Frank O'Connor

Super lean and tight thriller with elements of Hitchcock lensed through Michael Manns obsessively focused ability to make LA a character rather than a location - Tom Cruise for once channeling his deep seated weirdness and isolation into an oddly appropriate character - if a movie star were a predatory assassin - single minded and unable to stop - like a shark twisting from meal to meal without pausing to appreciate the reef - empty eyes only capable of gathering information about the next assassination. A superb choice to show Cruise's character almost take a different cab leaves the viewer on edge from the moment the movie starts -- knowing that everything that happens from now on is cosmic but relatable misfortune. Cruise impressively vanishes into the tailored suit and bleached hair and his usual toothsome charm becomes an unsettling rictus promise. In a way he's a darker version of the Scientologist control freak of tabloid myth. It's arguably his most transformed performance outside of the unexpected gimmick of Tropic Thunder. Foxx is a dry everyman in the wrong place and the wrong time -- and simply outlined as the movie colors both of them in broad strokes by the end of the tale -- and there's even fleeting sympathy for the shark from the simple realization that it's his nature to do what he does -- and he has nothing else. He is not just alone, he is slowly compounding that loneliness one life at a time. An Anton Chigur style bargain offered in a jazz club leaves the audience wondering if he's a man of his word or if the offer itself was a mote of kindness - a brief moment of hope for predator and prey. Ambiguous gristle that the script is confident enough to let the audience chew on themselves. The climax is just as intimate and atmospheric as the first scene and the lighting and sound design capture LA's sprawling melange of glitter and grit from Hollywood to skid row, from downtown to k-town and from nightlife to wildlife we ridealong on this nocturnal safari -- just as helpless and hapless as Foxx - wondering if that note of hope eked from a trumpet's brassy wail will be given or offered in this headlong journey to hell - or which of these intertwined fates is Dante and which is Virgil.