This is the story about a very bad night in the life of a Los Angeles cab driver. Jamie Foxx plays Max, a mild-mannered cabbie who takes pride in what he does, even though it's not what he wants to do with his life. He wants to start a luxury limousine service, but that plan has been gestating for over ten years. The night starts off well: Annie, a beautiful attorney played by Jada Pinkett Smith, gets into his cab, and they have a long conversation that starts with an argument over the best route to her hotel and ends with her giving him her card.

This scene made me wish that director Michael Mann and company had made a film about a cabbie's interesting night, instead of the one where the hired killer gets into the cab. Maybe that could be part of it, but not all of it. They quickly grow comfortable with each other: she tells him about her fears the night before a big case, and he tells her about his dream of opening a limo service. There are some uncomfortable silences, and then some comfortable ones. On the way out, stammering like a teenager, she impulsively gives him her card. It's a perfect scene, between two well-matched actors at the top of their games, and it's a joy to watch.

But alas, this is a thriller, and Max's next fare is Vincent the hired killer, played by Tom Cruise in a supposedly daring against-type casting coup. Vincent wants to pay Max $600 to take him around for the rest of the night; against his better judgment, Max agrees. He quickly realizes his mistake when, at the first stop, a body comes crashing down on the roof of his cab, the first of five targets that Vincent has been hired to eliminate. Vincent forces Max to drive him around, and they engage in an uneasy banter, partly Max attempting to understand the person who has kidnapped him, and partly Vincent imparting unwanted advice. Along the way, they make some stops, some where Vincent murders people and some where that great movie about the cabbie's weird night surfaces.

There's a great scene where Vincent forces Max to visit his sick mother (Irma P. Hall) in the hospital that perfectly illustrates the web of interactions between parents and grown children that an outsider can't understand. There's another scene where Vincent and Max stop by a blues club and chat with the owner, who tells them of one night when he was a busboy and Miles Davis walked in. These scenes hit the perfect notes of existential wistfulness that Mann is sometimes capable of achieving. Sadly, the rather pedestrian thriller plot kept intruding.

Also intruding was Tom Cruise. I respect the man, and I think he's a decent actor when he's in the right roles. But this is the new, mature Tom Cruise, who has decided to use his clout to develop films that might be better had he not acted in them. I actually felt sorry for him at times during this film, because everybody on the screen was better, more natural and convincing, than he was. After the early scene between Jada Pinkett Smith and Jamie Foxx, when Cruise climbed into the cab, life went out of the film. Cruise is in his earnest mode, the snappy delivery and calculated smirk that we've seen in other films: he's Frank T.J. Mackey from Magnolia, only with a gun. He telegraphs his acting process so baldly that you can see him considering every single expression and nuance. It's as if acting were something that could be mastered with the proper amount of concentration, but that concentration is always visible on his face and in his manner. There's a scene where Foxx must go into a bar and meet with the big kahuna (Javier Bardem) behind the five hits. Foxx goes in as the terrified, mild-mannered cabbie, but at a certain point he realizes that they're going to kill him if he doesn't act like a hard-boiled killer, and he transforms himself completely and astoundingly into his idea of a hitman. I was struck by how much more convincing he was, when imitating Cruise's killer, than Tom Cruise's imitation job.

Foxx gives a star-making performance throughout. He's best known for comedies, but this should establish him as an actor of surprising range. This should be a breakout film for him and Jada Pinkett Smith. Mark Ruffalo is great as always as a detective who notices the pattern of killings and doubts the notion that Max the cabbie is the killer. Barry Shabaka Henley, as the owner of the blues club, teams up with Foxx to make Cruise look like a rank amateur. Cruise was at his most natural in the scene with Irma P. Hall, where Cruise's stiffness made sense in context.

The movie's central message, that Vincent somehow teaches Max how to be a manly man, defend his new woman, and get on with his life plans, is just so much macho bullshit. It reminded me of the scene in Fight Club where Tyler Durden threatens the 7-11 employee's life unless he enrolls in college. Sure, it gets him off his butt, but it's fascist, it's one guy deciding how another guy should live his life. Any "ends justify means" arguments to justify these themes are repudiations of free will.

But it all looks so enchanting. Mann is more interested in the aesthetic aspects of his thrillers than many directors. He and cinematographers Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron paint a lovely Hopper-esque portrait of a sad, noirish city populated by lost souls insulated from each other by towers of glass and steel and the safe cocoons of their cars. A lot of the film is simply driving around, and it's shot with a fluidity and grace that you wouldn't expect from a thriller.

This was a pretty good film that could have been great, if it had not been as interested in the thriller elements. The best scenes demonstrated Michael Mann's tendency toward creating the cinematic equivalent of a lonely saxophone solo in the wee hours of an existential LA morning. The rest was sturdy, if uninspired, thriller plotting, which was not bad, but was unwelcome.