I’ve said this three or four times, but it can’t hurt to say it again. In Michael Mann‘s Collateral Tom Cruise‘s Vincent is literally the guardian angel of Jamie Foxx‘s Max. He’s tough love in a rough guise and a perfect suit. He jeopardizes and even threatens Max’s life once or twice, but ultimately he saves it. The motivator who finally gets through. And at the end, as he’s dying on a Los Angeles metro car, he’s one of God’s lonely men — “Think anybody’ll notice?”

Vincent: “Look in the mirror. Paper towels, clean cab, limo company someday. How much you got saved? Someday…someday my dream will come? One night you’ll wake up and you’ll discover it never happened. Because suddenly you are old. Didn’t happen and it never will because you were never going to do it anyway. You’ll push into memory then zone out in your Barcalounger, being hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life. Don’t you talk to me about murder. All it ever took was a down payment on a Lincoln Town Car. Or that girl. You can’t even call that girl. What the fuck are you still doing driving a cab?”