Movies Which movie is better: Collateral or Training Day

[Bullitt68]

Well then explain this, when tom cruise kills the 2 or 3 white guys robbing Jamie Foxx, why does he call them "homies"

The same reason Arnold's Terminator says "Fuck you, asshole."

I've neve cared for the ending of collateral and never will [...] Collateral however is a good movie at best. Never loved it Never will

In what way does it fit?

The way I explained. In what way(s) doesn't it?

The ending only works if you force yourself to believe fox can kill cruise. Nothing in the movie leads you to believe this.

Everything in the movie does, actually. Cruise can't adapt, he can't change, he's disciplined to a fault and isn't able to roll with shooting in the dark between train doors. He does what he always does like a computer: Dead center, two to the chest, one to the head. Foxx, meanwhile, just closes his eyes and plays jazz, firing left and right between the windows and hitting Cruise. Added to which, Cruise's fate is perfectly in keeping with his nihilistic philosophy ("There's no reason; there's no good reason, there's no bad reason to live or to die.") hence the full circle "Think anybody'll notice?" question he puts to Foxx before dying.

I promise you, the movie is note perfect. You can not like it just like you can not like other great art like Beethoven's 9th, the Mona Lisa, and Stairway to Heaven, but whether it's your cup of tea or not, the movie is rock solid.

It's called watching the movie.

Indeed. You should try it

If nobody complained about the ending after 30 classes then you are lying.

Some have thought it was boring, some don't like action movies, some couldn't follow the plot, but nobody's ever complained that the ending "doesn't fit" (nor has anyone lamented the fact that Foxx doesn't end up in handcuffs). From memory, the only "complaints" if you can call them that is some students have expressed the desire to have seen more, either Foxx and Pinkett Smith going to the cops and explaining everything (someone in an online class wrote that in their discussion board review) or an epilogue with them together (I remember a student in an in-person class saying that). Sorry to burst your bubble, but I train my students to be smarter viewers than the average Sherdogger

Needed something more crafty

Mann was plenty crafty, as evidenced by the number of people whose heads his ending apparently went over.

Yes it's a classic trope but it means nothing if its not executed well, which is something you are completely looking past.



So because a random cab driver was able to conjure his inner jazz playing tenets he was able to out fox and out shoot an elite hit man head to head?

This is the kind of pseudo intellectual nonsense that passes for modern film analysis which I often see in those pretentious video essays on youtube where they try and dress up any old nonsense as high level art when in reality its just dumb. Under no circumstances should Foxx's character been able to defeat Cruise head to head, zero, none, should have been completely off limits. Cruise just standing there in the open shooting blindly through a door like an untrained moron, completely contradicted the character that was portrayed for the whole movie, it was just not plausible and dumb no matter how hard you try and dress it up. He went out cheaply in dumb fashion which let down the movie. It means nothing for the hero to vanquish the ultimate villain if he slips on a banana skin, which is what basically happened. It was a cookie cutter ending that you would expect to see in some silly B movie late at night.



It was logically inconsistent and violated the suspension of disbelief. You are missing the forest for the trees if you are just focusing on the themes. It has to work on a nuts and bolts level first.

I know you're a contrarian troll and I don't take you seriously, yet you want so badly for me to engage you as if I respect your opinion. I don't, so I won't. But by all means, keep trying.

 

[Bobby Boulders]

I enjoy anything more than something featuring Tom Cruise. Yes, even Manos, the Hands of Fate

 

[Wrath of Foamy]

I've never seen Training Day, but I really liked Collateral.

I had a lot of mental health issues when I first saw it and did so in the cinema in an attempt to do something completely spontaneous and random. I saw it two more times in cinema after that, and bought the DVD.

 

[Frank_Drebin]

Collateral. I’m going to catch heat for this but I feel like Training Day is possibly the most overrated movie of the last 25 years.

kinda agree. denzel was really convincing and also had great acting by hawke but it's a bit overrated as a film overall.

 

[Frank_Drebin]

Man, first the ending of Kill Bill and now Collateral. You and I never seem to see eye-to-eye on denouements. It's part of the genius of the film that it ends where it began. For starters, it's just a great magic trick: We see where Foxx picks Cruise up at the beginning, we even see Cruise and Pinkett Smith pass each other on the escalators, yet it still hits like a punch in the gut when we realize where Cruise is heading at the end. That's just damn fine filmmaking. But it's also crucial that Foxx is required quite literally to man up for the woman of his dreams. He was too scared to call her -- is he going to be too scared to save her? It's the fucking hero's journey writ large. He has undergone quite the spiritual transformation through his night with Cruise, he has gained confidence he'd never had before and shown courage he didn't know he had, but now he's faced with the ultimate test for the ultimate reward, and the only way to be victorious is to vanquish the ultimate villain. It's mythologically epic, man, and it HAS to finish where it started (just like in Heat it HAS to finish with De Niro spotting the heat in Pacino coming around the corner).

