you start to get

from Vincent a sense of like, shit, like this guy's off the

rails and I've lost, I've lost control of him and a little

interfere. And then and then Vincent of

course. Sorry Max flips flips the cab.

Great crash. Brilliant sequence.

Really believable crunchy Max. I think Rince is Vincent for not

wearing his seat belt as well. Yes, that's right, he does.

That's brilliant. And Vincent is also is it?

He picks up his gun and it just hits Max like several times like

bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, like like just whacks him like

out of frustration. Very funny.

But then but then he gets out. He takes off down the street,

runs away. It's like finally, like they've

separated. There's like a right this this

thing has glommed onto all night is like finally departed.

Great. And then the police come and you

think, oh, great. Yeah, he's going to get, he's

going to be able to talk to the police.

You're going to tell them what's going on.

Finally. Fantastic.

And then the patrolman sees the, the, the, the, the boot and sees

the body. And then he like pulls the

weapon. And it's the precise same

moment, I think, as as Max sees the laptop, which has stayed on.

Take that Neil Breen and sees the identity of the 5th, the

identity of the 5th target and of course it's Annie.

What are the chances? And I initially was like, that's

a bit far fetched that he was talking to Annie earlier on, but

actually he drove her to her building and picked up Vincent,

who was scoping out her building.

Actually makes perfect sense onto her job.

But yeah, so unfortunately he what's he doing?

He cuffs the guy, doesn't he? Like, yeah, like he kind of, he

kind of cuffs him, cuffs him to the vehicle, right?

And then he's like, oh, don't worry, I'll call the police.

It's like he doesn't you've you've downloaded a little bit

too much of Vincent's lying personality that I made but.

Yeah, yeah. But what I love about it is that

this is so we had a an internal moment of change.

I think in the coyote scene, if we're going to be wanky about

it, they both looked at those coyotes and they both had a a

moment where they really considered who they are and what

they want in our life. We've obviously had these

conversations throughout the movie between Vincent and Max

where Vincent is called Max on his bullshit.

Basically, you're not starting this, this limousine company,

All it takes for you to buy, buy one town car, like get a load

and get one town car and then you're off to the races.

But no, you've said you've got to build up a client list,

you've got to get employees, you've got to like buy multiple

cars, you've got to find out a garage and all this stuff.

And it's like you're just stalling.

You're not living your life. And then he says to him like,

you know, you're going to get to the end of your life and realise

you never took it. You never took a chance.

You never did it. And then we get to the end of

the movie, which is the incredible movement.

So he obviously rubs that guy's phone out of his hand.

Hilarious. Just just like pulling the gun

goes like, hey, man, he should puts it goes like falls over.

Yeah, you would. And then then he has the whole

the whole moment where he has to like, call Annie and try to

explain what's going on, which is just like, it goes about as

well as it possibly can do. It goes better than it probably

could. You know, it's so it seems like

a crank call until he mentions Felix Ray's Terrina.

We have the the whole sequence where so they converge on her

building. She's doing her routine that she

said she was going to do at the start of the movie.

So she's working late. And so it's a good pull from Max

to remember that and go to where she works as well.

And we have the very tension building sequence of like Max

has stood on an adjacent building's roof.

You can see up to the floors of the building they're in.

She's on the 15th floor. Her office is on like the 14th

floor and fucking Vincent is in her office and she's on the

floor above, so she has to go in there himself and get her, get

her out from underneath. Basically the foot of this

fucking trained contract killer. Incredible sequence.

And she calls 911 and just full of powers cut.

She says there's a man in the building and and then power goes

out. And it's like at this point the

film was just screaming to me, shit, the police are going to

get the wrong guy. The wrong guy is going to get

watched at this point. Yeah, there is a man in the

building, a Michael Mann and. Michael Mann is in the fucking

house. It is Michael Mannuari, the

first baby. I love this hope sequence.

I love the the the shooting, like so many windows get shot

through, But again, you know, there's a there's a geography.

There's like a little maze of desks they've got to get through

and they do it. I really love this is a bit

where Vincent picks up an office chair, throws it through a plate

window, jumps through after it trips on the chair.

It falls off. It falls off it and then gets up

and runs away and they're like that.

Yeah, I mean, I wonder. Tom Cruise did that stunt, and

Tom Cruise probably demanded it remaining.

Because because he does have a stunt double, you know, a credit

in the film as well. I did see that, yeah, but

apparently he still did many of his own stunts, so I wonder what

bits he didn't do. Might be it might be stuff like

the car flipping if there was someone in there, or probably

not though. Probably wouldn't have had

anyone in it, but other bits of driving probably.

Yeah, yeah, probably. I mean, what is the most that

kind of dangerous physical stunt film do you think on the car

crash made it be that whole jump through the window thing?

I mean that is probably. In terms of like.

One of the most demanding stunts though in the car crash I guess.

Pick up a thing for the window. The chances of like, you know,

twisting your ankle or something, Yeah, are pretty

high. But falling and, you know, and

like broken bones, that kind of stuff, Yeah, there's probably a

fair amount of that. So I imagine that's the one that

you'd expect the still want to do, but interesting,

interesting. I mean, it's worth it.

We don't have time for on this on on this.

I would love if there was some kind of movie stunt podcast to

existence to go into this more detail.

I'd love to stalk with somebody who doesn't know about stunts a

lot more than we do. That'd be great.

Yeah. Deeply, deeply into that.

There's an idea. Yeah.

So they start to flee the building.

Max cleverly decides to avoid the streets and goes to the

underground scout a train. Vincent is not fooled.

And just follow them. And we have this, this, this

fight sequence set on the train. I love this.

It's that whole classic of like, will they get on the train?

Will they get off the train? There's two, there's a bit where

there's two trains as well. There's the upper level and the

lower level. And it's decide which one's

going to be pure chance. But he gets there and he picks,

he picks the lower level correctly, unfortunately.

Well, we've been a pretty, pretty underwhelming end of the

film actually, if you haven't, but but yeah.

And then you have this whole like cat and mouse chase through

the train. A bit like the deleted sequence

from the Untouchables to different director to different

streamer, but still. And then it culminates in

another great shootout, not unlike the lift shootout from

Smoking Aces. Yes, poorly aimed shots.

