What is masculinity? Is it an outdated and
overall destructive construct? Or is it a
necessary aspect of our humanity and the maturation
of the individual? These are some of the questions
that pervade the work of Michael Mann in general
and his film Collateral in particular. Because
even though its story of a cabbie being forced
to drive a contracted killer from hit to hit
during one night in LA might seem shallow
on the surface level, I believe its symbolic
and thematic structure provides a meaningful
meditation on what it means to adopt a healthy
masculinity and what happens when we attempt
to repress it within ourselves and our societies…
In one of his early seminars, Dr. Carl Jung
discussed the mythological symbol of the man
or the rider and the bull, and the necessity
of taming one’s inner bull, one’s masculine
and animal nature.
When we’re first introduced to Max we initially
get a sense that this a man who’s got his
life together. He’s the cabbie who goes
above and beyond to keep things orderly and
clean. He’s the driver who knows his routs
by heart and aims for maximum efficiency,
but he is also a people’s person, perceptive
in his ability to put himself in his passenger’s
shoes, compassionate to their struggles. Max
is a man who excels at what he does, who plans
on doing so much more… and who even gets
the number of the girl he likes without even
having to ask for it, Max truly, seems to
have it all…
It is not until after a mysterious man from
out of town enters his cab, that the façade
begins to crumble… Suddenly, Max’s excellence
and orderliness as a cabdriver are exposed
to be part of his weakness. For in reality,
Max is all order, no risk, a chronic flunker
of life, like a faceless rider missing in
action. He has become complacent, stuck in
a routine, afraid of getting dirty, of taking
a chance with the girl he likes, of delving
into the unknown, of facing his inner bull.
His realistic ambitions have turned into an
escapist dream, meant to deceive himself as
well as others from facing his reality. For
it’s when we repress our inner masculinity,
when we don’t listen to our instincts, forfeit
our assertiveness, our healthy aggression,
and when we don’t take responsibility for
our lives that life itself becomes rigid,
constricting, claustrophobic even, the car
becomes not a symbol of freedom, but one of
bondage in a world seemingly indifferent to
our existence. Like Max, we might dream or
deceive ourselves and others into believing
that nothing is wrong, but in reality when
we repress our inner bull we become small,
dependent, harmless and therefore vulnerable,
not much more than cogs in a machine, marionettes
stuck in an endless loop, naively waiting
for the universe to give us our due…
“You can avoid places where bulls are to
be found, and if you don’t see them, you
will not be bothered. But you must be dodging
all the time in order to avoid every possibility
of arousing the bull; and since life provides
endless opportunities for the emotions, there
is no end of dodging, which amounts to a panic
or a chronic flunking of life…”
Vincent is in all aspects the opposite of
Max, his shadow. He embodies all the masculine
aspects of the symbolic bull, everything Max
is not. He shows himself to be assertive,
alert and most of all aggressive and unpredictable…
If Max is constricted by too much order and
routine Vincent relishes in chaos and improvisation…
And yet Vincent is not the perfect manifestation
of the rider who has tamed the passions of
the bull. He believes the compassion and emotion
of Max to be a hypocritical weakness of character…
To Vincent, who grew up in an abusive household,
life has no inherent meaning or value, and
the people who claim the opposite are lying
to themselves…
Vincent is a product of modern urban society,
an extreme rationalist nihilist, his grey
and colorless attire revealing his inner hollowness,
he ultimately acts only to prove his resentful
belief that the world is disconnected, cruel
and indifferent to existence by bringing death
and misery to others. Vincent has become possessed
by, what Robert Moore termed, the archetypal
shadow warrior, the destructive side of masculinity.
He has become detached from emotion and human
relationships, he is disgusted by human-pettiness
and weakness and lives only for his mission.
Pain and death are the only things that are
real to the shadow warrior. To him the emotional
passions of the bull are but silly constructs
of society or the human imagination, ultimately
holding one back from taking unrestraint action
to achieve one’s goals. He takes what he
needs from this symbolic animal for his own
egoistic needs and thinks he can leave the
carcass behind 
to rot…
And so as these two opposites embark together
into their murderous night, an interplay of
personalities ensues. Visually, Max’s self-contained
window into the world, is cracked, and his
life is thrown into chaos after he realizes
the true identity of his diabolical passenger.
As he drives Vincent from hit to hit his own
insufficiency becomes clear as the veil of
his lie is slowly being lifted… And as much
as he’d love to escape his reality, his
dependence on others will only bring him and
the world more pain. He’s stuck in the cab,
in the enclosed arena, with his bull beside
him. The only way out is to move forward into
the unknown. And it’s in spending time with
him that he slowly becomes more comfortable,
more level-headed, and begins to learn from
Vincent’s behavior, slowly becoming more
assertive… and improvisational… The realization
dawns on Max that the only way to survive
the night and to beat Vincent, is to be like
Vincent, the only way to tame the dangerous
bull, is to consciously act like 
the bull…
In embodying his inner Vincent, his inner
bull, Max has discovered a newfound power
he didn’t know he had… But by acting like
the bull or the warrior, there’s always
the danger of becoming or being seen as its
opposite, seemingly blurring the line between
the warrior and its shadow counterpart, confusing
the police on who the real hitman is supposed
to be. It is only through the murder of Detective
Fanning that Vincent’s true pathological
nature is exposed…
In complete shock of Vincent’s nihilistic
worldview, Max makes a final move towards
the completion of his inner journey, by taking
full responsibility for his life… His own
hesitance to act, his passive dependence have
caused him to stagnate in life, his weakness
and lies have not only held himself back,
but have also contributed to the suffering
of others. Max’s veil of deceit has now
been lifted completely, and can therefore
exist no longer… His deliberate crashing
of his cab then becomes an image of a symbolic
death and resurrection, a shedding of weakness.
The marionette dies and the rider arises.
The bull has been tamed and the shadow warrior
has failed in his attempt to convert him into
his ranks and thus leaves his side. But there’s
one more step needed for Max to complete his
inner journey… Max transcends his own being
by sacrificing his own safety in order to
save the woman he cares about, who also comes
to represent the society as a whole in her
role as assistant attorney. And so by taking
responsibility, by embodying the archetype
of the warrior, Max is not only fighting for
another individual, but for the good of society
as a whole.
He surprises the shadow warrior in his newfound
ability to take decisive action. But he also
exposes the weakness in Vincent’s character.
Max ultimately does not win the final clash
because of his competence with firearms or
his through his aggression, but by improvising
on the spot whereas Vincent sticks to his
rigid and pathological nature. His inability
to emotionally connect with others and the
one person who made him self-conscious of
his flawed nature ultimately become his downfall.
He stoically accepts death almost as part
of his job, and yet in his final words we
hear the voice of a broken man, a forgotten
child…
For Max life begins again. The repressed,
passive man who started the night is no more,
in his place stands a rider with a bull in
his net. He has not killed it for he now knows
it to be impossible, naïve, immoral even.
And so he has tamed his masculinity without
becoming possessed by it. By embodying his
inner bull not for chaos and destruction but
for the good of himself and those around him,
he opens the door to a meaningful life, to
an existence 
with purpose, to a new beginning.
