A devoured son learns good from evil.

Readership: All
Targeted Readership: Young Men
Theme: The Gift of Singleness
Length: 550 words
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Collateral is a 2004 action thriller directed by Michael Mann and starring Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise.

The first time I watched the movie, I enjoyed it for its action, realistic gun handling, and smart plot. The second time I watched it, I realized that the movie is a study in contrasting masculine archetypes.

Max (Jamie Foxx) is a Devoured Son. He dresses sloppily in ill-fitting clothes that make him look homeless. He’s socially awkward. He drives a taxi for a living, which unlike himself, he maintains meticulously. He has a dream of starting his own limousine service, but he keeps putting off his dream year after year. His excuse is that “It has to be perfect”, but the real reason is clear — Max is afraid to take the risk. Perfectionism is oftentimes an excuse to not do things we’re afraid of doing. The signs are there from the start, but it becomes obvious that he’s a son-husband when we meet his mother. There’s no mention of his father.

Vincent (Tom Cruise) is a dark triad man. He’s literally a grey man, impeccably dressed in a grey tailored suit, with just-right grey stubble, and grey hair. He’s a professional assassin who travels to Los Angeles to eliminate five targets. He hires Max to take him to each target, but things go wrong immediately. Like Max, Vincent makes a detailed plan, but unlike Max, Vincent believes in “good enough”. He quickly improvises and adapts to whatever circumstances get thrown at him. He readily assesses his environment, changes tactics, and takes calculated risks. Vincent doesn’t see people as people. To Vincent, everyone is an object. Some objects are targets to be hunted down, some objects are tools to be used, and some objects are obstacles to be negotiated. Vincent can change from charming … to deadly, like flipping a switch, depending on what the situation calls for in the moment.

Obviously, Vincent is evil. He’s also masculine. At one point, Vincent tells Max about his overbearing, abusive father. There’s no mention of Vincent’s mother.

Max is a good man, he’s just not very good at acting like one. His chance encounter with Vincent, and the life-and-death situations Vincent imposes on him force Max to discover and embrace aspects of masculinity he never knew he possessed.

This is a great example of Jack’s thesis that good men can learn from bad men. Max is forced to learn from Vincent how to improvise and take risks. In one scene, you can see him asking himself, “What would Vincent do?” There’s even one scene where Vincent confronts Max about the lies he tells concerning his dream of starting a limousine service. Vincent taunts Max, but in the process he gives Max solid advice. The viewer gets the impression that if Max were to keep his moral compass, but develop Vincent’s sense of mission, he’d be a formidable, virtuous man.

I’ll stop here because I don’t want to give too much away. Suffice it to say that this really is a great movie.

You can currently watch Collateral on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Paramount Plus.

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