Yeah, just just kind of up close and personal.

The film uses darkness as part of its storytelling.

Yeah, tool kit lit only by muscle fascist for moments.

It's just like, different to P It's a difference between cover

and concealment, right? Yeah.

Because we're in this, like stuff mashing up through the

doors, through the windows. And Vincent comes off, comes off

the worst for it. He's faintly shot, tries to

reload. And then he realises that he's

cooked, realises he's head and he's losing blood rapidly.

He sits down and of course Max is out of ammo as well as pistol

sucked up. And he comes over.

Yeah. And.

And. He's still pointing it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's brilliant, Yeah.

It just goes to show that he's he's not an action guy.

I mean, he's like holding this pistol, like fucking Talisman

rather than a weapon. And he's managed to he's managed

to kill a guy. And it's like then of course you

guess you got that man gets on the MTA and dies, rides around

for six hours. No one, no one knows his dad

kind of thing from from Max's and our win Elliot the next

station and Vincent's then literally dies.

He's like, yeah, he's just. Pull out a Palm Beach and then

he's like. Yeah, yeah.

It's a poetic AF but but I think it works for me because like

this whole movie, it's this in the play between Max and

Vincent, this two header, this character study of the two of

them is made. It is elevated, I think, like a

what would have been a pretty straightforward action movie of

like like a an anti buddy cop movie.

But I think those philosophical chats they've had throughout the

course of it. And like it's it's lent this

almost like a almost like a fable kind of quality to it,

like a fairy tale quality to it. And yeah, it's almost like sort

of the moral good is trying to the evil despite itself.

Like there's no way that that Max is the is the better

marksman. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like

a knight in the Squire, but the Knights evil, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's kind of weird to

see me. It's almost like ripple skilt

skin. It's just been taken out and

it's like dying in the MTA. That's that's what it feels like

to me, like the evil trickster. It's like it's been defeated by

by his own tools. Fantastic.

Fantastic. And it just ends as well.

I love this movie Just ends as well.

There's some extra bullshit at the end of it.

There's no like, yeah, you know, there's no like end sequence

where he's like fucking opening his limousine company or or you

see any of the trial. You don't see any of the trial.

You don't see you don't see a news report.

You don't see a stepping out of the courtroom, the courthouse

and news reporters going there, going like, oh, the Felix Reyes

Terrella has been sent away for 50 years.

Like, no, that, no, that shit. They just didn't matter.

That's that's the importance of the stories over with.

You can kind of like work out in your head kind of what happens

to Felix or whatever a later date.

But it's again, it's Michael Mann cutting out the fat, paring

things down and things out, yet still leaving a really, really,

really rich storytelling experience.

Yeah, big time 100. Percent.

Cool, right? Should we take a quick break and

come back for categories? Go away, my briefcase the.

Briefcase. Yeah, it is why you want it

back. So we're going to go through the

categories, which is something we've always done on a clear and

present dudes got a few new categories for a new season.

So we'll try those out as well as we go through.

But first of all, I guess we'll stick with our always one, which

is casting. Yes.

So on this one, we don't talk about the major styles too much

because they've we've talked about them for the last two

hours. But we'll talk about some of the

the lesser known players and and who they are in this movie.

Got some really good ones for for this movie.

So starting with so we've talked already about Tom Cruise, Jimmy

Fox, Jimmy Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo, Mark Ruffalo, Detective

Fanning's boss, this guy called Peter Berg, his character called

Richard Wagner. Peter Berg is an actor.

He's also a producer and he's an executive producer on the left

of us, which is like one of the greatest TV shows ever made.

So I just want to throw that one out there.

Bruce McGill we talked about already Miami Vice, The insider,

but also right, he's been in so much National Lampoon's Animal

House, Law Abiding Citizen, My Cousin Vinny.

It's one of the greatest movies ever made.

Cinderella Man, Like if you even look through his latest stuff,

one thing I don't know if you remember, but he was in a season

1 of Reacher as the mayor. Holy crown the way.

Yes, yeah, that. In.

Detail The little pimp. The little pimp came, Yeah.

Details. The jazz musician that was

played by Barry Shabaka Henley, again, his his you may know, is

not massively extensive. So he plays his iconic role as

this jazz man and I guess gangster in this, but also plays

Bobby the prison officer in Rush Hour.

Tremendous. Only very short scene, but

really great. Yeah, Debbie, Debbie Mizar, who

is in a shit tonne of stuff including Empire Records and The

Insider. Empire Records mentioned get.

In exactly Yeah, Suppose Chain Empire records who is I think

Rex Manning's assistant, I think.

But she she's just plays a young professional in this this has a

tiny role, but great. We'll put you back to Barry

Shabaka Henley. I'll take a quick look.

His his his IMDb. Holy shit, it's done a lot.

I delayed that guy. Moment from him was he was in

Heroes. He was in the Heroes TV Series A

few years after this film. He played Detective Brian Fullen

where I remember him from. Tell you why as well he also

played He's also in Death by Lightning which came out this

year, which was the the mini series on Netflix about the the

assassination of James Garfield. Oh, right.

This is the second film that we've done when a member of the

cast was a voice actor in Duck Man.

I cannot remember which of that film we've talked about that

there was someone in it who was being in Duck Man, but he was in

an episode of Duck Man. We'll have to dig deeper in

with. There's like some kind of link

between people in being episodes of Duck Man, people being in

really fucking good thrillers. I think there might be.

It was in, it was in the Miami Vice film from 2006.

So he continued working with Michael Mann two years later,

which is pretty cool. Yeah, he seems to have done a

lot of a lot of interesting stuff.

Should we go through some quotes?

Yeah, such a dialogue heavy film as well.

The wit and wisdom and especially the width between

Vincent and Max is brilliant. High point of when there's the

argument about about how Vincent threw a man out of a window and

Vincent's like, Oh no, I didn't. He fell.

And then Max is like, what a deal you would say when Max

gives him shit. He just met him once and you

killed him like that and just this absolute the conversation

and our of a line from Vincent. What I should only kill people

after I get to know them and it's like, I mean it's just no

notes, 11 out of 10, no fucking notes.

Of course no one can argue with you, homie.

That my briefcase that's. That's the one your homie.

