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 give you a heads up on what was going on in the podcast.

Lots of exciting new stuff happening in the next few months. We we're participating in something called Podcast on in March, which is a big charitable Dr that we are participating in for a charity called Trash Cats, 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. And as I'd like just to say, thank you very much for your engagement over the last six or seven months of the podcast. But as always, please feel free to come out on the Spotify like and subscribe and comment on the YouTube or subscribe on the sub sack or like and review and rate on Apple Podcasts. Any, all any of these much appreciated. Has a tremendous impact for very, very small podcasts like ourselves just starting out. So yeah, any of that would be 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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