"I do this for a living," a sleek, if slightly bloodied, Tom Cruise explains near the end of the near-perfect new film Collateral. As Vincent, a cold-blooded contract killer, what Cruise does is ride around nighttime Los Angeles in the back seat of a cab, pausing occasionally to meet with clients and then, business concluded, shoot them right between the eyes.

Here's what Collateral's director, Michael Mann, does for a living: he nails the thriller genre right between the eyes, thanks to the economy and elegance of the suspense he creates. In Michael Mann movies like Heat and TV series like "Miami Vice," looks matter a lot: not only those of his leading men (and Mann's world is largely a man's world), but of everything around them, from their clothes to their cars to the cities they move restlessly through. If one of the chief pleasures of movies is the way things look, the way things look in Collateral is endlessly intoxicating, starting with after-hours L.A., which glitters like a diamond necklace.

But clothes don't make Mann the thrilling filmmaker that he is. Here, it's his virtuoso use of surprise and coincidence, and, as written by Stuart Beattie, Collateral is a dazzling succession of each, starting with the tiny twist of fate that lands Vincent in the back of a cab driven by Max Durocher (Jamie Foxx). As in so much of life, things could have gone a different way: still daydreaming about his previous fare, an attractive assistant U.S. attorney played by Jada Pinkett Smith, Max almost doesn't notice Vincent. But at the last moment he snaps to, offers Vincent a lift and, though neither he nor we know it yet, seals his destiny.

Things begin innocently enough, as the pair engage in the usual taxi-cab small talk and Max agrees to ferry Vincent around town while the latter takes care of a few business deals. But at their very first stop, it becomes clear that the stakes are much higher than Max realized when a body falls, seemingly out of the sky, and smashes onto the roof of his cab. "You killed him," a stunned Max says when Vincent, not a hair out of place, returns from his "business meeting." "No," replies Vincent, "the bullet and the fall killed him. Pop the trunk."

Max becomes a hostage in his own cab, and that cab becomes an existential space apart in which killer and cab driver debate everything from the nature of evil to the existence of God. "Why do you do this?" Max asks, after Vincent bumps off a police officer. "That's the why," Vincent says, citing his job assignment. "There is no reason." We are, he adds, all just "lost in space. The cop, you, me. Who notices?"

But this crash course in Nietzschean ethics has, it turns out, a bracing effect on Max, who learns to stand up not only to the various toughs he encounters, but eventually to Vincent himself. Foxx is completely appealing, first as an average Joe just trying to make it through the night, and then as a reluctant hero who, when he finally picks up a gun, isn't doing it for a living, but to save a life. Every bit as good are Mark Ruffalo as a quick-witted detective and, in a brief but compelling cameo, Javier Bardem as the nightclub owner and drug lord who hired Vincent and set the whole bloody evening in motion.

But basically, Collateral is Tom Cruise's show, and he's terrific, his familiar boyish charm iced over. Dressed in a sharp, silvery gray suit, his hair flecked with gray, Cruise moves through the film like the shark in Jaws, ruthless and relentless. And move is the operative word: not only is Cruise one of the most consistently under-rated actors in Hollywood, he's also one of the most physically expressive, a dancer in everything but name. Whether he's resting, running or reaching for his gun, Cruise makes every movement count, particularly in the film's major set piece, a shoot-out in a crowded nightclub where all the various forces now pursuing Vincent and Max converge.

Mann orchestrates every inch of this expertly, as he does all those seeming coincidences that begin to feel like the strands of fate tightening inexorably around Vincent, Max and everyone who crosses their paths. Lost in space we may be, but in Collateral, Michael Mann is a master of fate, a master of suspense and a master of the film universe.