But my briefcase so good. It's quite like a menacing,

punchy voice when he wants to. It really does.

It really does. I mean like in in in Tropic

Thunder, obviously when he was like kind of comically over the

top angry, like your fuck your face and all that.

But when he wants to be like more low key punchly intimidate

and you know, it's like he's. Even when he was in You good

man, he's like, you cut those guys loose.

Yeah, it's like still good the. Fucking only thing that didn't

show up is the Polish cavalry, says Vincent after the nightclub

shootout. It's like, is that a Siege of

Vienna reference? Is that a wing to sauce moment?

Shot This is fire. I like the the train the train

fight at the end and then Max Vincent is just like getting

angry and angry and he goes Max. I do this for a living.

It's like, Sir, I have a professional.

Oh good man. If you go through the quotes on

MTV, it's just them arguing with each other the whole time.

And some of those, some of those are funny, but some of them are

just that's sad. That's great, Vincent.

You're alive. I saved you.

Do I got any thanks? No.

All he do is climb up. You want to talk?

Tell me to fuck off, Max. Fuck off.

Yeah, I love that. There's a little grumble.

If I'd been like Joe Pesci would have been like that Shrek of

wrecking, wrecking stuff. Like like.

Yeah, I guess the, I guess the final lines as well, like just

the guy got some of the MTA here in LA he dies.

Do you think anyone will notice just that symbolism?

I'll tell you what, actually, one thing I noticed at the very

end, I'm sorry. One thing I noticed that's

really rewarding to rewatch is right at the beginning of the

movie, Vincent initially gives up on getting into Max's cap.

Like, like, Max's head lost and something else.

Yeah. And he's like, and he's like,

oh, forget, I'll go next one. And he's like, no, no, stop.

I can take him out. And it's like, fuck man, you

were like this close to getting a gun away from the whole thing.

If the other guy had picked him up, he would have killed

everyone. You've got everyone, man,

because, you know, because Max wouldn't have been that realised

that his final target was Zanny. Exactly.

Man, the whole thing would have gone very differently.

Yeah, crazy. Makes you think.

Fate, the universe, Kismet. Yi Ching.

Darwin. Darwin, man.

Man gets on the town and we are metro dies.

Oh cool, right? I'm Devi Shivier dude.

The very first one I've read here is Tom Cruise really fell

when he stepped on the office chair.

Michael Mann liked the anomaly so much he left it in the film.

Called it. Yeah, you did call it.

Well, the man could call. That's amazing.

Excellent. All right, OK, we haven't talked

about it yet. I I did already know this.

This movie initially wasn't a Michael Mann film.

Initially it was going to be a Frank Darabont film.

Frank Darabont obviously like Walking Dead, but also like

Shawshank Redemption and when it was in that stage, it was going

to be Russell Crowe in Adam the Sandler.

Did you did you do this? Could you imagine this movie?

Have it Had it been so Crow at Adam Sandler like got it back

got to do 5 stops and he played jungle and he's like.

Come to the back of the book like such a fucking bad concept.

That is painful. I think no, I right, I think

there's potential there, right Russell?

Crew, Rompus stomp. I can see how they came up with

it, Russell. Crew, Russell crew, I'm now

looking for like what he was up to in 2004.

I mean master obviously so. Master Commander.

Cinderella Mams you're after beautiful mind.

He did Gladiator and Proof of Life in the same year.

Jesus Christ, you smoke too hard, you bitch too bad you swag

too different. He'll kill you, I mean.

Around this time Adam Sandler I think this punch drunk glove

check. I think in this point in his

career, I could kind of see it. I mean, I could definitely see,

as you said, I think it's class. You and I both went to like

Rumble Stomper at that point, which was like in 1992 film, but

this, but it's like, I mean, the Rumble Stomper era of you could

definitely do it. I think he could have pulled it

off in 2004 with the with the kind of stuff that he's doing.

I mean, especially I can say he's done proof of life.

He's on a thriller kind of stuff.

It's got range. You've seen virtuosity.

Well, yeah, I asked well why it's got range.

He's gone from Gladiator, Proof of Life, Beautiful Mind, very

different film those. And then.

So yeah, I retract my statement that it wouldn't have been good

because I can actually see it working.

However, I'm still not sure about.

Adam Sandler. Yeah, I don't.

Yeah, a weird one. It's a weird 1, isn't it?

But I can see how it happened. They, they obviously wanted to

have the the sort of the comedian turn into a series

role, 'cause that's how they got Jimmy Fox.

I mean, Fox had only done comedy beforehand.

Yeah, and then it was brought into this really, really

levelled up, Delivered. Yeah, mad.

There's been so many people like interviews saying, oh, to say

it's, it's unbelievable to see him play in a cool person.

And I can't say, well, no, it's called acting.

It's called acting. He's a good fucking actor.

Tom Cruise's tactical draw is so good in a scene from Collateral

that it's used by experts and lessons for handgun training.

Obviously it's the Yahoo Me my briefcase.

Yeah. Sequence.

That's right. So that's interesting.

So that's that's a handgun sequence that's so good from a

from a Michael Mine film and it's been cool.

Yeah. Yeah, the W .1 both both the

same essays operator trained every.

Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, so not surprising.

So, so, So he did the training for heat as well, Yeah.

He did, Yeah. Incredible.

So, yeah, when when the American military like it so much, it's

because they like the British military.

What a what a surprise To help Tom Cruise and the Jamie Foxx

best capture the spirit of their characters.

Michael Mann wrote documents on the background of Vincent.

And Max says that the document on Vincent had information on

how he began to like Charles again.

But Michael Mann got over the top.

Yeah, right. Another thing as well was the

rule of Fanning was originally going to be played by Val Kilmer

and that's what it was written for.

And then Val Kilmer had a competing commitment, so we

couldn't do it. And that's why I went to Mark

Ruffalo. I can actually see, I mean, Mark

Ruffalo's got the whole slick back hair.

Yeah, Ring. It's very kind of Kilmar coated,

like kind of appearance isn't. It yeah, it is.

I mean, it would have made his death more shocking, I think,

because you wouldn't be expecting Val Kilmer to buy it.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, fascinating.

Some cool bits from inside the cab here.

