“17 million people. This was a country, it’d be the fifth biggest economy in the world and nobody knows each other. I read about this guy, gets on the MTA here, dies. Six hours he’s riding the subway before anybody notices his corpse doing laps around L.A., people on and off sitting next to him. Nobody notices.” – Vincent, Collateral

Collateral, director Michael Mann’s 2004 film about Los Angeles cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx), forced to chauffeur contract killer Vincent (Tom Cruise) for an evening, is, in many ways, a film about loneliness; specifically, the loneliness of LA at night.

As the quote from Vincent highlights, in a city of 17 million, nobody notices a dead body on a train. Everybody is lost in themselves. In a yellow cab, Max dreams of something bigger for himself; his own limousine company, unlike any other in the city, experiential and high-end; but as Collateral progresses, we see that’s all he has – dreams. Max is unable to make that first move to get out of his routine. We see that early on when he picks up a fare in Anne (Jada Pinkett Smith); the two have easy banter back and forth, an unspoken chemistry that’s clear, but Max is willing to let her go when she gets out of the cab without stepping outside of his comfort zone. It’s Anne, the bold prosecutor, who turns back, knocks on his window and hands him her card, inviting Max to call her sometime.

Contrast Max with Vincent, the film’s cold and calculated killer, in town to take out five seemingly disparate souls. He and Max also have an easy rapport, even when Vincent is forced to reveal his reason for being in Los Angeles and takes Max as his hostage/driver. Vincent is focused on his work, implies he has nothing else but it, but is able to improvise each and every time it’s necessary. Still, this sociopath seems to let his guard down at times, revealing bits of his own lonely past to Max; losing his mother at a young age, a painful relationship with an abusive father. Are these stories true, or does Vincent tell them to Max simply to fuck with him? Only Cruise, Mann, and screenwriter Stuart Beattie know for sure, but there’s an implied connection between the two characters that gives Vincent more humanity than you’d think he’d have in his line of work. Vincent wants Max to step up, to be better than who he is; to be a better son to his mother in the hospital, to actually find the nerve to call the girl.

There’s a fantastic scene with Vincent and Max when we can’t help but feel that the two of them, if only for a moment, are actually friends. Cruise and Foxx share it with actor Barry Shabaka Henley, who plays jazz club owner Daniel and who is another name on Vincent’s hit list. For minutes Vincent and Max are enthralled as Daniel regales them with a tale of meeting the legendary Miles Davis. We almost forget that one of them is a killer on a job and the other a hostage. Almost.

Vincent and Max aren’t the only lost, lonely souls who inhabit Mann’s Collateral. Some of are more understated than others. Max’s mother Ida (Irma P. Hall) lays in a hospital bed and waits for her son to visit her every night. Peter Limm (Inmo Yuon), another soon-to-be victim of Vincent’s, is at a packed L.A. nightclub called Fever; it’s his wife, home alone and neither seen nor heard, who gives his location to the FBI. And then there’s Pinkett Smith’s Anne, who can be found at 4 am in her law office library, alone getting prepped for a big trial. One of 17 million; would anybody notice if any of them were gone?

Collateral screenwriter Stuart Beattie first conceived of the story while he was being driven home by taxi from an airport in Sydney, Australia. The script would take shape over years, at one point taking place in New York City. In Michael Mann’s hands, though, the film feels like it could be set nowhere else but Los Angeles at night. Collateral, in fact, is a travelogue one can follow, as many of the addresses Max travels to are real locations in the city, including 223 Union Place, where the body of Ramone falls onto the roof of Max’s cab; the El Rodeo Nightclub, where he meets Felix (Javier Bardem), and the Metro Station at 7th and Flower Streets, where the film’s final moments begin.

20 years later, Collateral endures as a classic film in the canons of its lead actors and its esteemed director, a journey into the loneliness that permeates the city of night.