After sitting – hour after dark hour - through the moody conniving of Tom Cruise in Collateral (i.e. "rough trade in a good suit"), I cannot escape the conclusion that America's love affair with banality is far from over. While everyone's work on the film is predictably exact and commendable – the real star of the movie is Michael Mann. The dialogue is sparse and finely calibrated to reveal character; leaving the heavy lifting to Mann, who pounds on his well-worn themes of loneliness, isolation, and slick corporate ennui. Tom Cruise does a smashing job conveying professionalism and indifference. The utter absence of any other facet of human emotion, however, will probably get him an award of some sort. Modern audiences love emptiness and simplicity in their movie actors: to fully understand a character is to own them. To leave a theatre feeling that a character exceeds your ability to pigeonhole him/her only confirms your own emotional paucity. And so we are given simple people about whom brilliant directors work their sultry magic. Let the actors lure you into the theater with their celebrity, you won't have to suffer through actual performances. We promise to deliver the goods in other ways. In this respect, Mann has given collateral to both us and his actors: "a security pledged against the performance of an obligation".