CITY OF ANGLES TOM CRUISE AND JAMIE FOXX SAW L.A. IN A NEW LIGHT WHILE SHOOTING MICHAEL MANN'S `COLLATERAL'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Michael Mann had an odd notion for depicting Los Angeles at night in his neo-noir thriller ``Collateral'': Show how it really looks.

Not as simple as it sounds. The backdrop for dozens of black-and-white '40s crime dramas, countless TV cop shows and more recent hard-boiled classics such as ``Chinatown,'' ``Training Day'' and Mann's own ``Heat,'' L.A. may seem like a familiar setting for dark and demented doings.

But the filmmaker felt like he hadn't really seen either the streetlamp-and-neon-under-marine-layer quality of L.A. after sundown, or the exploding diversity of the area's nightlife, properly portrayed in a Hollywood production.

To that end, he shot 80 percent of ``Collateral'' on high-definition video cameras that could record light qualities and shadowy depths that movie film simply can't. And it's why he sent the movie's mismatched antiheroes - Tom Cruise's implacable hit man Vincent, out to make five contract killings by dawn, and Jamie Foxx's Max, the unlucky cab driver Vincent forces to ferry him around - on an existential journey from downtown to the back alleys of Hollywood, Leimert Park jazz haunts to Pico Rivera Norteno clubs, Koreatown discos to the nondescript ends of Metro Rail lines.

``The places where Michael was taking us, and seeing L.A. through his eyes - it was great,'' enthuses Cruise. ``I mean, (the dance club) El Rodeo, I've never seen a place like that before. It's what I dig about L.A., these kind of satellite communities and this multicultural community that we have here. I just admire how Michael opens the film with Spanish music and you have Max speaking Spanish. It really brings you into the texture of this city.

``And the technology that he developed,'' Cruise continues. ``You could never shoot the city the way that Michael Mann shot it if he had not developed the digital the way he did. It just would not look that way, it'd be a different experience. And as an audience, it would give you a different emotion when you see those scenes.''

Ah yes, the joy of technological pioneering.

``I got so frustrated with that stuff, halfway through the movie I was ready to kick it all off the truck and get a Bolex,'' grumbles tough-talking, transplanted Chicagoan Mann. ``I mean, we needed and wanted it, that's why it was there, because I can see into the night with digital and I could not with film. The night becomes the world that these two men travel through, and we had to see that world.''

He got the look

To register low light levels and provide longer, crisper depth of field - as you would view the city looking down its long boulevards through a car windshield - Mann employed both Sony CineVista and modified Thomson Grass Valley Viper FilmStream digital cameras. The tape-using Sony system was fairly agile, but the Viper had to be connected by thick cables to a separate hard drive, onto which it recorded directly.

``The equipment was cumbersome and there was a lot of it to move around,'' Mann explains. ``Every time you wanted to move, we had to move what we called the video village, about the size of an armoire. It wasn't that portable.''

But the effect was worth it.

``It's L.A.,'' Mann says, shrugging. ``L.A. is this big, emotionally Technicolor landscape of old dreams and stuff kind of layered on with new ethnic groups moving in and taking over neighborhoods. So it's a very colorful space, that you can then move into moods that you can relate to those parts of the story.''

This from the guy who did much to define the modern, high-tech crime- movie look in his first feature film, the 1981 ``Thief''; who draped new layers of chilly, forensic methodology and clammy creepiness over the serial-killer genre (and introduced the Hannibal Lecter character to movies) in ``Manhunter''; and, of course, who masterminded the concept of pastel-coordinated police on TV's ``Miami Vice'' series.

But as notoriously attentive to color and texture as Mann is, he is also adamant about character and story detail. Thus Cruise, whose grayed-up hair and matching tailored suit were as important to portraying Vincent as his fast trigger finger, also famously bopped around L.A. disguised as a delivery man as part of his research for the role (Vincent gets locked doors opened by pretending to be from UPS).

As for Foxx's research, he rode with an assortment of L.A. cabbies to learn the tricks of the trade and the rhythms of the job, which are different in our self-driving and limo-oriented city than in taxi-dependent New York, where Stuart Beattie's ``Collateral'' screenplay was originally set.

For one only-in-L.A. example, an enterprising African immigrant worked lists of club-hopping women with DUI-suspended licenses, whom he'd shuttle from nightspot to nightspot on the weekends.

