Collateral

I watched a movie yesterday on my laptop (any guesses how I obtain it? ehehe), Collateral, that movie screened 2 years ago but I lost all chances of ever watching it. It had some rave reviews then, and I remembered how the bunch of us went to RB’s house with a pirated VCD from Heng or sommat, but the audio and picture quality was so bad we turned it off 30 minutes into the movie, because we could hardly understand it.

It’s quite an amazing piece of show with completely insightful dialogues, all entirely un-corny and refreshing, but they’re mostly blink-it-and-you’ll-miss-it, so thank god for the subtitles.

Max: First time in L.A.?
Vincent: No.
Vincent: Tell you the truth, whenever I’m here I can’t wait to leave. Too sprawled out, disconnected. You know. That’s me. You like it?
Max: It’s my home.
Vincent: Seventeen 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.

In fact, if you’re expecting bustling action immediately from the opening scene, you’d be sorely disappointed. Considering that this isn’t Mission Impossible: III, it has a slow, steady start that coaxes you into the unique storyline, no clich?s.

It’s a story about how an assassin, Vincent (Tom Cruise), gets into Max’s (Jamie Foxx) cab, and holds him semi-hostage where Max has to do his biddings as Vincent kills off people in the list he holds.

And it slowly climbs into a climax where elaborate special effects aren’t required. Me like!

I’d give it a 4.3/5 rating.

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On my way to college today for the afternoon class of Malaysian Studies, at about 2.20pm, Andy’s CD player was churning out The All-American Rejects’ Straightjacket Feeling. And as I looked at the large bungalows lining up at USJ 5 blurring as memories of my previous Langkawi trip soar into my head, of beautiful islands, of driving my friends around in an unfamiliar territory at night as we sing said emo song together, it was a reminder of how closely-knitted we were, of how much fun we had.

I’m looking forward to our planned Port Dickson trip next two weeks after our finals, with our bunch of college classmates who are living so far from one another, from Klang to Cheras, that this would be the perfect opportunity to bond together.

I’d love to, ‘course, invite my ex-high school mates to join us, but it’d be futile as our holidays are no longer the same. :( Maybe December hols or something, ya?

Malaysian Studies finals tomorrow, signing off.