Miami Vice

I thought the movie was slick and stylish, yet Mann gave absolutely no nods towards one of the biggest t.v shows of all time, aside from the characters having the same names and residing in Miami.

Where was the boat? The alligator? The ex-wife? The kid? Where was Miami? The scenes shot there could have pretty much been anywhere on the coastline of the States. Mann reportedly said a few years back that Miami isn't an interesting place to him anymore. Well he made that quite apparent with his new version of Miami Vice.

I, against popular opinion, actually thought he made a good choice in Farell. I don't really like the guy but he seems to be convincing in most of his roles, and who's better to play a party hard, rough around the edges renegade than a party hard, rough around the edges, erm, renegade.. ahem. But as it's been stated over and over, Farell and Foxx had no chemistry whatsoever. They barely even looked at each other. In fact, Foxx's role could have pretty much been played as well by most African American actors, given the amount of screen time the guy had.

I came out of the movie feeling like I wanted to hit a club, drink mojito's and pick up a model. Which I did, almost.

Miami Vice was a slick cop story with a shaky plot and cool visuals. But if you're looking for any references to the series then forget it, aside from a crap cover version of In The Air tonight thrown on during the end credits (originally sung by Phil Collins in the series pilot).

What was great about the series was the style, the attitude, the music. The film got one out of three of those right.

When I first commented on this movie, I was furious. First, I couldn't tell why this was being adapted into a movie from the 80's TV show, but with that aside, secondly, I couldn't figure out how I felt about Colin Farrell (with his gruff voice throughout the whole movie trying to replace Don Johnson as Crockett) and Jamie Foxx playing Tubbs (especially because I always loved Foxx's more comedic acting over his serious roles). I saw it in the theater the first time around, and everything just felt completely off-putting for me, even little things like not including the trademark theme song from the TV show to hype up the movie.

So I lost that initial impression altogether with a second viewing. I forgot that they never used the original theme music. I overlooked Farrell's acting like Don Johnson. And I had time (and subtitles for most of the overly specific commands and subtle name changes that the characters used throughout the film) to sit back and figure everything out without being uncomfortably squirming around in a theater chair to view it. Although I felt that some music changes would've gotten this film a higher score with my taste in soundtracks (or maybe a loss of the random sex scenes between the two vice partners and the included music in those changed around), ultimately the DVD proved a lot of my primary opinion were false.

The camera-work was awesome (each scene being shot with a photograph included in place of a traditional storyboard layout). Time was put into the detail-oriented script almost to the point of confusion, for the audience at points, but in the long-run, the totally expanding life of a vice agent and the takeovers that are possible in the real world might be this sky-bound. Michael Mann deserves a lot of the credit for the entire film for its look and continuous feel throughout; this adaptation definitely could not have been made as complete without him as the director. And his tests for simple things (such as .50 caliber gun impact tests on a car) really show through in the final draft of the film.

All in all, the film deserves at least 7 stars as its rating. I don't know about seeing it again and again (mostly due to its heady-script and elongated duration of the film), but there are moments of the film that have you laughing to yourself abut how this drug-trade stuff goes on within vice squads. Very informative, very stylish and functional camera-work, and very worth seeing.

This is a story about being undercover, and what happens when you go deep undercover.Particularly if you're doing an operation in a foreign country, where your badge doesn't count and where you can't have SWAT team surveillance you, and people are not in contact, you really are out on the edge. It's the allure of doing that undercover work and what happens to you when you're deep in that role of that fabricated identity. These roles protagonists(Colin Farrell,Jamie Foxx as Sonny Crockett and Tubbs) are filled by real deal. This is a cool film directed by Michael Mann. He tells that his ambitions with a picture like that was to really go exploring into some of diverse areas. It's shot in location Scout, South America. One of the exciting things about Michael Mann is the choosing real location all the time. We're dealing with environment that can often surprise us. Whether it's the light, whether it's dramatic moment with the sky, or some interior or some sort of background action that would not have happened in a controlled backlog situation. Michael gets this slickness, finding places, that, you know , that aren't even on the map.He makes as real as he possibly can. He's all about, why fake it, when you can do it for real? . The cameraman Dion Beebe gets a maximum chromatic saturation. The shooting in these places like Ciudad del Este is incredibly stimulating and exciting.It's a Tri-border area where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet. It's such a unique part of the world. This town have people who are from Middle East, Lebanese and Syrians, a lot of ethnic Chinese and the country speaks Guarani, which is the indigenous language. These people were extras and director got to be pretty determined to get a crew to these places. Also was shot a lot of stuff in the Dominican Republic and in some areas, it took a lot of social engineering to be able to bring a film company in and shoot responsibly and shoot safely. The main shooting is Miami, it's kind of globalized city with a huge population and a lot of money, and lot of people from Haiti, Brazil, Venezuela Columbia. In the movie Miami seems to have elevated itself, up into the most sensual which is up into the air.It's reflected the storm systems, the clouds, the dramatic weather and nature in a very, almost tactile way. Filming in really swank, fantastic places, and the girls are still beautiful(Gong Li, Naomie Harris,Elizabeth Rodriguez) and the cars are still fast but doesn't pull any punches when it comes to the underbelly of Miami.The city is photographed with alluring, it's very attractive, very engaging , sensual and also very dangerous and things that we can see around the images; furthermore an atmospheric music score by John Murphy. The motion picture is well realized by the successful director Michael Mann.

