What a stupid fucking plot...

what a stupid fucking plot. Why would an experienced and talented hitman ever have a taxi driver chosen at random to be his chauffeur? Why would someone reputable and trustworthy enough to kill a District Attorney not have a skilled getaway driver?

hubris

shut up you dumb bitch

Taxi's are inconspicuous
He kills the driver each time do there's no witnesses
No one will be able to trace him since he uses a random taxi that has nothing to do with him

Um.. so he could pin it on him? Did you watch the movie?

>woah WOAH woah!

Its kino.

film is pretty much cruise kino. i find it hard to believe that Jamie Fox was able to kill him though, more believable if the cops or the mob killed him

he was tracked within no time whatsoever by the police that swatted that night club entirely because of this 'great' strategy of using random taxi drivers. He was outstandingly poor at his job considering he was killing people in plain sight and not even trying to hide his face despite being in extremely public areas with MANY security cameras (the hospital, the DA's office tower). Plus he got killed by a guy who had never even used a gun before in his life (evidenced by Max fumbling to take the safety off the gun in the chase scene). Shit writing

It was his first day. His whole reputation was a bluff. He had no money for a car

I'm so glad Sup Forums doesn't get to make movies.

>that awful acting by the thief's friend reaching and flopping for his gun

Jesus Christ

what kind of inexperienced person would ever get such a ludicrous responsibility list, capping off with a DA, that fast? That's like being hired as a McDonald's frycook and being fast-tracked to being the regional manager overnight.

"At the moment of gunfire, Vincent attempts to engage Max using the exact same tactic he's used all throughout the film: double tap to the chest followed by a headshot. He sees Max, he aims at Max, he fires...but he's no longer able to process changes or adapt to them, and he fails to register or react to the presence of the steel door frame between them. All three of the shots from his stolen S&W impact the door frame and fail to penetrate (which is fairly realistic). In contrast, we can see Max clearly close his eyes and fire blindly. He's not become some super-skilled gunman, he's simply learned how to let go and act rather than stall, delay, or deny reality. Most of his shots go wild, but one passes through the window and is just good enough to score a vital hit on Vincent."

tl;dr he killed him through sheer luck. Please you can't bruise the cruise or mann.

He lied on his CV

The plan was to eliminate the taxi driver at the end of all killings. No witnesses. That's a nice plot.

Why not just kill the driver right off the bat than?

Who would drive?

Wow thanks for pointing out what makes that movie so kino... the realism. You ever fired a gun before? They're pretty loud and startling, that coupled with watching your buddy get shot point blank would totally cause you to react like that if you weren't trained for such a high stress situation. Based Mann does it again

Real bullets would absolutely penetrate steel/aluminum alloys that thin

>no witnesses
except for shooting people in plain sight in highly-visible areas with plentiful security cameras. I understand that eye witnesses seldom can identify a shooter in sudden tense shootouts, but the shear volume of his kills and brazenness (night club, jazz club, the train) in being covered in blood and waiving a gun in public is complete nonsense

I like the part where the cop asks if they had a food fight

the plan was to pin the kills on the taxi driver making it an open and shut case and have no ties to the mob boss who order the hits

allso
its been a while since i seen it, but it wasnt a matter of "Cant process it" it was a reflection that he saw and fired, but it was glass, giving max the time to counter and shoot back, blindly, and getting a lucky hit

alsoif i remember , he didnt just walk in the front door and cap the guards, he snuck around, and forced max to break in the front door
also you're putting way too much value on CTV, most are closed circuit and don't keep the data unless an incident was recorded, mostly used for active security monitoring

being in crowded public places makes it easier to get away with shit, because youre not tracked as easily

Himself? Which he can do.
There wasn't a point in being a passenger

>Real bullets would absolutely penetrate steel/aluminum alloys that thin
Not true. That was a S&W 5906 chambered in 9mm and most likely hollow points since he swiped it from a security guard. If you watch the scene you can clearly see the bullets hit the door but not penetrate. That door is a good couple inches thick. That and considering what that gun is shooting makes it entirely plausible for the rounds to not penetrate completely. You'd be surprised at how little it takes to stop some bullets.