So the seating of the two leads was crucial to certain scenes.

For some of their more intimate exchanges, Tom Cruise would sit

directly behind Jimmy Fox on the driver's side, so out of Jimmy

Fox's peripheral vision, making him more vulnerable and

uncertain of his opponent. I quite like that scarf kind of

thing. And they put a lot of effort

into the setting up for the cab. So they had about, like, 17 cabs

they used for the filming. Yeah, but all of them with like

different windows removed so they could get all the different

shots at different angles inside the cab without obviously having

a fucked up cab. So incredible amount of work

keeping track of which cab to use for which scene and minds.

Boggling amazing though. That's so sad attention it.

Did you know that like kind of comprehensive film making that

he does, right? I mean Michael Mann.

Yeah, wow. I just really.

I didn't know that. I didn't.

It wasn't. I didn't pick up on that.

There are no opening credits or or titles of this film.

It just starts and it doesn't. You don't.

The first time you'll see you is directed by Michael Mad.

At the end it's. Actually, Jesus, I didn't.

Wow, there you go man. You don't need them.

You don't need them. You.

Don't need them, man. I mean, you know, you know what

you're going to say. You know what you signed up for.

That's. Incredible.

That's. A fucking statement of intent

right there. Like when you don't even have

titles, that's class. I love it.

Michael Mann? You dude, Honestly.

Right. This one does not surprise me.

The train sequence was shot with a green screen background

because Michael Mann had very precise ideas about what should

be visible through the train windows.

He obviously had that idea of the establishing kind of closing

shot of the train going away around all the like the is it

chemical works or something? I think so.

I think it's towers. Or something.

Something like. That it's like industrial stuff

isn't there. So we obviously didn't want it

to be like random backgrounds of random presidential

neighbourhoods. You wanted to be going out of

the city and sticks kind of thing.

I mean like, because like you want to look like, it's like,

like because it brings everything in the film down to

just like, you know, three people isling it from

everything. So you feel like you look out

the window and there's a fucking Applebee's with like 7 cars in

the car park and like, you know, like it's like, no, that kind of

pulls you out of a better thing, you know?

It's like getting to the end like this goes.

That's what we're talking about. Like this being like a magical

realm. It's like, it's like them

getting to the edge, the border of like this, this weird little

pocket to mention they're in. And then like, so it's like a

final, like the final trial, the final Test.

And not everyone gets to pass through this membrane and get

back to life. You know, Vincent obviously is

the one who doesn't do it. Yeah.

Fantastic. Ed Norton was offered both lead

roles. Wild.

I'm really sorry, I'm imagining him playing both at the same

time. Yeah.

Like the clumps? Edward Norton and Edward Norton.

Like the fucking clumps. Edward Norton just plays

everyone in the film. Edward Norton threw it himself

out of the window. Edward Norton quizzing himself

about jazz. Edward Norton in gunfights with

multiple Edward Nortons. Yeah.

And then like, oh, that's brilliant.

But Annie, the end is is played by Brad Pitt.

God. Edward Norton in a fat suit

playing El Gordo. This is just the Clumps now.

We've just stolen this film's legitimacy and taken away all of

it, all of its grandeur, all of its gravity, by just imagining

Ed Norton playing every role. This is like that whole recast

one film, but every character but one is now played by a

Muppet, right? It's like recounts to any film,

but every character's played by Edward Horton.

I've got one final brilliant bit of trivia and we'll move on.

Bruce Miguel is in this movie because Dennis Farina dropped

out. Yeah, Dennis Farina.

Dennis Farina, don't burn your tongue in another man's soup.

And there's no Irish saying don't listen to the world Polish

sayings. Brilliant man Love Dennis

Farina. Cool.

That's that's the trivia rundown.

We've been through casting. We've done 2 quotes, we've done

trivia. So the next category I want to

try out is weapons. Free weapons.

Free. Well, Royal James O'Toole, you

will talk us through the weapon handling in this movie.

Yeah, I mean, like, I hope we all talk like the weapons and

stuff. And I guess, well, I'm an

absolute firearms nerd and a guns and films nerd.

I know that you're actually you actually blew things up for HM

government to know you. You also have your inputs about

this as well. But man, I love the gun play in

this film that the the sequence in the alley when it takes out

the two guys. I mean, we've we've been in like

foreshadowing this through the podcast, but I actually had a go

at doing it myself, not in an alley.

I didn't walk out into the mean streets of E Harvard and try and

gun people down, but I did I did attempt to kind of replicate the

like this, the speed and the movements of the draw and I was

convinced I wouldn't be able to actually do it.

But through through the power of what's probably undiagnosed

autism, I actually managed to pretty much pull it off.

We've got a video that I'm I'm I'm I'm sure we're going to

stick on and the in in video, you'll see if if you're

listening to the audio and it's kind of fear of the mind.

There's a video of me when I'm the from like from like a

standing position doing a draw fire, dry firing some good boy,

dry firing twice and a mass forward and pivot and dry fire

again. Don't I'm doing the fucking

handgun thing with my hand is like pivot and fire two shots

and a mass then one for the head.

And I managed to actually get at the same kind of rate speed.

Tom Cruise does it. Now, I'm not saying I've got his

level of elite ball knowledge and no, he's significantly

higher trained than me. There's things that I didn't do

when all that replicated in the film.

He he punches someone, then draws and.

It's what is a good thing, but you didn't do that.

Yeah, yeah, like, I'm not gonna like, hey, Emma, come down here.

I've got to rock your fucking chin.

And then I've got a dry fire and all of these horrible things you

do in in your kitchen just for a podcast.

And also he's he, so he's got that motion when he's already

moving. His left hands go out and hit

the guy's right hand goes back, it pulls out the jacket to let

him get it was pistol. I'm drawn from like a wholesale

that's on a battle belt because I'm too fat and fucking lazy to

take the horser off my gun belt and put it on my trousers.

So that's probably a bit of a different variable.

But yeah, it's it's, it's an incredible scene.

The rapidity that he shoots. I was buzzing that managed to to

kind of replicate it. That's pretty cool because the

plan was I was just going to show how fucking difficult it

was and how it almost got it. But anyway.

