09/27/06 Miami Vice

Miami Vice (2006), directed by Michael Mann

watched w/ Leslie (partially), Joel & Ben L.; theater (Blue Ridge Cinema, Raleigh, NC)

Gone are the flashy dress suits of pastels, white and silver...but remaining are the flashy sports cars that detectives like to drive (real incognito if you ask me). Gone are the leading men/musical talents of Philip Michael Thomas and Don Johnson...but replacing them are the leading men/musical talents/sex-tape scandalizers Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell respectively. Gone are the innocent times of prime-time television action/drama...and here usher in the violent tendencies of big-time blockbuster movies. I think it was probably a collective disbelief from most when the idea was announced to the world that the TV-show "Miami Vice" was going to be remade by known gritty filmmaker Michael Mann (best known for turns with "Heat," "The Insider," "Ali," and most recently "Collateral" with Foxx). Teaming up again with the new star-power of Foxx, and the Hollywood bad-boy Farrell...the respectable director had Rico Tubbs and Sonny Crockett back from hiatus to do some damage. Yes, that's where the great ideas basically stopped. What could have been a really cool action film, and truly a departure from presentation than it's original television predecessor...fell flat on its grainy camera lens face. The plot has the dynamic duo being asked to take part in an undercover sting operation of epic proportions. When there is a security breach in the agency's task force, the FBI taps Crockett & Tubbs to infiltrate a drug ring using their unorthodox style of law enforcement. Posing as outlaw smugglers themselves, the duo begin to unravel a huge arms & drug trafficking ring at their risk of their own lives. Emotions heat up when Crockett falls for the one woman he shouldn't...the beautifully deadly wife (Gong Li) of the biggest drug lord of them all. Tubbs tries to talk some sense into his buddy, but will the operation cost them everything?! Oh boy, I hope not! The action can be intense at times and fairly graphic (considering the 80's pop-culture approach from the old TV-series), but the acting is dumb and drug out. The grainy footage of Mann's shooting style (a la "Collateral") does not play well here with the characterizations of the players not worth the intensity of the filming. It's sad really, and totally laughable. Foxx is a good actor too, but he seems to be stuck in that post-Oscar winning funk that many fall into. Also, you can't take Farrell's lousy American-ized accent seriously, nor his so-called bad-boy antics any further than perhaps punching a paparazzo rather than taking down a Miami drug kingpin with an uzi. Yeah, but those pastel suits are still one of my all-time favorite Halloween costume ideas. A remake of someone making the old outfits of Crockett & Tubbs and wearing them for Halloween would have made for a better movie than this modern take on their exploits. We left the theater (some of us sooner than others...waiting in the car until it let out)laughing and shaking our heads...where have you gone Don Johnson?

2 out of 5 stars