Starring:Jamie Foxx, Tom Cruise, Jada Pinkett-Smith

Running Time:1 hour, 56 minutes

3 1/2 Gus heads

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Foxx and Cruise light up ‘Collateral’

Sometimes, you just have to respect a movie that sticks to its guns. Never mind the impossible, the implausible or the predictable – they are only details. What matters is that the film has moxie – enough to make up the difference.

Enter “Collateral.” The film is a few weeks old now, already returning to its spot below the now-obsessed Hollywood radar, but don’t let that fool you if you missed it. “Collateral” is a powerhouse. As gritty as it is personal, as tense as it is thoughtful, “Collateral” is a morality play brought to stark life by director Michael Mann and superbly acted by actors who seem to have given their characters some real thought.

Tom Cruise, playing the cold-blooded Vincent, gets one of his best roles. Jada Pinkett-Smith takes a simple character and gives her some depth. And as for Jamie Foxx, this is a milestone. He just made himself a career.

Despite the slick surface, however, some fundamental flaws are seething underneath, most of them involving the painful obviousness of the story. If you’re looking for sharp plot twists or surprise endings, “Collateral” is not the ticket. It’s as predictable as any by-the-numbers thriller, but “Collateral” comes out on top because it really seems to believe in itself and hopes that its audience does, too. It has a beating heart and a style all its own, and you’re forced to plunge into its dark depths because they are too fascinating not to.

Max (Foxx) is a cab driver stuck in a rut. He’s been working his job for 12 years, passively dreaming of future plans, but pretty complacent in the present. He’s an honest straight-shooter, as we see when he drives an attorney named Annie (Pinkett-Smith) downtown. There is a genuine quality to Max, uncorrupted and personable, and it’s helped by the fact that he’s driving the cleanest cab in Los Angeles.

Then he picks up Vincent (Cruise), who offers him $600 to take him on a night’s worth of errands and get him to the airport on time. Max reluctantly agrees, but he starts to regret things when a dead body falls on the roof of his cab. Vincent, it seems, is a hitman in town to do a few jobs, and Max has been unwittingly hijacked. Now a prisoner in his own cab, Max goes on an odyssey through Vincent’s world and tries to stop him before things get too far.

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The story is pretty simple stuff, but it’s the execution of it that really leaves a mark. Mann, working more successfully in territory he first explored in “Heat,” brings the grit of Los Angeles to chilling life, using long takes and hand-held camera moves to give the film a neo-noir feel. When we’re not busy watching the paper-thin plot unfold, the most fascinating aspect of “Collateral” is the narrow precipice upon which Max stands. He comes close to plunging into Vincent’s world.

Despite its flaws, “Collateral” is a mighty film. In lesser hands, it could have been one of the year’s cruddiest movies, but its unique flair saves it from falling. Instead of flopping, “Collateral” thrives as a living, breathing fable for the modern day, a story as true as it is simple. And if nothing else, it has the ever important moxie. That can count for a lot.