But you did that like over the course of like an hour or two

and one night I, I bet, I bet, I bet Cruz and man were doing that

for hours and hours and hours. Yeah, I mean, it was about like

about 15 minutes work. You only did about like 15 or 20

attempts, I think. But then again, like I said, I'm

not bragging because fucking the conditions Tom Cruise that under

were harder than what I did, I think, but still quite bust

regarding that guns in this film, something that had us like

clapping my little hands with Glee.

Was that like, I don't know if you saw two of the feds had

those little 9 millimetre cooled submachine guns like the AR15

with like the long 9 millimetre pistol pistol calibre magazine.

It's saying our pistol calibre carbines, my beloved.

I was like, yes, it's that's like a real that guy moment to

me. It's like when you say like a

beloved actor or when I say when I say like a firearm that I kind

of have have have a boner for. I really liked I like Jamie

Foxx's weapon handling as as Max.

I like the fact that he he was trained by the same guy, right,

who trained like the rest of the cast, But he's clearly being

being told and hold it wrong and shoot with the wrong form and

stuff. And it adds that adds so much of

legitimacy the film. It's like every time he

successfully uses a gun, he's shooting with terrible form.

Like he's holding out like it's like he's like he's fucking

scared of it. And he still gets like a glance

and a shot on Tom Cruise. And then obviously he

annihilates him through the doors of the train and it's and

it it's Michael Mann's attention details for his gun fighting

gunplay goes is that it's a guy who's never picked one up in his

life. The character, the actors taught

you a fear with him, and that's really good physical acting, I

think you know. I'm super interested to see what

Jamie Foxx's weapon handling will be like in the Miami Vice

film that he would do two years after this.

Awesome man. I bet it's incredibly slick.

I've been holding off watching it until we did the pod so I

can't remember anything about it really.

Did did he catch 1? Tom Cruise doesn't get brass

check with the slide and that just before he goes and shoots

the first guy. I really love that.

As I said, that's like Tom Cruise is a guy who handles

weapons really well on film. It's it's really believable.

I love that. And it's like, yeah, part was a

go over and Rory thinks guns are really cool and he was dropped

on his head as a child. But also, it's like a lot of it

does really kind of like make the difference in how believable

the film is and like the the craft actors put into it.

And like you said, the shades of storytelling that go and the how

people handle equipment, much like with any other item of

equipment. You know, if I was if I was a

car nerd and 10 times cooler, I'd be staying.

Oh, hey, you know, you can tell the way this guy drives.

Is that kind of really important to character?

Yeah. I think it's worth saying at

this point that Tom Cruise and like another good example, Keanu

Reeves. Yeah.

OK. Like these are guys who have

been. Yeah, they're actors.

Yeah, but they've been doing flight training, they've been

doing fitness training, been in weapons training sometimes for

months and months and months on end over the course of the last

like two or three decades. Like so when you think when you

level them against like an operator in the military, for

example. So people always go like, oh,

they haven't got any credibility.

It's not like going to the military.

Well, they're not. But but if you think about like,

what, the average working day of a soldier in the British Army,

Yeah. You know, like they are not on

stagger all the time. Yeah, they are not in fields of

combat all the time. They're not like, you know,

they're not like SF operators currently operate a constant

operating out of a threat or whatever.

Yeah, they are in a barracks somewhere.

They might do agree exercise that's three weeks long, maybe

once a year, maybe once every six months, you know, as well as

any other millions of different jobs you've got on top of what

you're doing. It's not just running on with

guns all the time. So when people talk about like

like Tom Cruise, Anna Reeves, like any of your big action

stars that have that have got like credibility for doing a lot

of weapon handling themselves, you know, if they're as skilled

as anybody else. I was hasten to say that actors

like Tom Cruise who didn't work with Michael Mad fuck Hilmer,

they all use live ammunition. They've done a shit tonne of

stuff on range of live ammunition and they did like CQB

training with the live ammunition Rangers.

You've seen that footage of Kenner Reeves like.

Yeah, but he's doing like, I think it's like.

CQB kind of thing. Yeah, it's crazy.

It's amazing. And I mean when he's when he's

like being because he's because there's Halle Berry following

him around, right. And like she's like, Oh my God,

yeah, you got a record timers ago.

But I hit two of the plates out sequence like he's our guy.

He's our guy. But no, he's great.

Like, like these guys are incredibly good at the craft.

And I think it's mint. I also, as I said, I love like

just that incredibly chunky laser pointer that's on one of

the cartel guys pistols. That's like such intersection

between it's the intersection between the 90s and the 2000s

when laser pointers are still fucking huge, when like people

that people as people, they're still preferring like 9

millimetre for like the effects of machine gun kind of shit, not

going back the short barrel of fifteens, you know, like it's,

it's an interesting time. Cool.

That was our first ever weapons free, right?

I'm going to take it down into a slightly less lethal area.

Now it's about needle drops. So this movie, right.

So one of the criticisms I've seen for this film is that the

music dates it and takes you out of the experience a little bit.

And it does. I think that's a element of

truth in that. I think some of the tracks that

kind of Thunder in on the soundtrack do take you out of

the moments the music is creating.

James Newton Howard I think that the the the the original score,

great composer did I think I haven't checked this, so I might

be wrong, but I think you did the score for Nightcrawler as

well. Another amazing LA that night,

the night in the city is a different character movie.

Great. Some of the Neil jobs in this

movie, I think do take out the action a little bit.

They also fury date it in the period that it's in how that we

discussed at the pod that I think and you think as well that

the timing of this movie and the technology available to the

people is crucial for how the movie.

Works, definitely. I mean, it's, I mean, it's

essentially a period film at this point, like looking back at

it. Yeah, big time.

And the music, the music bears that.

So we've got, we've got stuff like the C 2.0 by The Roots.

Yeah, we've we've got, we've got, we've got a bit of Groove

Armada at the time, you know, we've got, we've got that weird

electronic stroke jazzy version of Air on AG Stream by you on

Sebastian Bach. Weird.

I like that. It's during the jazz sequence.

We've got Spanish Key by Miles Davis.

Brilliant. Absolutely fantastic.

Yeah, right. Another great composer here who

has done many a film score of their own, but is here as a

needle drop. Gustavo Santuala with Agatsu,

fantastic guitarist, did the music for latterly The Last of

Us TV series. But but incredible films.

