Collateral made Tom Cruise into a slasher movie villain

polygon.com:

A well-dressed man slips through throngs of dancers at a tightly packed nightclub while the rhythmic, electronic drone of Paul Oakenfold’s “Ready Set Go” bounces off every surface in the space. The enraptured crowd is fully lost in the music, unaware of the dark presence that moves among them like a shadow. The figure working his way to the back of the room is not there to dance or mingle. He is there for a single awful purpose, to stalk and kill another victim, and nothing will stop him. A few guards lie in wait, hidden among the crowd, to protect the intended target, but they are quickly dispatched in a savage flurry of snapped limbs and bludgeoning strikes. The loud music and pulsing crowd obscure the violent scene from detection. The brutal killer is unfazed by the physical altercation and now one step closer to completing his grisly mission.

This foreboding sequence sounds like a horror movie, but it’s actually Michael Mann’s 2004 thriller Collateral. Inhabited by Tom Cruise, the character, Vincent, is a rarity among the image-conscious superstar’s past performances, allowing him to play an emotionally distant and ruthlessly violent force of destruction. While it is not his only villainous role, it is certainly his most chilling. Coupled with Mann’s use of sudden violence, Collateral stands out as the closest thing to a slasher movie that Tom Cruise has ever done.

The word “slasher” likely conjures images of unstoppable knife-wielding maniacs killing off coeds at a summer camp or university. But the slasher horror genre is broad and composed of only a few essential elements: an unstoppable killer, unwitting victims (who try but fail to escape the killer’s wrath), and a foil to stand against the madman’s rampage.