I also regularly screen this film for students in one of my classes and I always get oohs-and-aahs from them when we break down that train sequence and I show them Cruise's bullet pattern in the train doors, Mann's brilliant little nugget showing how rigid Cruise is (despite his bullshit about Darwin, the I Ching, adapting, rolling with it, and playing jazz) and how it's the fact that he can't/won't change that brings him down, whereas Foxx can and does change, actually embodying the jazz-playing tenets Cruise only talks, and therefore he survives their head-to-head.

something sticks out to me with collateral. all the characters feel human and even "modern" except cruise. cruise to me feels like an alien, someone who doesn't belong there. it's not just bcause he's a psychopath with no humanity, but someone who metaphorically feels like they were transported there from the past or the future, that's how alien he feels to me. do you see this as well?

 

[Frank_Drebin]

I've seen this exact argument for the ending several times.

It's cope. The ending doesn't fit the movie. No amount of confirmation biased led criticism and analysis is going to change that.

He didn't know how to end it the way he wanted without it looking dumb. So he just did it anyway, and hoped his groupies would find a way to rationalize it as genius.

I mean, the rest of the film is so good that it doesn't even matter much to me. But enough to keep it from a 9/10 imo

there's some truth to this.

i don't know how it should have ended but by the end the movie transformed into something that it wasn't for the first 80%. the arc makes sense but the genre seemed to change. i don't know, i'm not an expert or experienced analyzing movies but it's just a feeling.

 

[Severen]

I know you're a contrarian troll and I don't take you seriously, yet you want so badly for me to engage you as if I respect your opinion. I don't, so I won't. But by all means, keep trying.

I would have thought a Snr mod would have a better way to win a debate than just calling someone a troll. Funny how most people seem to agree with me on this topic. Not bad for a troll I guess. I don't care if you respect my opinion I am just replying to someone's argument on a forum if I disagree with it. 30 classes and not a single dissenting opinion likely means they were scared of getting the boot from your class for daring to disagree.

For the entire movie Vincent was portrayed as a surgical elite assassin, yet in the final show down he was the complete opposite and your explanation is 'Jazz'. Where do I sign up for class?

I think a better ending would have been. In the building earlier when Max surprises him and shoots him, we hear 2 shots but only see 1 hitting him in the ear. The rest plays out the same but instead of shooting each other blindly through the door, Vincent outmanoeuvres Max after a battle of wits, and has him dead to rights but at the last moment, relents and sits down peacefully, and we realize he has been mortally wounded the whole time, gives his speech and dies. This way Max has his moment but Vincent's character is not betrayed as cheaply as it was.

 

[Frank_Drebin]

teaching film must be really cool and i'm curious what other movies is part of his course.

i love movies but honestly kind of ignorant on screenwriting, but sometimes when a movie feels off (in a bad way), it just is what it is, even i'm too dumb to get it. i'm open to learning things though.

 

[Bullitt68]

something sticks out to me with collateral. all the characters feel human and even "modern" except cruise. cruise to me feels like an alien, someone who doesn't belong there. it's not just bcause he's a psychopath with no humanity, but someone who metaphorically feels like they were transported there from the past or the future, that's how alien he feels to me. do you see this as well?

Yes, 100%. Cruise's character went through a process of encasing his humanity in a nihilistic shell of cold professionalism. (He's "indifferent" to death; he doesn't kill people, "bullets and the fall" kill them; etc.) The gray thing, from the hair to the suit, even makes him look metallic. But my favorite part of the film (and the genius of Cruise's performance) is watching his facade start to crack and then seeing the slivers of the humanity underneath it. The jazz club scene is one of my favorite scenes in any movie ever. He genuinely respects and admires that man, but he has a job he contracted to do. He allows himself to be vulnerable and it hurts him. Same thing with Foxx. He genuinely likes and respects him. ("Why haven't you killed me yet?") Like Mann's other great antagonists (Tom Noonan's serial killer in Manhunter and De Niro in Heat) Cruise could change, he could form a meaningful relationship with another person, but he doesn't. He reverts back to his killer programming. ("I do this for a living!") It's tragic (as is the end of Heat) and by the end Foxx himself has some weird but genuine feelings for Cruise (I love his off-hand remark on the train about how they're approaching the next stop, as if he could - as if he wishes he could - get Cruise help).