>taxi driver found/proven dead before the victims Vincent is going to pin on him
yeah, real smart

>also you're putting way too much value on CTV, most are closed circuit and don't keep the data unless an incident was recorded, mostly used for active security monitoring

patently incorrect especially with how prolific he was in carrying his gun around- since he was pretty recognizable with his hairstyle and grey suit, he made for an easy mark especially for the police that used their surveillance to spot his busted taxi for its windscreen in short order. Given his crimes took place over about 10 hours that would be absolutely more than enough time to call APB's on him and bring a lot of heat immediately- especially when that police team ambushed Vincent right as he was going to kill that Asian mob boss at the night club

>he's no longer able to process changes or adapt to them
To expand on that, it's a recurring theme in Mann's filmography.

In Heat, Neil cannot adapt and dies because he decides to change his ways

In Collateral, Vincent dies because he doesn't (trying to do mozambique drill out of habit despite being behind train doors whereas Foxx randomly fires the gun and hit him out of sheer luck)

This theme is explored again in Blackhat. Hathaway survives by adapting himself to his environment and improvising makeshift armor and weapon.

Notice how both Heat and Blackhat end with the male character trying to escape in an airport (ready to start a new life, a very symbolic place), with his loved one.

there's no way a train door is any thicker than a car door, and car doors routinely get penetrated by even modest-caliber gunfire especially at close ranges

>Why would an experienced and talented hitman ever have a taxi driver chosen at random to be his chauffeur?
So he could kill the cabbie and effectively cover his tracks. And he works alone, bringing a driver into the mix means there are loose ends and people who know what he looks like.

You know that a car door is incredibly thin beyond the wall and then it's just electronics and mechanical shit before the interior. Whereas a portion of a train is either a solid piece or a reinforced piece.

One of these things weighs 3,000 pounds and is designed for crashes with other similar things with moderate force. A train on the other hand is weighs... a lot and is designed for catastrophic crashes.

Don't even try to compare a car to a train.

Hathaway was a classic Mann character with a lot of flaws. His whole archetype (warrior-poet, body & mind) is introduced intuitively: 1. you see him in his cell reading philosophy books 2. you see him act like a smartass to the prison director, which gets him thrown into the hole 3. you see him workout. He has nothing but time ahead of him and the traditional Mannian sense of discipline. "I do my time, the time doesn't do me", very similar to Caan in Thief. This is the same dedication to a code that you find in characters like Vincent or McCauley. But his flaw is his defiance of authority and arrogance, which is the reason he got caught in the first place. The Asian girl even mocks his dedication to his code in the restaurant conversation, "you still speak like you're in prison", but this is what saves her life during the fight and is what makes her drop her panties.

The fact that Chris Hemsworth is handsome and doesn't look like the stereotypical acne hacker doesn't matter in the slightest. Bank robbers and hitmen don't look like Cruise or DeNiro with their perfect fashion tastes. Mann's world is highly romanticized and idealized.

Hathaway is a complete man, like a Greek hoplite. His enemies however reflect the false dichotomy of the body and mind. The villain hacker is stereotypical, unfit, neckbearded, glasses, king in the virtual world but out of touch with the real world. He has to hire a mercenary to be his body, who is fierce and methodical but lacks brain and ability to adapt. In the end Hathaway adapts to his environment and disposes of both, by literally walking "against" the crowd, against the norm and false conventions. All of this is told mostly visually, without dialogues.

Mann's use of digital cinematography is particularly relevant, makes thematic sense and contributes to the film's discourse. A digital film about the clash between the digital and the carnal worlds, feeling more organic and alive than films shot on film.

Again, the baggage attached to that FAR outweighs the pros. There's no plan for insubordination from a rogue taxi driver, which is exactly what killed him. Of course this is still apossibility with a trained and hired driver, but far less likely- if I had the money and means to fund hits on some reputable and visible people, I would want absolutely no fucking part of any plan that uses such an unpredictable element as that. That would be like investing your 401k on short-selling, completely moronic.

>he was pretty recognizable with his hairstyle and grey suit
He's disguised as the most average fucking joe on the planet.

The controversial casting of Hemwsorth is actually the thematic point and ethos of the whole film, and justified right from the first couple of scenes. Mann's characters have always been romanticized and idealized archetypes. He is shown as a character above conformity and false dichotomies, training both his body and his mind while in his cell. No doubt he has read Yukio Mishima's Sun & Steel, which angry fat Sup Forums neckbeards have never heard about. It's also funny that people spouting this criticism never address that Sadak fits the negative hacker stereotypes, and this is what ultimately makes him lose. he has hubris and is self-agrandizing, but it's about how hes come to see himself behind a computer screen, an online God, then gets caught back by reality: he dies a pathetic death, he is nothing in the real world but a fleeting shadow in the middle of an indifferent crowd, one screwdriver is enough to end him. Its similar to how Vincent dies in Collateral: build up throughout the whole film as an invincible hitman who has everything figured out but dies indifferently on a subway as the city slowly wakes up. Hathaway "wins" because hes still connected to the real world, through his love and passion with Tang Wei, though all the self-reflection and meditation he went through in prison, through his anger and grief. The chaotic brutal nature of the action scenes mixed with the ethereal sensuality of the digital photo reflect that.