Amoros, Peros, The Moot, Cycle Diaries, shake of our movie.

Yeah, he's he's great. Where's my big one?

There's a whole bunch of them here, right.

Obviously Shadow on the Sun by your duo slave.

We've talked about that already. That appears in the movie twice,

actually. Did you catch a second time?

Yes, because there's like a reprise, isn't there?

Like a reprises and as before, he does the go fuck yourself and

crashes. Yeah.

Exactly. So you have like the the initial

breaking of his brain at the coyotes and then that breaking

his brain comes back in actual action and it's hinted out by

the music. Yeah.

And then? Finally, tell you which track I

really like. Sorry is the track when when

Fanning first appears and the and song Rolling Crumbling by

Tom Rothrock plays. Oh.

Yeah, there's two Tom Roth rocks in this.

Yeah. Yeah, it is.

It is got absolute swagger. It instantly takes me back to

like there was that kind of specific sound of some bands at

the time. Like it reminds us of the song

North American Scum by LCD Sound System.

It's that like that tight little kind like like guitar riff.

But I've just seen now someone comment that quote and quote is

exactly Going out West by Tom Waits.

Holy crap. I mean, yeah, it kind of is.

But it's got like that kind of like early thousands, like

swaggery, kind of. It's just it's just a vibe that

doesn't fucking exist anymore. It's 2007, I'm listening to the

Icarus line. I'm looking on the Buddy Head

website for its updates on scams you can pull on like Dr Throughs

and stuff like that. This music of a very specific

camera that's fucking playing everywhere and like it just, it

just captures moments to capture sounds and the captures feelings

that have gone and won't come back again.

The film is a perfect ship in a bottle of the early to mid 2000s

I think. Yeah, yeah, big time.

Musically, musically, that really, really drives it home.

Yeah, The only track that I don't particularly like is you

mentioned it already, Ready, Steady Go, Korean style by Polok

and Fulton, Andy Grey, which plays during the fever club

sequence, which gives me big like Bourne Movie Energy.

Yeah, where it is not welcome. It should be like a Crimea, just

a thumping. Yeah, less to scripts, less of a

well known tune piece of music. It should just I don't believe a

bunch of cool people in LA in 2004 dancing to ready set ego

Korean style like like that in such a high end place.

It just seems like. The dancing is something we had.

The dancing is something like really weird, like obscure remix

of something that was. I would have liked yeah, yeah,

only a few years after this, like a new form of EDM would

come in and trash all this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's only sticks up for me. That gives me very specific

memories of, of going to the gym in like 2010, 2011 with that on

my running playlist, along with like extreme ways by Moby and

like, like all my and all my friends and and and Daft Punk is

playing at my house by our CD sound system and yeah, sure like

that. Kid you kid you.

Can you imagine the effect? They're just like dug in like

stuff. It was like kind of big, big,

big and like the zeitgeist at the time, like fucking harmar

superstar or something like that, or or Peaches like like

the walk in it is just blasting fuck the pain away.

That would actually kind of fucking cool.

Just got this mental image now of of like just tom-tom Cruise,

like kicking someone to death. But it's like what else is in

the teachers of Peaches sex on. Yeah, that would actually be

wild, to be honest. Even if like something a bit 9

inch nails have been on. Yeah, yeah, you.

Know just something a bit like loud and aggressive not a

pleasant happy club scene, but awful horrible but like not like

something that you could feasibly see on a sports channel

like. Yeah.

A piece of music is that I could I could be hearing over like a

highlight reel of free kicks on much, much of the day.

Like Michael? My goal, he's going to felt like

a traction engine that. Was liquid fool looking out?

Oh my God. What would have been in the He's

the Lightning seeds life of Riley I was.

Like Republica? Republica, I'm ready to go.

You've been. It would literally have been

Republican. It would.

Have been Republican. In fact, wasn't Republican or

not the STEM publica Soccer Saturday on Sky on.

Saturday and they also did the music for a football.

Really to have WAG centric soap opera I think of.

Course it did. What?

Footballers Wives is me. Boston footballers wives would

hold on. This whole office is going on

fucking lockdown. We'll find out which TV show

that was. Republic TV show soundtrack.

It was you. It was you.

It was you. I might cut this.

Hold on it, it was. It's so ready to go, right?

Was used frequently in the British children's football

drama series Rendford Rejects Rendford.

Rendford rejects which is, which is themed.

She was Australia by. Australia.

Yeah, what absolute banger. Great.

I must have loved Redford Rejects.

Do you know that the guy who plays like the posh English

manager because he had like a foot injury and couldn't play

for the team anymore. That guy who who's like,

obviously like one of the kids but was also the manager to cut

around with a blazer on is in The Dark Knight.

What? There you go, there's a pulp

drop that boom boom Redford rejects in a Christopher Nolan

movie. What is this also over episode?

There you go. Right.

I was going to cut all that, but we're keeping it in keep.

It. In, keep it in, it's in.

Keep it in. Right, dude, I'm going to reduce

the number of these questions I asked because it was getting a

bit, it was getting a bit much, but I'm going to ask you to

would Colombo make this movie better?

Would Peter Falk is a is a little scrungly old man improve

this movie somewhat? Peter Falcon's scrungly old man

mode would. Let's say you would have been

good as the main FBI agent, I think, yeah.

You would be. That's right.

Yeah, that's right. So in the in the person McGill.

100 percent, 100% Just like I couldn't I couldn't imagine him

being like an LAPD detective who gets night shifts because at

this point in in his career in life, he's too cool.

Paedophiles not playing a guy gets a shitty night shift I.

Would I would say he gets to the point where he's like over the

hill, Bosch mentioned. There's 2 characters.

There's 2 characters in that called crate&barrel who are like

the old over the hill, like old retired guys.

But they've been in the force for like 30-5 years and every

night and like, and every season they'll like to pull off 1

amazing thing. Like they'll find one crucial

piece of evidence because they've done like the hard

yards. I have to start watching Bosch.

It's like the Scullion. Fucking what's Scullion?

That guy from Brooklyn. Brooklyn 9, Yeah.

I'm a boy Scullion. Get in.

