Post-Modernism in Michael Mann's “Collateral” - Emotional Disconnect and Fractured Society

Michael Mann's 2004 Academy Award nominated film “Collateral” stands on the precipice of the post-modern movement. It tells the story of many people, but specifically two men; Max, as portrayed by Jamie Foxx, and Vincent, as portrayed by Tom Cruise. The film tells the story of how these two men's lives intersect and the profound impact they have on each other, in one form or another.

The film opens and the viewer is immediately thrown into the disassociated world of Los Angeles by entering the garage of the Yellow Cab Co., in which we are shown a newspaper in Arabic, a man speaking French and another working on a crossword puzzle. Foreign men begin arguing and the film's protagonist, Max, begins his day. As he enters the taxi cab's driver's seat and closes the door, the outside world becomes entirely quiet and disassociated to him.

We are shown a typical day in Max's life; driving a bickering couple, gassing-up the cab in a Latin district and speaking Spanish to the man working at the station, and then putting on the proverbial charm with a young female lawyer. The lawyer, played by Jada Pinkett-Smith, and Max begin a friendly debate over the route he should take to get her to her destination.

In the disassociated world of Los Angeles, Max begins to show his ability to understand the people around him; without every identifying herself as a lawyer, Max is able to determine as much by what she wears and how she handles herself.

Lives intertwined, some would say. As the lawyer, Annie, leaves Max's cab, Vincent emerges from the building Annie entered and now enters Max's world. Vincent's arrival marks the beginning of the progressive post-modern movement in the film. Max asks Vincent if it was his first time in LA, to which Vincent responds “Nah. Tell you the truth, whenever I'm here I can't wait to leave. Too sprawled out, disconnected. That's me.” He then states that LA has the “fifth biggest economy in the world and nobody knows each other.” He tells an anecdote about a man who gets on the subway in LA and dies then it takes six hours for anyone to notice that he man has died.

Vincent tells Max that he's in town for a “real estate deal” and to see some friends. He offers to buy Max's time for the night to take him to each of his destinations. As Vincent exits the cab at his first stop we are shown, as director Michael Mann notes, “a typical Latin working class apartment” complex. Max sits peacefully in the cab, eating and reading waiting for Vincent.

His life was inexorably changed.

A man falls from high up and lands on top of the cab. Vincent emerges from the building. Max then realizes that Vincent was responsible for the man's death.

“You killed him?!”

“No, I shot him. The Bullets and the fall killed him.”

In this moment, once again, the post modern way of thinking stands true. The emotional disconnect and personal disconnect associated with the murder as expressed by Vincent stands as the central pillar of post-modern thinking. There is no longer any moral absolutism or any true division between “right” and “wrong.”

The post-modern thinking continues throughout the film, especially between Max and Vincent. Max is fractured, now, because of the first murder. Vincent begins to talk him through this all and rationalize it with him. “You were gonna drive me around tonight and be none the wiser...We're into plan B. Now we gotta make the best of it. Adapt to the environment. Darwin. Shit happens. I Ching. Whatever happens, man, we gotta roll with it.”

Max asks him what he means and qualifies it by saying “..you threw a man out of a window.” Vincent replies “I didn't throw him. He fell.” Vincent continues to manipulate Max's psyche by relating the murder of “one fat Angelino” to the mass genocide in Rwanda. After a brief run-in with police, in which Vincent readies himself to kill the cops if need be, we witness Vincent stick-up for Max as the dispatcher from the cab company tries to strong-arm Max into paying for the repairs to the damaged cab. Vincent interjects, pretending to be an Assistant US Attorney.

Once more, the post-modern theme of disassociation and disconnect against absolutist sentiment re-emerges as Vincent encourages Max to tell off his boss. “I need my job,” Max says. “No you don't” replies Vincent. As Vincent is engaging his second target, Max is robbed while waiting outside. Vincent returns and engages the two men who robbed Max and took Vincent's briefcase. With speed and precision, Vincent neutralizes the targets, all the while remaining ever-present of his surroundings.

The two men continue onward to the third target, a jazz musician out of South Central. Vincent begins to explain jazz to Max, who claims he never liked the music. “It's behind the notes. Improvised. Like tonight. Ten years from now, the same people with the same jobs, doing the same thing. In ten years from now...we don't even know where we'd be ten minutes from now.” Vincent reveals to Daniel why he is here and proceeds to play him.

For the first time we are able to see a moment of remorse from Vincent, and Max leaves the building. Max and Vincent continue on their strange journey to visit Max's mother in the hospital. At the conclusion of this Max takes fate into his own hands by destroying Vincent's materials. Vincent tells of his mother and father, including how he murdered his father without remorse.

Max is now forced into a situation where he must role-play as Vincent to get copies of the remaining information for the night's assignments. We witness the awakening of Max, as he is confronted by a life-or-death situation. Max borrows Vincent's personality, speaking of “Darwin, I Ching” and adaptation. The two men begin on toward their fourth target. This time they are being followed by both the FBI as well as the criminal element that had hired out Vincent.