It's pure Mann. Thematically it goes back to his early films, like Thief (characters: the dinner scene & protagonist marked by his jail time, theme: the crime stays the same, only the tools change) and Manhunter (procedural investigation, lawful side needing the help of a jailed criminal to arrest a similar criminal)

>people in L.A. wear suits casually

you've clearly never been to L.A.

Would you say Vincent is a risk averse person or that he revels in highly dangerous situations?

The melancholic desire to escape is of course another main running theme in his films, and another way of showing his characters don't belong in a world of conformity.

There's a transcendent, almost metaphysical quality to water in his films, like the characters are longing for a purity and freedom they could never find on land. It's both calming and worrying, as if they're contemplating their own inevitable doom and are at peace with it. Even in a 100% urban film like Collateral, Max relaxes by thinking of the sea, it's what drives him forward.

Hathaway starts the film alone and in prison. In the end, he finally reaches the airport and escapes, but only because he found a sensual connection along the way. This also mirrors Neil reaching the airport for his escape with his girl, but the fate is reversed.

In Collateral, Max survives for the same reasons Hathaway survives in Blackhat; love/passion and his romantic interest, and the romantic drive to escape, allow them to be spontaneous and improvise and stay grounded in the sensual world, whereas the highly trained Vincent and Blackhat's mercenary are too detached from real human emotions and ultimately their sense of discipline causes an inability to adapt which is their downfall.

He makes lots of careless decisions for an extremely dangerous and exact profession, far more so than someone of his ilk should have been doing

You were expecting a guy whose agenda is flying around the country, killing a list of targets and then flying out before the next day to have a chauffeur? The chauffeur would need a car in any location they arrived in. It's also a lot easier to identify two guys travelling together rather than one guy. Underestimating Max and having a modus operandi of capping cab drivers is what screwed Vincent over.

On the flipside is thief, where changing is what gets him into trouble, and its only by giving up everything again that he gets himself clean of the situation.
Based fucking Mann. I love that most of his movies seem to have philosophical underpinning to all the themes and characters.
I see a lot of talk about the constructive/destructive nature of change, and the nature of the self and the conflict with the other, as well as the death of the ego. All of which he does with some of the slickest fucking action on film.

This scene is so damn satisfying.

Am I actually supposed to see Vincent as a villain?

>no one visits L.A. ever

Aren't you the cleverest.

You use the word careless like he isn't really thinking about what he is doing, like he shrugs his shoulders and says "whatever bro" as he approaches danger.

try leaving skidrow next time you're there, poorfag.

An experienced taxi driver can get to the targets quicker than he can. I think he mentioned he was from Kansas.

The entire purpose of hiring a hitman to begin with is the assurance of discretion. Having any strategy that open to instability and unpredictability is a complete dogshit one that is extremely prone to falling apart. The consequence of doing so could led to mob retaliation against the buyer or worse, getting the buyer caught on putting out the hit if Vincent gets arrested or squeals. If you were serious enough to put up the money to kill a DA (presumably, a 6-7 figure sum) why would you ever agree to these terms knowing how open to fuck-ups they are?

skilled hitmen use Uber

>I think he mentioned he was from Kansas.

I think you're right, I remember something about that but doesn't he later say something like we're not in Kansas anymore? Might just be him being whimsical

And now someone knows what he looks like, every time he does a job.
Remember why Jamie fox was able to get a new file from javier bardem? Because Cruise is an enigma. A professional.
And don't forget this was '04, so surveilance wasn't anywhere as pervasive due to the costs of the technology, the staff to monitor the feeds, and a medium on which to archive.
You're literally making up bull shit to argue with what the movie clearly explains.
I mean do you watch haunted house movie and spend the whole time ghosts arent real?

Was that Jason Statham in the beginning?

We can assume he was previously flawless in his execution, and had likely established a reputation of not being a fuck-up despite the film leading us to believe he was somewhat incompetent. By the time he met Max he had likely become over-confident.

