Featured Image Credit: Dreamworks
Topics: Tom Cruise, Film and TV, Jamie Foxx, Oscars
Ben Thompson
If there's one thing you can count on Tom Cruise for, it's to be at the front of a film that performs well at the box office.
Whether he's flying through the sky in Top Gun or being a bit more sentimental in Jerry Maguire, the 61-year-old is still box office gold after decades in the business.
But fans are saying that Cruise's best film is one that has been virtually overlooked.
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Which is strange, considering that it has a star studded cast.
It features the likes of Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo, Jason Statham and Javier Bardem.
If you have an eye for film trivia, you may have deduced by now what the film is.
I am, of course, talking about Collateral, released in 2004.
It revolves around a taxi driver, Max Durocher, played by Jamie Foxx, who is driving around Vincent, played by Cruise.
Durocher is offered a high fee to drive his passenger to various locations but soon finds himself taken hostage, as it turns out that Vincent is a hitman on a killing spree.
Sounds like gripping stuff, right?
The film did well at the box office, grossing over $200 million worldwide, and securing Foxx a nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars.
It even made its way into the National Board of review's top ten films of the year.
Yet many people feel like it's under-appreciated and doesn't get the hype that Cruise's other flicks get.
Over on Reddit, fans of the film had some thoughts about why this was.
One wrote: "Most people I know have no idea what Collateral is. My girlfriend is a self proclaimed Tom Cruise fan, found out she has no idea what it is recently.
"It's Cruise's 16th highest grossing movie (domestic). And many that grossed less, like Risky Business, Eyes Wide Shut, and Magnolia have all had a larger cultural impact.
"I'd say people discuss Edge of Tomorrow more even."
Others were gushing about how Cruise pulled off the part of a villain so well, opining that other leading men should follow suit in playing a bad guy.
Reviewing the film at the time, Roger Ebert wrote: "Cruise and the filmmakers bring a great deal more to his character than we expect in a thriller. What he reveals about Vincent, deliberately and unintentionally, leads up to a final line that is worthy of one of those nihilistic French crime movies from the 1950s. Jamie Foxx's work is a revelation.
"This is a rare thriller that's as much character study as sound and fury."