Like I said: There's so much going on in that insanely dense script.

i don't know how it should have ended but by the end the movie transformed into something that it wasn't for the first 80%. the arc makes sense but the genre seemed to change. i don't know, i'm not an expert or experienced analyzing movies but it's just a feeling.

It becomes a chase movie. It becomes Terminator with Foxx/Kyle Reese protecting Pinkett Smith/Sarah Connor from a killing machine. But, again, that's already there in the preceding: When Foxx steals Cruise's briefcase, Cruise chases him down, and Foxx throws it down onto the street. That's his mini rebellion, his dry run. He does have fight in him, he does have the courage to stand up to Cruise, but how far will he go? The end of the movie gives us the answer.

I'm telling you: That script is bulletproof.

Meanwhile, in Training Day, of all the people in LA, Hawke just happens to intervene and help a random girl who just happens to be related to a Mexican gangster who just happens to be about to kill Hawke who just happens to realize that she's his Get Out of Jail Free card. That's deus ex machina, i.e. lazy screenwriting. Bad ass scene paced well and superbly acted by Hawke and my boy Raymond Cruz who's awesome in everything, but ridiculous if you think about it for more than two seconds. Collateral is on a whole higher level of screenwriting and filmmaking.

 

[Frank_Drebin]

don't hold this against me but another example where an ending just feels off is history of violence.

it was a really intriguing movie, with good buildup, good acting, good mystery, and they didn't beat us over the head with exposition and just let it play out naturally, so that's good, but the final third or final act or whatever they call it was a little ridiculous.

so we find out the true nature of joey and his past when he goes to boston to meet with this brother, but then he kills them all in the most comically way possible, almost like he's rambo! and that comedy was built straight into the movie too, like when the brother gets locked out of the house as joey's doing his KARA-TAY, he starts searching for his keys in the most hilarious way possible, but overall that ending was shit! dude goes rambo then comes back to his family. i kinda hated it! what was the meaning? that the past is truly never done with you and all that nonsense? c'mon, man! lol

 

[Bullitt68]

don't hold this against me but another example where an ending just feels off is history of violence.

it was a really intriguing movie, with good buildup, good acting, good mystery, and they didn't beat us over the head with exposition and just let it play out naturally, so that's good, but the final third or final act or whatever they call it was a little ridiculous.

so we find out the true nature of joey and his past when he goes to boston to meet with this brother, but then he kills them all in the most comically way possible, almost like he's rambo! and that comedy was built straight into the movie too, like when the brother gets locked out of the house as joey's doing his KARA-TAY, he starts searching for his keys in the most hilarious way possible, but overall that ending was shit! dude goes rambo then comes back to his family. i kinda hated it! what was the meaning? that the past is truly never done with you and all that nonsense? c'mon, man! lol

Haha, yeah, that movie's pretty bad, even though Ed Harris rules. Eastern Promises is also stupid. Cronenberg is so weird that only his weird movies are good. His regular movies are weaksauce IMO.

 

[deviake]

Collateral easily but I haven't seen Training Day since it hit video.

Collateral is pretty much flawless as far as I remember.

 

[Bullitt68]

teaching film must be really cool and i'm curious what other movies is part of his course.

i love movies but honestly kind of ignorant on screenwriting, but sometimes when a movie feels off (in a bad way), it just is what it is, even i'm too dumb to get it. i'm open to learning things though.

My bad for missing this post earlier. For the particular classes that I show Collateral in, they're "Intro to Film" type classes. I always use it as part two of a two-part unit on character and theme focusing on screenwriting. The first unit is all about protagonists. In the past, I'd assign something written by Aaron Sorkin (I'd alternate between Steve Jobs, IMO the greatest film script ever written, and Molly's Game, a criminally underrated film), but more recently I've been showing Train to Busan which has a fantastic redemption arc for the unsympathetic protagonist who starts off a finance douche and a shitty father but who becomes a better man when faced with a horrifying crisis. The second unit is all about antagonists, and I only show Collateral. I also go through Manhunter in class to set up Mann's unique and brilliant dealings with the trope of the sympathetic villain (as well as, secondarily, his brilliant use of the trope of the doppelgänger).