>trying to hide his face

he had gray hair for a reason, he's would constantly change his appearance

>extremely public areas with MANY security cameras
means jacks shit.........especially in a city as big as LA.

If you have no fixed address, no one who knows you or could trace your whereabouts you won't be found, let alone a POLICE DEPARTMENT cracking that case (PDs and FBI are wholly incompetent organizations)

>Am I actually supposed to see Vincent as a villain?
Nope. He's certainly the antagonist since he sets the things in motion against Max, but he's the counterpoint, it's Jazz man. Hes sympathetic, and he pushes max to the next level. He's a cipher for the protagonist.

careless to say, he lets his rage supersede good judgement often (killing those bums in the alleyway right off a busy street, or continuously shooting without discretion, especially being in the presence of a police squadron, at the Asian mob boss in the club)

>And don't forget this was '04, so surveillance wasn't anywhere as pervasive due to the costs of the technology, the staff to monitor the feeds, and a medium on which to archive.

Again, this 'shit' technology was good enough to get a positive ID on the taxi car through a grainy police camera shot in almost no time whatsoever. Plus, he never showed any concern of having people knowing his identity, he literally chased through a subway train with a cocked gun past a lot of passengers.

yes

It was the transporter character. extended universe when?

is statham even working on anything aside from big money fast and furious anymore?

>Again, this 'shit' technology was good enough to get a positive ID on the taxi car through a grainy police camera shot in almost no time whatsoever.
Because its a movie cheese dick. You can resolve any picture down to its atomic components just by saying "enhance." It's a fucking story device to further the plot.
Do you actually have autism?

baseless assumption, nothing in the movie even alluded to this possibility

the taxi car was positively ID's for its license plate number extremely fast. Given the abundance of police helicopters and the surviving police officers from the club ambush who now absolutely have ID'd both the perp AND his car, it would take a 5 second APB to give Max, Vincent, and their getaway car a five fucking star wanted level. In the ABSOLUTE center of LA, it'd be over every police scanner within 20 miles instantaneously

>this 'shit' technology was good enough to get a positive ID on the taxi car through a grainy police camera shot in almost no time
yeah, how do police know the driver of a car based on a license plate??? What is this Bruce Wayne technology where you can find a driver of a car?

>it would take a 5 second APB to give Max, Vincent, and their getaway car a five fucking star wanted level
The LAPD wasn't after them.
It was ONE LAPD detective (Russo) that was able to piece together the smashed roof and his missing CI jumper. His superior didn't want to pursue it. The FEDS certainly didn't want to pursue it. By the time they were exposed, the ONE GUY that had the info was killed after Club Fever

Dumbass, I can enjoy thriller or heist movies if their well-written. Hokey plot devices are just lazy and ruin all the good that the movie (or any movie) had going for it. I wanted to like this movie but it had so much of this that it got nauseating.

they used allegedly archaic video surveillance technology to ID them from across the street at night. Did you even watch the movie?

>LAPD officer gets shot and several dead in a massive club shooting
>this wouldn't instantly be broadcasted across all of L.A. especially with the positive ID

>it'd be over every police scanner within 20 miles instantaneously
more crime dramas would be better served taking this approach
of criminals who just are a tad smarter than your average detective. The reality is, most police departments are not that smart, let alone very coordinated. Large bureaucracies like the FBI can be even more bungling due to their inherent incest of procedures. Most criminals get caught because they are lazy, not well thought-out and just happen to be dumber than the cops chasing them

I enjoyed everything but the ending. Sort of corny that he beat an experienced assassin.

Because he's playing jazz

>archaic video surveillance technology to ID them from across the street at night
they used a license plate to trace the cab.
the cab company can immediately tell you who is driving.
Pull DMV record on guy driving....with his picture

Does picture resemble the pixels on your CCTV? not that fucking difficult.

Fever was the climax for the Feds then everything went to shit. All their major players were down. The car wrecked shortly thereafter.

You have way too much blind faith in LEOs to think they know exactly who does what and how to coordinate manhunts like that within 20 minutes

Fair point. But their crimespree lasted from sundown to dawn- even the bumbling LAPD could set up road blocks or seriously track someone as prolifically public as Vincent in such an incredibly large metropolitan city like L.A. Even the Boston Bombers got caught in less than two days and they weren't leaving nearly as clumsy of a path of destruction behind them

>blocks your path

>Sort of corny that he beat an experienced assassin
yeah, but the movie's beauty was slow-burn/unraveling of Vincent's polish. He had tremendous skill as an operator with a plan. When the CI fell out of the window, the bulletproof plan of travelling salesman was blown.....how was he to adapt and not get lost behind the beat?

