Jamie Foxx
Collateral
Best Supporting Actor - 2004
All right, hired killers don't normally flag a cab to transport them from one dark deed to the next. But once you get over that improbability, Michael Mann's elegantly shot thriller is the best of its breed this year, featuring a fine, comically terrorized performance by Jamie Foxx as the cabbie, Tom Cruise as the implacably ironic hit man and the city of Los Angeles in all its dark, neo-noir splendor as the setting for their deadly encounter. Technical note: the film was largely shot in a digital format and, guess what, the difference between pixels and film stock is not visible to the bedazzled eye.