Do you love Bosch? Man, Bosch is so good.

Okay, crimes grocery list, new category.

What it means is like Jack Ryan's grocery list, which isn't

a thing in any movies, I don't think.

But the concept is an oddly mundane human moment in the

middle of the chaos. So despite this crazy situation

that's going on, what's the little bit of normality that

happens that reminds us that this is all happening in some

kind of version of a real world? So what sort of like kind of

anchors to like to like reality and big and it kind of humanises

that is interesting. I think for me a little nice

touch that I liked is the fate of Max's sandwich after the

after the guy lands on the roof, then it gets destroyed and the S

is just and he gets pulled over by the cops.

You see the state of the sandwich all over the.

Yeah, Oh my God, I like, how would the cops give him shit for

it as well? Like, like, like he's such a

fastidious guy and all of a sudden his world's turned upside

down and now, now the police are bullying him for his messy car

and his sandwich issues. I think that's definitely it

more than more than the whole I'm going to go to Fuji and

raise cats thing with his, with his like fucking island limos.

Yeah, yeah. Dream the thing really humanises

him is is it's right it's like the thing that really ties that

reality is that just it's that fucking sandwich man because.

He tries to eat it. Yeah, during the first hit, yeah

as well. That is sad.

That is sad. I think you've got it there,

definitely. Next category VHS and the mess

chess and the mess so with with this movie I've done well in in

the mess on board. I've got to say yes big time

yeah, this this is this is a great movie to caveat this or to

explain it to people who might not know what I mean so on His

Majesty ships of war, the junior rates, senior rates and officers

each have a a mess the officers one is called the wardrobe.

And very often they have, I'm not saying that every single one

of them has a television in which people can plug in hard

drives and all that kind of good jazz.

And it's not unusual on a period of operations, especially the

ship is in like State 2. So your defence watches doing 6

hours on, six hours off where not everybody gets to watch the

same stuff at the same time. Because people are wondering in

and wondering out to find the same movie playing over and over

again at different times of the day over the course of a couple

of, over a couple of a course of a couple of days until

everyone's seen it basically. And I did a department in 2016

on HS Portland where I think I watched The Fast and the Furious

and the Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift about four times over the

course of like one week because it was just always on in the

mess symbols. And so would this be one of

those kind of movies that would get played in the mess like 20

times until everyone's seen it? Yes, because it bangs is my

answer. I mean just for new listeners

and stuff are really able to qualify and qualify to answer

this question because I'm the token civilian that make and

Sonya won in a card game. The next episode I have when

Sonya's back online with us will be more like back and forth.

I think about whether or not this would have gone down well

in the mess. It's interesting because the

next film people are aware now that we're doing Manhunt and

next. So that would be an interesting

one to debate whether that absolutely.

Yeah, it's an interesting. One wild film would go on well

in in the mess among the fighting men and women of your

nations so. The elements that you've got to

bear in mind are it's blockbusters, right?

So it's wide appeal, OK. It's blockbuster bankability.

It's how readily available available is that film going to

be on someone's hard drive? Quite likely.

And is it is it just a bit fucking weird?

And what I found is films that are just a little bit fucking

weird generally don't play as well.

So it's a weird one. It's not as simple as is the

movie good or not? So like, there are lots of

movies that I think are brilliant, but might not

necessarily find themselves being played on a wardroom hard

drive. And yet weirdly, Ironclad would

probably do really well for a week, you know?

So just stray bolt to poor old Ironclad there.

But yeah, but what the fuck is that film anyway, right?

Next category, I'm going to call this the the PS2 Tie in Game

award. If this movie had a tie in video

game, not necessarily for the PS2, what kind of movie would

it? What kind of game would it be?

And conversely, if we're doing a movie that did have a tying

game, like what should it have been?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, part of us wants to see

a kind of a Crazy Taxi type game, but I don't know how much

you could kind of spin out. I mean, that's because I mean,

Crazy Taxis obviously is very fun, light hearted kind of game.

Get ready to make some crazy money and then get ready to

drive a great head sociopath around them.

Kill someone. I mean, it is kind of it is that

kind of like the same GTA mission over and over again

really, isn't it? It's it's just one GC.

It's like GTA5 mission. So.

I'm thinking, well, San Andreas. It would come out as one of

those like kind of GTA ish games.

In fact I'll tell you the perfect analogue.

True crime Streets of LA, except with less I.

Thought you're going to say that?

Yeah, it'll be like. The crime streets of LA, but

with less content. Yeah, man, yeah, that's awesome.

And then like rush hour 2 would be like sleeping dogs.

Rush hour 2 would be totally sleeping dogs.

Holy crap on. I'm excited about this new

category. This is going to be fun.

Yeah, man, So if if it wasn't like a Crazy Taxi or GTA for me,

I think the next best one, I don't write the movie takes

place from Max's point of view. OK, That's who we're seeing as

well through. So if it was, if it was evil

way, it was Vincent, then. Yeah.

This is a series of hitline missions.

And then your and then, and then and then your exit point is the

cab, right. And then, then, then a cutscene

happens and the cab's in a slightly different state.

And then the mission changes and you've got like Diana Burnwood

going like, hello, Agent 47. Hello, Agent Vincent, your

target is Peter Lynn in the fever club in South Central, you

know and like but watch out because Felix Rez Torrena has

sent his hit men also to hit you and the target.

What kind of shit? But but where Max right.

So I think if it's not exactly Crazy Taxi, it's the next best

thing, right? Which is the music video for

California, for Californication. But I'm really sure you've.

Got a tour which is. Which is which is not really

crazy sexy, but it's also like SXX snowboarding and also like

The Simpsons hit and run. Yeah, and with a bit of a bit of

a bit of a bit of Sonic adventure thrown in there a.

Sonic adventure of some kind of magic magic carpet bullshit.

Tell you what, a game based on like Detective Fanning's end of

it would be like a really fucking bleak, like a third

person RPG or even a really bleak like point and click RPG

kind of thing, I think. Yeah, yeah.

Like like just some something beard with like the scrum

engine, like they have the tentacle or whatever, but like

but like but like not with a cutesy graphics and just like

downbeat, downbeat Elliot kind of visuals.