Once the time signature changed (free jazz.......what he alluded to in the jazz club) he got exposed as not having the chops to be a Miles Davis/Ron Carter player. He was never to get back on the beat and try as he might to fall back on his rote scales (weapon training) it failed him in this ever evolving rhythm.

Listen to some Bitches Brew..a random scream or distorted harmonic makes more sense in the context of what is being played rather than a in-key Pentatonic riff

>crimespree lasted from sundown to dawn
so?
murders happen every hour.
The only guy who had a whiff of those murders being connected was Ruffalo who died.
This isn't CSI Miami. Police are just not that smart NOR are they spending a shitload of resources chasing hunches.
Police work is just business. You don't spend countless hours after work (on your job) tracking down minutiae that might save the company $0.001 a quarter do you? Why would police be that coordinated or motivated? they aren't

Boston Bombers were 2 idiot Millennials with a crockpot bomb. They weren't much smarter than a Tyronne that robs a liquor store.

>buttrock screeches in the background

The cops were actively staking out the club where they saw Foxx's car to get another list right? I'd consider that more misfortune of going in front of a group of cops actively checking out who's coming and going than the effectiveness of CCTV, which wouldn't have been an issue anyway if Foxx didn't get bold and force them to go there. The cab would have showed up on footage in a number of places but Foxx would be found dead in it in the morning anyway with fleeting shots of Cruise in various places at best, who already would have been on a plane out by the time they even started to piece it all together, with hardly enough information to go off of to track him down.

He's perfectly fine you dolt.

Because it's a fucking movie you turbo autist

OP
> this fucking film sucked.....this super assassin gets killed by a cab driver
> OP is a /tvfag that thinks Baby Driver, Driver, and fucking capeshit are good films

>several random shooting deaths across the city of LA
Do you realize how many people get shot in LA on any given night or just what a monsterous sprawl of a city it is? How many precincts did this crime spree spread across? What evidence is left behind that connects all of these together? By the time anyone figures it out the job is done and he's off to the next contract.
There's a reason he tells the story about the dead guy on the train besides the narrative circle, but literal exposition about the inherent apathy of the people of the city.

everything you're complaining about was because he faced unexpected resistance from max. if it weren't for max he would never have had to visit felix, felix would never have sent his men to koreatown, and that hit could have been done outside the club.

the whole point was that everything was going wrong that night.

as for Vincent's MO

>he was going to potentially pin the murders on Max
>being driven around in a cab allowed him to remain incognito. think of the LAX scene.
>he could afford to be seen on CCTV because he had an intentionally implacable appearance and was going to be leaving the country within a matter of hours
>all of the hits needed to be carried out within a certain timeframe. that was the priority because it was an extraordinary situation for the cartel, not remaining 100% clandestine.

Thanks for writing this.

Thanks for typing this you are a good person

The guy wasn't supposed to fall out the window on the first kill. He was supposed to die and then Vincent would make a few more stops and then kill the cabbie and be done like he did in the past.

>when that police team ambushed Vincent right as he was going to kill that Asian mob boss
this fucking idiot was texting on his phone during the movie, apparently
Vincent was an unknown to everyone in Fever.
The Feds and the 1 LAPD detective were all targeting Jaime Foxx.

Mexican carry
Clothes baggy
Snaggy snaggy

>In Heat, Neil cannot adapt and dies because he decides to change his ways

Disagree. He dies because he follows his code to the letter. And his code must lead to chaos and emptiness.

>He dies because he follows his code to the letter
his code is 'drop everything at the sign of heat'
> intense police pressure after failed heist
> neil lingers for personal ties to Edie, VanZant and Wayne Gros

Neil's code didn't obligate him to go after Waingro.

My hairline is almost Waingro tier

They were there before us, user. They'll still be there when we're gone too. For all our high rises and streets we're only leasing.

Pretty much this. The movie's only good because Cruise is amazing as always.

i think you mean that his code leads to eptiness, and he didnt want that
which is why he went after waingro

his plan was to crash the taxi, with no survivors, leaving one of them in the wreckage.

Find a flaw.

lol

>someone saved the thumbnail of my webm

I don't know if I should be happy or disgusted

gun pointy edge
wrap in clothe
very slow.
dead?
very yes