Miami Vice- ***1/2
My mom watched a lot of "Miami Vice" in the 1980s. I did not, preferring to maybe catch a second or two of guns blazing and then heading off into my own imagination where I saved Amy Woggerman from mean, but ultimately inept bad guys (I mean, honestly, what sort of bad guys allow a ten year-old to defeat them?). Now Michael Mann has resurrected the series as a film, and most people I know (particularly my age and younger) are just shaking their heads. They assume this must be some sort of joke. What’s next, Scarecrow and Mrs King: The Movie?
Luckily, writer-director Michael Mann still has some tricks up his sleeve. I find Mann notoriously hit and miss since his dry, measured style doesn’t always pay off (Ali, for example). Mann begins by throwing out nearly all references to the original and starting from scratch. Our two heroes, Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) get a call from an old informant that something bad is going down. It’s an FBI sting operation gone wrong (due to an informant who only exists to jump start the plot), and the FBI decides to use Crockett and Tubbs to break the case. Of course, they get too deep undercover, and Crockett falls for the drug lord’s girlfriend, Isabella (Gong Li), and then in the end everyone has to shoot everyone else.
This is nothing you haven’t seen before, and in fact the movie tends to suffer a bit when dealing with our heroes getting in over their heads. You know they are because that’s how these plots go, but neither they nor the movie ever seems to worry too much about it. The characters are so gritty that they’re almost miserable, and one more set back is just another excuse for them to sigh and push on. Gone are the interesting characterizations of Mann previous film, Collateral. The plot feels almost like a (coincidence?) TV show stretched out to two hours. It seems too flimsy to support the entire running time, and slows quite a bit in the middle, particularly when Crockett is romancing Isabella. But never fear. When the guns finally come out in the last twenty minutes, you’ll forget how much time you spent wondering how long it was going to take for the guns to come out. We even get two particularly cheer-worthy bad guy deaths, both thankfully without snappy one liners.
Luckily, Mann’s style counts for a lot, and manages to make up for deficiencies in plot and character. Every shot looks fastidiously researched and expertly timed. A brief montage of a plane flight becomes almost epic, and night scenes feel like you’re actually standing with them under the streetlight. The movie is shot in HD video, and this only emphasizes the story’s grittiness. The only choice I didn’t like was an over-reliance on sludgy modern rock, which kept pulling me out of the movie and making me wish someone would turn off the top-40 radio.
Despite its plot and character shortcomings, Miami Vice succeeds almost in spite of itself. It manages to rise above the stigma of its TV show past in ways that shows like “Knight Rider” or “Riptide” probably could not. It’s a light action film, entertaining within its own limits and nothing more.
Luckily, writer-director Michael Mann still has some tricks up his sleeve. I find Mann notoriously hit and miss since his dry, measured style doesn’t always pay off (Ali, for example). Mann begins by throwing out nearly all references to the original and starting from scratch. Our two heroes, Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) get a call from an old informant that something bad is going down. It’s an FBI sting operation gone wrong (due to an informant who only exists to jump start the plot), and the FBI decides to use Crockett and Tubbs to break the case. Of course, they get too deep undercover, and Crockett falls for the drug lord’s girlfriend, Isabella (Gong Li), and then in the end everyone has to shoot everyone else.
This is nothing you haven’t seen before, and in fact the movie tends to suffer a bit when dealing with our heroes getting in over their heads. You know they are because that’s how these plots go, but neither they nor the movie ever seems to worry too much about it. The characters are so gritty that they’re almost miserable, and one more set back is just another excuse for them to sigh and push on. Gone are the interesting characterizations of Mann previous film, Collateral. The plot feels almost like a (coincidence?) TV show stretched out to two hours. It seems too flimsy to support the entire running time, and slows quite a bit in the middle, particularly when Crockett is romancing Isabella. But never fear. When the guns finally come out in the last twenty minutes, you’ll forget how much time you spent wondering how long it was going to take for the guns to come out. We even get two particularly cheer-worthy bad guy deaths, both thankfully without snappy one liners.
Luckily, Mann’s style counts for a lot, and manages to make up for deficiencies in plot and character. Every shot looks fastidiously researched and expertly timed. A brief montage of a plane flight becomes almost epic, and night scenes feel like you’re actually standing with them under the streetlight. The movie is shot in HD video, and this only emphasizes the story’s grittiness. The only choice I didn’t like was an over-reliance on sludgy modern rock, which kept pulling me out of the movie and making me wish someone would turn off the top-40 radio.
Despite its plot and character shortcomings, Miami Vice succeeds almost in spite of itself. It manages to rise above the stigma of its TV show past in ways that shows like “Knight Rider” or “Riptide” probably could not. It’s a light action film, entertaining within its own limits and nothing more.
posted by Brandon at
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