Whilst in the middle of an operation, Sonny Crocket takes a panicked call from an informant that tells him very little but tells him enough to work out that some drug operation is going wrong. Things have indeed gone very wrong with an inter-agency undercover operation that has left the DEA nowhere. As local officers Crockett and Tubbs are unknown quantities to the drug runners they are recruited to infiltrate the existing network and continue the operation. The dangers are obvious but even with that knowledge the pair find themselves getting deeper than planned.

I can barely remember the television series because I never really cared for it as a child. I say this because I am about to spend a few hundred words randomly lashing out at the 2006 version of it and I don't want you to think that it is for a reason as basic as me just having a soft spot for the original. No, my actual problems with the film are with the film and not as a result of some childhood memory, nostalgia or "retro-cool" view that some may have. The film opens well by jumping straight into the story, forgoing the usual character introductions etc that this type of film normally does. However after this the plot becomes a fairly dull affair that drags along a path that is hard to follow.

Part of the reason it is hard to follow is because I stopped caring after about half of the film but it is also worth mentioning that the script appears to have been turned into mumbling in the ADR and a lot of dialogue is hard to hear. It doesn't really flow that well either, partly because the scenes are blunt and edited in a really weird style. Unlike many viewers I actually quite liked the digital video cinematography for how it looked. Sure it looked gritty and dark and perhaps not what you expect from a film that cost this much, but I did like it. Problem I had with it though was that it didn't suit the material. Credit to Mann for trying something but the visual feel would have worked better with a film with much more substance and grit, as it is it feels like a soulless cop thriller trying to dress up as something else.

The long dull scenes don't help and personally I found all the sex and montage scenes to be embarrassingly lame – just like too much of the soundtrack. Speaking of lame, the performances are roundly poor. Farrell is dumped in a terrible moustache and left with no character to speak of. He lacks any presence and his performance consists of just staring into the sunset and being moody. Foxx benefits from at least looking cool but he does much of the same. Together they have no chemistry at all and they are part of the film being as dull as it is. Gong Li is wasted. Her section of the film should have added heart and character to the film, but it isn't there in the script and she ends up just soft-focus frolicking with Farrell instead. Wonderful rising British star Harris is equally poor. With no character to speak of she focuses on doing her accent, which is OK but the direction pushes her too hard with the script and it doesn't really work.

Overall then a roundly poor, dull film that has little going on in the script, story or characters. It looks all serious and grown up thanks to the cinematography but it is nothing of the sort, with mumbled dialogue, superficial characters and a plot that offers little apart from the occasional moment of excitement here and there.

Due to Michael Mann's track record it was hard to go into this movie without very high expectations. After all, we are talking about the creator of arguably the greatest crime drama/thriller ever made with "Heat", as well as the highly entertaining "Collateral". But "Miami Vice" fails to live up to Mann's past success in the crime genre.

The plot is completely ordinary and doesn't offer up any unexpected twists and turns along the way. Because of this, the movie lacks intensity through much of the first and second acts, when everything that's happening is completely predictable.

However, pedestrian plot aside, the biggest disappointment was the manner in which the characters were developed. Both "Collateral" and "Heat" were notable for the way in which they delved deep into the psyche of the central characters, providing compelling personal drama to go along with the heists, hits and gunplay. But in "Miami Vice", we never really get to know the characters or their motivations beyond the surface level. And to make matters worse, Foxx and Farrell never develop the kind of rapport that's necessary to make a movie like this work on a high level. Compare Foxx and Farrell to Johnson and Thomas, or Gibson and Glover, and you'll see what I mean. Even though the "Miami Vice" movie aspires to be darker and grittier than "Lethal Weapon", which it is, it fails to be as dramatic because we never really come to care about the characters all that much. While there was clearly a conscious decision to downplay the "buddy" elements of the movie, the result is that Crockett and Tubbs seem so disconnected from each other on a personal level that it's hard to buy that they would die for each other, which we are expected to believe. The only relationship that is at all convincing or fleshed out is between Crockett and Isabella. The rest seem decidedly distant and undercooked.

What saves the film from being a bust is the visual splendor and great action sets. Mann once again proves that when it comes to creating a gritty atmosphere and staging shootouts, he's among the best in the business. When it comes to style, visuals, and atmosphere, "Miami Vice" is top notch.

In the end perhaps what hurt this movie most was studio deadlines and delays while shooting. It's been widely reported that Michael Mann had to feverishly edit this film just to get it into theaters on time, and in many ways that shows. There are multiple loose ends that are never tied up or explained, and several plot threads seem underdeveloped. I'm sure some day we will see a director's cut which approaches the 3 hour mark just like "Heat", and perhaps that version will overcome of the issues involving character development and plot holes in the theatrical version. Until then, "Miami Vice" is a movie that, while far from being a total failure, is none-the-less disappointing in that it had the potential to be a much more complete film than it is.