Tailkinker

15th Aug 2005

Collateral (2004)

Question: I forget his name, but he's the cop that rescues Max at Fever, and Vincent shoots him. I'm just wondering does he die? It shows him putting on bullet proof vest and it shows he gets shot in the chest so I'm not sure.

Answer: Vincent's standard shooting pattern is established as two in the chest, followed by a head shot. We see Fanning get hit twice in the chest, then, as the camera cuts to shot Vincent, he fires a third shot, presumably into Fanning's head, killing him.

Tailkinker

5th Feb 2005

Collateral (2004)

Question: Max rambles a bit sometimes. But why does he say "I'm collateral anyway" in the scene after Vincent shot the Jazz player?

Answer: By this point, he's pretty much figured out that Vincent's going to kill him at the end of the night - given the lengths that Vincent goes to to prevent people from seeing his face, he's hardly going to leave somebody who could easily identify him alive. The term 'collateral damage' is used to describe individuals who are killed as the result of targeting somebody else - like a civilian standing near a military target who's killed by a bomb aiming at that target. Max isn't the target of Vincent's hits, but he knows that he'll end up dead anyway.

Tailkinker

Can I just say it took me ten times watching this to catch that.

Also the name refers to the fact Vincent was going to use Max to to blame the murders on him no matter what, if the night failed and he didn't kill his targets he'd suicide Vincent and blame it on him, risk management, protecting his identity even from his employers since a dead killer is "clean" in terms of the law investigating it. Kinda like the job was a loan, and Max was a house, if he lost the job he'd forfeit Max as a contingency. Basically Max was always going to be his "Collateral" if he failed in his killings or succeeded, Collateral Damage if he succeeds, Employment Collateral if he failed, and if Detective Fanning showed up 5 minutes earlier or if the body didn't fall out the window, the whole movie wouldn't have happened as it did since the witnesses would have been locked down, and he'd end up suicide an unsuspecting Max in an alleyway somewhere upon failure. I love the title, it's so provocative, the meanings behind it for Max, Vincent, and the story.

22nd Jan 2005

Collateral (2004)

Question: Did Vincent die from wounds sustained during the shootout in Annie's office, or was he mortally wounded only during the final exchange of fire on the train? At first it seemed he was hit in the office (he *was* knocked down from an impact), but he managed to chase them around the subway for quite a bit with no noticeable effects. In the train, it looked like all of Max's shots hit the door, but I may be wrong.

Answer: Max's shot in Annie's workplace only skimmed the side of Vincent's head - not really that bad an injury, but enough to snap his head around, sending him to the floor. Vincent does indeed die from the wound sustained during the final exchange of fire. While at least one of Max's shots hit the door, from the damage seen, he's not trained with guns, so the bullets would be quite widely spread - obviously one got past the doorframe to hit Vincent.

Tailkinker

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