Suspense In Collateral

Collateral, released in 2004, directed by the critically acclaimed Michael Mann, is about a gun-for-hire hitman named Vincent and taxi driver turned chauffeur for the night Max, starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. Early on in the film we can identify with Max, a taxi driver who has ambitions of owning a limo business; however he has no time to dream when Tom Cruise enters his car and asks him to drive around LA while he shoots targets. We now understand that there will be bloodshed in this film and therefore action and suspense and thriller genres come to mind.

A particular scene where this can be seen is where Vincent nearly has Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) starring at the barrel of his gun. But the protagonist Max has other plans as he tries to save her from the hands of the villain.

In this scene, Max warns Annie about the presence of Vincent. The music for this scene is long and eerie, this already tells us something is about to happen, which is proved when Vincent finds out Annie is two floors above. The music suddenly changes the atmosphere and creates more and more tension as the chase begins.

Many types of camera shots show us the whereabouts of Max, the protagonist running to save Annie, compared to the position of Vincent, the antagonist who is out for the kill. We see a bird’s eye view of Max running hard, and then a close up of Vincent cutting the power and adding to the dark mood already created by turning the lights off.

As the room is filled with darkness, some music is overlapped; however we can still hear the movements and footsteps of Annie as she desperately crawls around the carpet. This adds realism and keeps the scene natural, and adds a lot of tension with the choice of music. Annie is caught by Vincent, but Max shows and the music is slightly toned down, he shoots Vincent and they run.

Many elements are grouped together such as music, camera movement and body language to create an overwhelmingly suspenseful scene.

Link to 'Collateral' scene

- Mehmet Tarhan