And in the course of those lectures, I incorporate the insights of Syd Field (see his Screenplay book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenplay_(book)) and Blake Snyder (see his series of "Save the Cat" books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_the_Cat!:_The_Last_Book_on_Screenwriting_You'll_Ever_Need), whose work I highly recommend if you're interested in learning more about screenwriting.

I would have thought a Snr mod would have a better way to win a debate than just calling someone a troll.

We're not debating.

Funny how most people seem to agree with me on this topic.

You either don't know how to count or you don't know what "most" means. Either way, you're too dumb even to troll, much less debate. How have you been here this long and this is the best you have to offer? If you can show me you're worth engaging, I'll engage you, but you have quite the hill to climb. Maybe you shouldn't keep trying...

 

[Severen]

I'm telling you: That script is bulletproof.

Meanwhile, in Training Day, of all the people in LA, Hawke just happens to intervene and help a random girl who just happens to be related to a Mexican gangster who just happens to be about to kill Hawke who just happens to realize that she's his Get Out of Jail Free card. That's deus ex machina, i.e. lazy screenwriting. Bad ass scene paced well and superbly acted by Hawke and my boy Raymond Cruz who's awesome in everything, but ridiculous if you think about it for more than two seconds. Collateral is on a whole higher level of screenwriting and filmmaking.

Sort of like Max randomly catching a glimpse of vincent's open laptop after the car crash because it was perfectly positioned and opened on his last target which happened to be the same women he randomly gave a ride at the start of the movie who happened to give him her number he can use to call to save her life? Nothing contrived about that right? It's almost as if both relied on the same ridiculous chance meeting coincidence?

 

[Frank_Drebin]

Haha, yeah, that movie's pretty bad, even though Ed Harris rules. Eastern Promises is also stupid. Cronenberg is so weird that only his weird movies are good. His regular movies are weaksauce IMO.

so yeah i'm not sure what to believe in, the critics or my gut. my gut is pretty dumb but i trust it the most, even though sometimes i can't seem to see good writing even from a mile away.

i love kubrick, he's probably my favorite director, but i don't get some of his stuff, like barry lyndon. barry lyndon was fucking beautifully shot, like that opening scene of the duel. it literally looks like an magnificent oil painting, but i'm too dumb to get what the hell was going on in that movie, and i was bored.

i know you're arguing with other posters and stuff but you gotta realize us civilians don't get it all the time, and sometimes, not necessarily you, but the smarty pants filmmakers and writers sometimes make pretentious stuff like that emma stone movie with the brain transplant or whatever.

what are you top 10-20 recommend movies?

 

[Frank_Drebin]

Sort of like Max randomly catching a glimpse of vincent's open laptop after the car crash because it was perfectly positioned and opened on his last target which happened to be the same women he randomly gave a ride at the start of the movie who happened to give him her number he can use to call to save her life? Nothing contrived about that right? It's almost as if both relied on the same ridiculous chance meeting coincidence?

not trying to start a fight between the both of you lol but severen makes a good point here. it's a little too convenient of a plot point, i dunno.

 

[Bullitt68]

Sort of like Max randomly catching a glimpse of vincent's open laptop after the car crash because it was perfectly positioned and opened on his last target which happened to be the same women he randomly gave a ride at the start of the movie who happened to give him her number? Nothing contrived about that right?

Okay, contrarian troll, here's an actual response before I go to bed.

1) You probably didn't read or understand this when I first posted it, so we'll start with you trying to reread this:

It's part of the genius of the film that it ends where it began. For starters, it's just a great magic trick: We see where Foxx picks Cruise up at the beginning, we even see Cruise and Pinkett Smith pass each other on the escalators, yet it still hits like a punch in the gut when we realize where Cruise is heading at the end. That's just damn fine filmmaking.

2) It's not a "random glimpse," it's what Cruise would obviously have on his computer since she's next and last on the list. We'd already seen him pull up hits along the way, stands to reason he'd pull her up. If you actually want to argue the physics of the car crash, on the other hand, I'll do that once you run a couple of field tests with cars and laptops.

3) Even without seeing the computer, it's still there in the film that Foxx could've deduced she was his target. The computer is the gut punch, but it's not deus ex machina. The script is better than that, and if you can't understand that then you're too dumb for it, but that's your fault, not Mann's.

