Dargis arrives *

Manohla Dargis' first film review for the New York Times runs in today's paper. A.O. Scott takes Open Water; she reviews the L.A. movie.

In Collateral, the edgy new thriller from the director Michael Mann, the city never sleeps; it doesn't even relax. Set in Los Angeles mostly after dark, after the city's sunshine has given way to cool noir, the story centers on a taxi driver, Max (Jamie Foxx), and the assassin Vincent (Tom Cruise), who hops a ride with him deep into the night. As the pair cover the city, looping over interchanges and down wide open boulevards, they travel a landscape alive with wild animals and wilder men, noisy with unfamiliar music and chatter, and punctured by the hard pop of occasional gunfire.

It's always interesting to see how writers from the L.A. Times take to the tighter, more rigorous copy editing in New York. Readers more familiar with the Dargis style will have to judge how much of her voice made it into this first effort at getting through the desk there. It's just the first of many to come, of course. I can tell you it's about 1,100 words, a bit longer than her last review for the L.A. Times: The Bourne Supremacy.

* Scott weighs in on Collateral: In Sunday's paper.

Previously on L.A. Observed: Welcome NYT style, NYT raid on L.A. Times writers