The next two discussions between Max and Vincent that happens next is the pinnacle of post-modern thinking. Vincent says to Max that he should call the girl (Annie) if they make it out of this alive. The men then encounter wild coyotes roaming the streets of LA. The coyotes pass without incident, but it stands as the absurdity of their lives.

The two men meet the next target, an Asian man in a Korean nightclub called “Fever.” After the shootout, the two head toward their fateful end. Vincent and Max dialog;

“It's what I do for a living.”

“Some living.”

“Why didn't you just kill me, get another cab driver?”

“Because you're good. We're in this together. Fates intertwined. Cosmic coincidence.”

“You're full of shit.”

“I'm full of shit? You're a monument of it. You've even bullshitted yourself. 'All I am is taking out the garbage, killing bad people'.”

“So that's the reason?”

“That's the why. There is no reason. There's no good reason, there's no bad reason. We live or we die.”

“Then what are you?”

“Indifferent.”

“What's with you? If someone had a gun to your head and said 'You gotta tell me what's going on with this person over here or I'm gonna kill you...' What is driving him, what was he thinking? You couldn't do it, could you? They would have to kill your ass because you don't know what anybody else is thinkin'. I think you're low, brother. Way low. The standard parts that are supposed to be there in people in you...aren't. Then why didn't you kill me?"

Vincent turns the assault entirely upon Max, attacking Max's dream to own a limo company:

Look in the mirror. The paper towels. The clean cab. Limo company some day? How much you got saved? Some day...some day my dream will come. One night you'll wake up and discover it never happened it's all turned around on you and suddenly you are old. Didn't happen and never will because you were never going to do it anyway. You push it into memory and zone out in your Barcolounger hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life. Don't you talk to me about murder.

Max then awakens to his true self:

I never straightened up and looked at it, myself. I tried to gamble my way out from under it, but that's a born-to-lose deal. It's gotta be perfect. Risk all torqued down. I could have done it anytime I wanted to. But you know what? New news. It doesn't matter anyway. What does it matter anyway? We're all insignificant out here in this big-ass nowhere, twilight zone shit, says the badass sociopath in my backseat. But you know what? There's one thing I gotta thank you for, bro. I never looked at it that way. What does it matter? It don't, so fuck it, fix it. What have we got to lose anyway?

Max proceeds to wreck the cab in the hopes to end their lives or, at least, detain Vincent. It is then revealed to Max that Vincent's fifth and final target is Annie, the lawyer from the start of the film. A wild chase and fight ensues between Max and Vincent, eventually coming to the Los Angeles subway. Max and Vincent finally come to the final confrontation on the subway in which Max is able to fatally shoot Vincent. Vincent speaks again about the man who rode the MTA and died. He asks Max “think anybody will notice?” and his head slumps forward. Max and Annie leave the subway onto the street into the coming dawn of the next day.

I understand that this seemed almost like a lot of plot summary, which it was, but when describing a film's thematic elements, it is hard to explain it without any form of proper context in which to place it, especially a theme such as post-modernist thinking. The notion of post-modernism being “against the metanarrative” is shown strongly throughout “Collateral,” as Vincent continually removes himself from moral and social norms and defends the notion that murder is perfectly acceptable. Vincent's psyche is one of a damaged person without any regard for “right” and “wrong.” After the murder of Daniel, we are shown that Vincent has a moment of remorse and is capable of understanding right from wrong, but in his post-modernist way of thinking, none of it matters. He addresses Max as though the murders he has committed this night are insignificant to the self-murder Max is committing by not starting his limo company he dreams of.

Max, however, is equally a post-modernist in his inability and refusal to stand up against Vincent and stop him. He slowly awakens out of this mindset, doing what he can to stop Vincent, but ultimately continues to drive to the various locations. Though Max is the moral center of the movie, he allows “bad” things to happen because of his willingness to submit.

The post-modern movement aims to blur the lines along people's boundaries, which Vincent excels at. His ability to rationalize that he's “just taking out the garbage” is enough to convince Max at first. Vincent continues to blur the lines by addressing that “there is no reason” for why anything in the world ever happens. It just does. Post-modernist thinking dictates that there are times when there is no reason. Things are what they are because that's all they were supposed to be.

The theme of disconnect is even addressed directly by Vincent at the start, as he identifies himself as being “disconnected,” just like Los Angeles. The film, as well as post-modernism, stood as an example in racial indifference; the two lead characters were white and black, and the murder victims were, in chronological order; Latin, white, black, Asian, and black, the last of which survived.

As compared to new-historical perspectives or other critical theory, post-modernism places no emphasis on racial stereotyping because race is yet another blurred line, made difficult to know when it is being crossed.

Kevin McGinnis