4) For the whole film, Cruise talks about fate, "hundreds of millions of galaxies," "fates intertwined," "cosmic coincidence," etc. Hell, Cruise almost didn't get in Foxx's cab! Foxx was so happy on cloud nine after getting Pinkett Smith's number that he almost missed the new fare. It's baked into the movie from the jump. That's not deus ex machina, either, that's more good writing.

Training Day fails to integrate the most important plot point in a narratively plausible or thematically significant way. That's deus ex machina, aka bad writing. Collateral, meanwhile, is full of foreshadowing and recursion and every single thing that happens is significant and coherent in terms of plot, character, and theme. That's good writing.

There. I've fed the troll. Good night.

so yeah i'm not sure what to believe in, the critics or my gut. my gut is pretty dumb but i trust it the most, even though sometimes i can't seem to see good writing even from a mile away.

i love kubrick, he's probably my favorite director, but i don't get some of his stuff, like barry lyndon. barry lyndon was fucking beautifully shot, like that opening scene of the duel. it literally looks like an magnificent oil painting, but i'm too dumb to get what the hell was going on in that movie, and i was bored.

i know you're arguing with other posters and stuff but you gotta realize us civilians don't get it all the time, and sometimes, not necessarily you, but the smarty pants filmmakers and writers sometimes make pretentious stuff like that emma stone movie with the brain transplant or whatever.

what are you top 10-20 recommend movies?

I'm turning in for the night and I have a full day of commuting and teaching two classes tomorrow. I'll try to come back in a couple of days to talk about more stuff.

 

[Highway99]

If we are throwing out books about screenwriting, the book Backwards and Forwards by David Ball is a really interesting one. It's actually a book about script analysis for the theater and uses Hamlet as it's source for a script to breakdown. But it works well as a way for a writer to make sure they have all the links of their story in place.

Also, Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach by Paul Joseph Gulino that's based on the ideas of Frank Daniel, who taught David Lynch. It breaks down act structure into smaller more manageable chunks sort of giving the writer more rungs on the monkey bars to get more easily from the start to the finish.

 

[Severen]

2) It's not a "random glimpse," it's what Cruise would obviously have on his computer since she's next and last on the list. We'd already seen him pull up hits along the way, stands to reason he'd pull her up. If you actually want to argue the physics of the car crash, on the other hand, I'll do that once you run a couple of field tests with cars and laptops.

You really need to do a crash field test to concede that a lap top surviving a violent car crash involving flipping multiple times, and landing open conveniently in the exact right spot for Max to see the screen while being arrested is widely improbable and contrived? Are you sure you are arguing in good faith?. News flash, its a ridiculously undeniably contrived moment.

3) Even without seeing the computer, it's still there in the film that Foxx could've deduced she was his target. The computer is the gut punch, but it's not deus ex machina. The script is better than that, and if you can't understand that then you're too dumb for it, but that's your fault, not Mann's.

Cool. Explain how he could have deduced she was the final target without seeing the lap top. From what I saw, it was the moment he saw the laptop that he realized it was her and went into action and overpowered the cop. Without that glimpse the ending does not happen.

4) For the whole film, Cruise talks about fate, "hundreds of millions of galaxies," "fates intertwined," "cosmic coincidence," etc. Hell, Cruise almost didn't get in Foxx's cab! Foxx was so happy on cloud nine after getting Pinkett Smith's number that he almost missed the new fare. It's baked into the movie from the jump. That's not deus ex machina, either, that's more good writing.

Oh ok. So because a character references cosmic coincidences earlier on, that someone makes the coincidence of 2 people he picked up in a city of millions being linked, not a ridiculous coincidence anymore? It was ridiculous in training day for Jack to meet the gangsters cousin but not in Collateral because nobody mentioned cosmic coincidences in training day? lol.

Training Day fails to integrate the most important plot point in a narratively plausible or thematically significant way. That's deus ex machina, aka bad writing. Collateral, meanwhile, is full of foreshadowing and recursion and every single thing that happens is significant and coherent in terms of plot, character, and theme. That's good writing.

It was integrated, it was just a wild coincidence, in same way it was in Collateral (multiple times) You are just demonstrating a ridiculous double standard here which no amount of world salads will escape.

We have not even gotten into the contrived part where both annie and vincent and perfectly positioned in the tower for max to see them through the windows and direct her over the phone, or was that just down to cosmic coincidence as well?


At the end of the day, Collateral is a pretty good movie that never quite got there. If you want to talk about Mann's masterpiece that would be Heat, which was a far superior movie.

PS. Stop getting triggered out of your mind because someone disagrees with your opinion on movies.

 

[Frank_Drebin]