Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx Star in Collateral

It is a typical night in Los Angeles until Vincent gets into the backseat of Max’s cab. Vincent is in town overnight on a business deal. Before his flight leaves at dawn, he has five destinations that he needs to visit in order to finalize everything. He doesn’t have the time to wait for a cab at each stop, so he wants to reserve Max’s services for the night. Max declines because it’s against the cab company’s rules, but when Vincent shows him he can make more money than he does most evenings, Max is persuaded.

At the first stop while Max waits in the cab for Vincent, he reads a brochure about luxury cars. Driving cabs is only a temporary gig for him; he is only doing it until he can get everything in order to start up his limousine service. Max’s “plan” has been on-going for 12 years. He is violently interrupted from his daydreams by a body falling onto his car, which damages the windshield. Vincent rushes out and Max guesses that Vincent killed the man. Vincent corrects him by telling him that he “only shot him. It was the bullet and the fall that killed him.”

Vincent takes charge immediately. After putting the body in the cab’s trunk, Max offers Vincent the cab, but Vincent doesn’t let Max off that easy, so he has to drive Vincent around the rest of the night. Vincent attempts to calm Max down by telling him that these are bad people he is going to kill tonight. The truth of the matter is that Vincent is a contract killer, whose assignment is eliminating all those involved in a case against a Mexican drug cartel.

The first victim was actually an informant for an undercover police detective, who arrives at the house to find the aftermath. The police want to rule it as a suicide, but the detective knows there has to be more going on. He talks about a recent case in Seattle where a cabbie drove around one night killing people and took his own life; however, the detective on that case believed there was someone else involved.