Instructive, but a little embarrassing for the red-hot comedian and rising film star who was riding along.

``We'd get to the club, and he'd go in to get the girls,'' Foxx explains. ``So he leaves me in the cab, and people are walking past and looking at Jamie Foxx in the cab and going, 'Man, Foxx done fell off. He's riding in cabs now.' ''

No running away

Once filming commenced, Mann's insistence on shooting L.A. for L.A. led to more public recognition.

``There were plenty of moments when we were recognized and people yelled out things during takes and stuff like that,'' Foxx recounts. ``But it was great doing this movie in L.A. and not, say, Vancouver, Canada, or anything like that. I said, this is when you know that you're really stompin' with the big dogs. Michael Mann shut down the FBI building! I know we must've been in some orange or green alert or something and he said, 'I don't care about that. I need this shot!' And then he shut the street off! Downtown, he cuts off all the streets at 6:30 in the afternoon.''

Which, Foxx adds, almost got him killed. This was to shoot a key scene in which Max floors the cab in order to rattle Vincent. The vehicle was actually being driven by a hidden stunt driver who, due to his position in the cab, had no peripheral vision. Somehow, as the taxi's speed hit 60 miles per hour, a wayward Toyota floated in front of it from an obviously overlooked and unblocked side street. Foxx was able to hit an emergency brake in time to miss the car by what he says were mere inches.

``So, shooting in L.A. was fun and adventurous,'' the actor concludes.

For all the action, suspense and intricate character work in ``Collateral,'' though, Mann is convinced that filming it conventionally would have resulted in ``a boring movie. Literally boring. We would have had a bunch of defocused blobs and a couple of faces, and everything would have been dark.

``This is about one place, Los Angeles, in one night. That means that in the duration of a two-hour movie, all the stuff you see is getting way, way intense in its ability to impact upon you. That meant that the exact color of street light in L.A., that's critical, because once I decide it's that, it's that for two hours. It was possible to capture that with video; it would have been impossible on film.''

OK, so maybe Mann is as hung up on form as his reputation indicates. But what those carefully wrought images reveal is just as important.

``I've prowled the city, been looking around here for quite a while,'' Mann says of his adopted hometown. ``I've got this fascination with Los Angeles. This is a cool place. There are all kinds of great, unexplored areas around L.A. This is a very undershot, underused city for film, man. And that is odd.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

Many felt Mann's 'Heat'

While Michael Mann's new film ``Collateral'' is being rightly praised for its realistic images of L.A. at night, they're unlikely to have anything like the indelible impact of the brazen, daylight downtown bank robbery and shootout he filmed for his last crime opus, the 1995 release ``Heat.''

That's not just because it was an expertly shot sequence. On Feb. 28, 1997, a North Hollywood Bank of America branch was hit by robbers wearing body armor and loaded with automatic weapons. Their subsequent shootout with police eerily resembled the ``Heat'' street battle.

And although the two robbers, Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Matasareanu, who were killed in the gunfight, had been arrested as far back as 1993 for possessing extensive weaponry, Mann acknowledges that they learned at least one lesson from his movie.

``I was told by some people at the LAPD that the guys had copies of 'Heat,' which they'd obviously studied,'' the director reveals. ``The lesson they got right was that the police are not used to being assaulted with full automatic weapons. But what they didn't get from the movie is that you're supposed to leave quickly, because the assets for the police department are coming in. You're in a lot more trouble 10 seconds from now than you are right now.''

Mann admits feeling weird about inspiring a true copycat crime. Then again, he sees no reason to feel too guilty.

``It's kind of bizarre, I've got to tell you, that people take lessons from this,'' he says. ``But these were not people who were working in a gas station who decided to hold up a bank because they saw 'Heat.' These were bad guys who were bank robbers! Nothing about 'Heat' caused their actions.''

- B.S.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) L.A. at night

`Collateral' is shot through with jarring images of the city

(2) no caption (Tom Cruise) (3) Michael Mann, left, used high-definition video cameras to capture the evocative L.A. nighttime inhabited by Tom Cruise's hit man character and his reluctant chauffeur, played by Jamie Foxx, right.

(4) ``Heat'' (1995), with Val Kilmer, eerily foreshadowed the North Hollywood bank-robbery shootout two years later.

Box:

Many felt Mann's `Heat' (see text)