A cab driver becomes a hit man's unwilling accomplice in the sleek and stylish crime thriller "Collateral" (DreamWorks).

Returning to familiar genre terrain, director Michael Mann crafts a tautly paced, multilayered film oozing with L.A. noir moodiness and hardboiled menace.

Jamie Foxx stars as Max, a cabby with dreams of saving up enough cash to start his own limousine business in the tropics.

Into his back seat slides Vincent (Tom Cruise), a stranger in town for one night who has gunmetal-gray hair and a steely demeanor to match. He tells Max he is a businessman in Los Angeles to close a real estate deal which requires the signatures of five parties scattered throughout the city. He offers to pay Max $600 to turn off his meter and drive him around for the rest of the night.

But things take a decidedly deadly turn when -- minutes after Vincent disappears into his first destination -- a bullet-riddled body comes crashing down onto the windshield of Max's parked taxi. As it turns out, Vincent is actually a contract killer hired by a Latin American cartel kingpin (Javier Bardem) to eliminate key witnesses set to testify in his upcoming trial.

Taking Max hostage, Vincent forces the rattled cabbie to chauffeur him on his appointed rounds. But as the evening unfolds, it becomes unclear which of the two men is really in the driver's seat.

Cinematically, Mann is at the top of his game, using digital video to create an edgy visual lexicon that is both gritty and glossy. And while "Collateral" displays a more stark color palette than films of an earlier vintage like "Heat" or "Manhunter," Mann's hypnotic after-hours sojourn in Los Angeles is, nevertheless, a nocturnal rhapsody of seductive shadows and cool-toned streetlights.

Unlike Vincent's description of Los Angeles -- "sprawling and disconnected" -- "Collateral" is compact and coherent, though the last 20 minutes or so derail into more generic action territory.

Taking place in the span of one night, "Collateral" is much more intimate and reflective than Mann's larger canvas works like "Heat." In fact, most of the movie's two hours involves Max and Vincent driving around talking.

As in Mann's previous films, violence plays an integral part in "Collateral." But apart from a protracted centerpiece shootout in an Asian dance club and a graphic execution in a jazz lounge, the killings are handled with economy and visual restraint.

Cruise is mesmerizing as the haute-couture hit man, exuding a calibrated blend of lethality and loneliness. Best known for his comedic work, Foxx proves a capable counterpoint to Cruise's precision-tool implacability. Rounding out the cast is Mark Ruffalo as an undercover narcotics cop honing in on Vincent, and Jada Pinkett Smith as a federal attorney involved in the case.

Underneath its slick crime-story conceit, "Collateral" is driven by an ongoing philosophical debate between Max and Vincent which flavors the film's central conflict with an existential accent. Vincent is a nihilist who views the world and everyone in it as "a cosmic accident," the product of random chance. Without the safety catch of meaning and morality, pulling the trigger becomes much easier. If nothing means anything, taking a life is of as little consequence as driving a cab. As Dostoyevsky opined, without God -- without a moral system of right and wrong -- "anything is permissible."

Due to recurring intense violence, autopsy gore and much rough language, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted.

David DiCerto is on the staff of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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Garden State (Fox Searchlight)
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David DiCerto is on the staff of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.