Rated (MA) Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith

Anonymity may be a pleasantry in the taxi driver-passenger relationship, but it's a street that runs both ways. For Max, an LA cab driver for 12 years, it offers an excuse to keep pedalling the same pipe-dreams about operating a swanky limo service to anyone who listens: he knows deep down that if his plans were ever to happen, they would have happened by now.

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Max (Jamie Foxx) instead spends his day driving around in circles … until Vincent hops into his backseat. A contract killer hired by narcotics goons to knock off five key witnesses in a high-profile court case beginning the following day, Vincent (Tom Cruise) needs a driver in order to make his "hits" all in one night.

Max may soon become a hostage in his own cab, but the two form a bond of sorts whereby the silver-haired Cruise shows his reluctant accomplice how to stand up to life's little setbacks. It's a self-defeating lesson, of course, as the decent-hearted Max is never quite on song with this murderous rampage through LA, and he quickly threatens to foil Vincent's mission as undercover police pick up the trail of dead bodies.

This is a gripping — if a little far-fetched — thriller from Michael Mann, with Foxx very watchable as the repressed cabbie convulsed into action by a desperate situation, and Cruise suitable enough as the cold-blooded villain (for a change).

Erin J. Tennant