Collateral Damage

[talktooloose]

Since I'm basically feeling unloved and unloveable and am having fits of angsty misery non-stop, I'll do what everyone in my family does when in emotional turmoil: I'll talk about movies!

(Warning: Secret Window spoiler in next paragraph)

Collateral was really well scripted and constructed and I loved the dynamic between the killer and the cabby. Unfortunately, Tom Cruise can't act his way out of puff pastry gift-wrapped in tissue paper; and that piece of casting almost scuttled the movie completely. Damn! Who would you have cast in it? Chris Cooper comes to mind, but I think he's a bit too old for the character. Johnny Depp is too marked as a good guy. In fact, in Secret Window, Chris Cooper had to play his evil half! Maybe Mark Ruffalo should have gotten the killer part instead of the obvious choice of making him the renegade cop. I'd like to see Ruffalo get dressed up and suave -- I think he could handle it beautifully. Did anyone see him in In the Cut? Sexy as hell, too.

Blah, never mind. I even bore myself lately. I especially bore myself.

Comments

[eversearching.livejournal.com]

For the record, in your writing and when meeting you in person, I found you loveable!

Also, I agree with you about Tom Cruises general acting abilities- however, in Collateral I found him compellingly believable. This, I think, is because he wasn't actually acting. I think Tom Cruise is actually that much of a sociopath. I felt both creeped out and vindicated watching him- like something I've suspected was being revealed.

I can think of who I'd want to cast, but I can't think of his name. He starred in a movie about a group of college kids who kidnap a member of the mafia to get him to help them ransom a friend of theirs who they believe is kidnapped.... oh man, what was that movie?

Or Edward Norton. He'd be believable.

[talktooloose.livejournal.com]

Ed Norton!

Where the fuck is Ed Norton? He hasn't done anything in ages. Fuck he's a great actor. He would have been perfect.

Much as I agree that Tom Cruise is an unstable sociopath, I still couldn't connect to him here. And you sorta had to. Vincent, at some points, has to be transparently a hurt child. That's what Max picks up on and goes after in the speech where he takes him down and tells him he has no values.

Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio share an affliction -- they are both obviously worried about how they look as actors and stars all the time and it puts a non-stick coating over everything they do. I think that's why Leo was good in Gilbert Grape--by doing a character that was so obviously not him mentally, he could let go and be seen as brave no matter how far he went. It acted like a freeing mask. I almost got there with Cruise in Magnolia, but not quite.

[untoward.livejournal.com]

chris cooper wasn't in secret window. that was john tuturro!

[talktooloose.livejournal.com]

You're totally right! I was actually clearly seeing Cooper in the role until I got your comment and then the face switched in my head to Turturro. Weird. Next you'll tell me Harvey Keitel didn't play Scarlet O'hara.

Concur on Ed Norton

[codystrum.livejournal.com]

Eddie would have been great. I was thinking of Christian Slater. I enjoy his acting even though it isn't as fine as Norton's.

Keifer Sutherland would have been my first pick though. However, he is kinda busy,

This film wouldn't have worked with an older man? I guess I can't remember the plot as well to judge. Cruise was playing a guy about ten years older than he is (we are) I thought. I wouldn't have minded Tim Robbins then. He was pretty scary in Arlington Road - a film I love for its ending.

But the best kind of villian for this film in my opinion is the ever creepy Christopher Walken.