Yeah, or it's like a top down. It's a Hotline Miami.

Yes. Oh, Grimm.

Yeah, yeah, good category. I'm going to keep that the next

one, the Ding Chavez Award for missed opportunity of the movie.

Dude, there's not a lot left on the table in this movie.

I've agreed with all the major choices that that Michael Mann

is is made in this, in this film, Yeah.

Yeah. It's decision to obfuscate the

the grand jury indictment. So we don't, we don't really

know what it's for. It's about it's just some

amorphous organised crime. Yeah.

We don't know why the FBI have been a bit negligent.

We don't really know why or where the the surveillance

operation that's brought together all the information for

the targets has come from. Like it's just, it's all.

I like that about it. Yeah, but doesn't really miss

out on any opportunities, even unlike the kind of bit part

characters who were there just to give a small amount of

exposition or explanation. People like the guy, the morgue,

stuff like that. It's like even though the belly

used the used for like the perfect amount of time,

everything's in proportion. I can mean what could have had a

scene when the Mortuary guy who was kind of who was portrayed in

a kind of disguise a bit, we had kind of fashion.

We could have had another scene about the most are doing more.

We had more tree guy stuff, but it wasn't necessary.

So we didn't get it. And and that's just fine.

That's just fine because that's his that's his excellent way of

storytelling. So missed opportunities.

Not many at all that I can think.

Yeah, the only thing right. If I was going to do a stupid

answer, I would say because of what was going on at the same

time in her career. There's an opportunity here

where Jill Pinkett Smith, who was also naive in the Matrix

Reloaders in remissions, could have done some kind of like

amazing, kind of weird karate kids kind of kick to momentarily

distract to Vincent at the end of the movie.

But that's obviously like a stupid answer.

Otherwise, I don't think there's anything this is this is one of

the best movies we've done. Yeah, yeah, a lot of people in

reviews I've seen of it have have said like, where are the

police after the after the guys are initially waved off by the

shots fired. You could say there was a missed

opportunity for the police to be chased, not for them, but then

it ruins the film and it and it just like in the point is, the

point is the film's like lack of police interaction with them is

because it underlines that Ellie is a fucking dangerous,

heartless city where there's it's not going to be a place

from every corner for you. You know, that's the thing, like

mean the they're looking out for the road in this one.

There's been shots fired, some every cars in attendance.

It supports like the the fable like idea that they're having a

descent into like a long dark night, the soul kind of thing

for each of them as well. Yeah.

It's passed through a veil into a gauntlet of like who they

where they're getting distilled or trial by fire.

Who are they really when they get when they get down to it.

Yeah. And they're fighting for their

lives. And then that's how.

And then the end. Yeah.

By literally doing that. It's it's, it's too new guy

being like put through the absolute ringer, yeah.

And then for me it works that it's slightly unreal and that

there are little things like that taken away like.

Yeah. Any superfluous external

influence is completely gone. Even the weather is completely

neutral. It doesn't rain, it's not wet on

the streets, you see necessarily.

See wind? You see?

Yeah, blowing, blowing the palm trees.

But it's LA. It's a hot and dry, right?

I mean, that's that's that's that's what I'm told.

It's a hot and dry, hot and dry, hot and sunny.

There's no, there's no other. There's a real lack of external.

Factors, yeah, it's just I guess because it's that.

Isn't that isn't there for the mission, you know?

Yeah, I guess because it's a city at night, Night city, if

you will. Sorry.

It's like like like it's, it's a city in that special kind of

night time. You know, it's not just a city

when the sun's gone down. It's a city at a special kind of

like, you know what I'm going to, I'm going to quote a song

about LA by the Distillers. It's a ghost town, rabbit

underworld, DNDC and night, vitriolic twilight.

And I just love like this DNDC and night of the city.

It's like, it's like a twilight of the gods.

It's like this weird, like kind of kind of holy yet unholy,

primitive, primal, spiritual. Yeah.

Final Final category Is this movie pro or anti the Central

Intelligence Agency? Well, how more?

Explicit. Yeah.

Haven't thought about what you've said.

When you said that you kind of inferred from it that Vincent's

done this shit not just for six years, he's done the shit

previously. And when I was looking to

quotes, he does say six years private sector.

Exactly. Yeah.

What was he doing in the public sector?

Well, I mean, it's well, I mean, it's a public sector or it's

just freelance criminal shit. So it's so it's more likely I

think going to be public sector because he's he's incredibly

adept and weapons handling when he compares fighting abilities

to the large. So the ISIS and the ally,

they're not private sector. He's done a hand to hand as

well. Yeah, yeah.

It's his film pro around ICIA though.

I mean. I suppose it's indifferent to

specifically the CIA. I think there's a commentary on

the federal government. Yeah.

And that the FBI is shown to be incompetent.

Yeah, and neglectful. And I think it's also an

indication that what Felix alludes to where the initial

source of the very expensive surveillance operation and

intelligence gathering operations that took place to

get the information on the targets that he has.

It applies to me that they've got into some federal stuff.

Now whether or not that's through some very expensive

theft, which Inc or that's some corruption that's occurred maybe

makes me doesn't paint the federal government in an

unfavourable life. It doesn't paint the federal

government well and I think previously we have put that down

to the anti CIA. Is that correct?

Yeah, I think we have. Yeah.

So scores on the doors that then if we're going to go this for

Auntie, I think it's eight against 3.

Pro. It'll change soon.

We've got some Tom plans to come.

In we have Jax Ryan coming up indeed.

So yes. Indeed we had That's a good

segue. That brings us to the end of

season 2, episode 1 of clear and present dudes.

I've been Mike, we've had Rory here.

Coming up next, we've got our Michael Manuri continuing with

the next episode of being Manhunter at the 1986 film,

which introduces the world to Hannibal Lecter.

Also coming up shortly, we have Tom Clancy, the some of all

fears and Sicario. And we've also got the future to

finally our first Harrison Ford movie.

So a lot of interesting things coming down the pipe for for the

clear present dudes. But until then just Rory and I

and sadly, sadly no sun yesterday but we have been clear

as. Present you.

Thank you. We'll see you when.

We'll see you in two weeks time when Sonia will be back among

us. Take care.

Peace out.

Collateral (2004)

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