From Collateral: Pandemonium reigns in club Fever as hit man Vincent
zeroes in on his fourth victim, gangster Peter Lim (seated at left).
In part 6 of the analysis we observed that the first stage of alchemy's Great Work, the nigredo ("the blackening"), is characterized by chaos. It is also associated with confusion, the encounter with one's psychological shadow, and death. What appears to be going on in Mann's Collateral is that each of Vincent's killings is followed by a metaphorical nigredo: The first victim, Ramone Ayala, falls out of a window down several stories and lands, dead, on the top of Max's cab. This is followed by Max panicking and getting extremely confused and excited, and thus represents a nigredo. The second killing is Vincent's execution of Sylvester Clarke while the latter is in his condominium. During the time Vincent is in the condo building, Max is tied up inside his cab, and a couple of young hoodlums come along to rob him. There is then chaos when Vincent shows up and shoots the two men, one of whom was trying to steal his satchel. Max suffers a panic attack after the third victim, jazz club owner Daniel Baker, is shot point blank in the head. Finally, there is complete chaos and pandemonium in the nightclub Fever, before, during, and after the execution of gangster Peter Lim (see above screencap).
Since Max defeats Vincent before Vincent can kill Annie Farrell, his intended fifth and final hit, there are effectively four nigredos being depicted in the movie (since four hits have been accomplished, as described in the foregoing). We can loosely associate these four nigredos in Mann's movie with Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, when we realize that each of the four appearances of the black monolith in 2001 represents a nigredo: each appearance is shortly followed by chaos, confusion, and/or death: The first appearance on earth in the 'primeval' segment of the movie is followed by chaos and confusion among man's ape-like ancestors; the second appearance (on the Moon) is followed by confusion and the death of the six astronauts when the monolith starts making a high-pitched noise (see my analysis of 2001 for more details on this); the third appearance, when the monolith is shown floating near Jupiter, is directly followed by chaos and confusion as David Bowman moves through the 'stargate'; and the fourth and final appearance is accompanied by the death (and rebirth) of Bowman. Note that the nigredos depicted in 2001 may not necessarily have one-to-one correspondences to the nigredos in Collateral.
Note that the second victim in Collateral is named Sylvester Clarke; Arthur C. Clarke was the author of the novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and actor William Sylvester played the part of Dr. Heywood Floyd in Kubrick's movie. Mann is here making an almost comical-seeming reference to Kubrick.
