Mannhunting - Collateral (2004)

June 13, 2023·2 hr 59 min·5 clips

Rob Zacny argues why Michael Mann's 2004 thriller Collateral is actually his best film, despite stronger scripts and action in others.

Mannhunting starts with a ranking problem. Collateral might be Michael Mann's best movie because it does not clearly win one category, but it keeps landing close to the top of every category the crew cares about. That is the hook. They set it against stronger scripts, bigger action scenes, cleaner themes, and flashier cinematography, so the case for it becomes cumulative instead of a trophy speech. The read stays loose. Each return to the movie changes how the characters feel and how the night around them works, so the conversation keeps revising itself as it goes. Then the jazz club hits. Vincent's stop at a gas station and then a club turns into a little side quest, with his taste for jazz treated as character note and Mann tell. The room gets wry fast. Ken Burns, Miles Davis, Miami Vice, and Crime Story all end up in the same thread as the crew tracks Mann's habit of pausing crime stories for music. The criticism works by association. They do not pull Collateral away from Mann's other work. They keep bouncing it off the older television and his obvious urge to put performance on screen. The point keeps getting bigger. One club scene starts to look like a clue that Mann sometimes builds crime movies with music-video logic running under the plot. Nobody treats that as wasted time. The digression is the method, because the show lets a jazz bit or a biopic joke turn into a real argument about image, rhythm, and bodies in a room. The ending gets stranger. A late riff finds hidden layers in Ida, Becker, health-care anxiety, and Collateral's pressure on Max, turning a stray Easter egg into a weirdly precise reading machine. That is very Waypoint. The fun is hearing critics chase a movie through craft, old fixations, and ridiculous side doors until the joke and the thesis almost meet.

As heard by us

A funny, Mann-literate Collateral episode where craft, jazz, gunfights, and Becker somehow belong in the same conversation.

Mannhunting treats Collateral as one of Michael Mann's most durable arguments for itself: maybe not his sharpest script, biggest action movie, or cleanest statement of theme, but the film that keeps ranking near the top on almost every front.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you like film talk that keeps finding new angles on one great movie, start here.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Waypoint Radio