MovieMantz Reviews: ‘Miami Vice’

After directing exceptionally sophisticated and highly entertaining adult dramas like 1992’s ?The Last of the Mohicans,? 1995’s masterpiece ?Heat? and 1999’s Best Picture-nominee ?The Insider,? Michael Mann comes full circle for the feature film based on the seminal TV series that he executive produced back in the 80’s, ?Miami Vice.? But given how little the film has in common with that groundbreaking pop cultural phenomenon, one has to wonder why he even bothered calling it ?Miami Vice? in the first place.

That’s because Mann’s dark and gritty big screen update is not only devoid of the slick, stylish, MTV-inspired visuals that made the show so appealing, but it’s also sorely lacking in excitement, originality and, quite frankly, a story that’s even remotely compelling. Fans clamoring for a glimpse of the magic that defined the show that ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989 will be sorely disappointed, but even more casual moviegoers simply looking for an engaging summer crime thriller will be bored by a derivative storyline that reeks of ?been there, done that.?

Hollywood bad boy Colin Farrell and Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx play Miami vice cops James ?Sonny? Crockett and Ricardo ?Rico? Tubbs, who go undercover to expose a group of ruthless drug traffickers. But their investigation soon turns dangerous when they get in over their heads, forgetting which side of the law they’re on — especially Crockett, who falls for the cartel’s chief financial planner, a Chinese-Cuban beauty named Isabella (Gong Li). With time running out, Crockett and Tubbs fight to make the streets of Miami safe again, but more importantly, they must risk their lives in an effort to watch each other’s backs.

For a shoot that was plagued with problems ranging from deadly hurricanes to manic gunfire and a reported clash of egos, ?Miami Vice? feels surprisingly generic. The story has more or less been told before, if not on Mann’s TV series, than certainly on a more ambitious level in films like 2000’s ?Traffic.? At least Mann’s use of high-definition video cameras — which added to the dreamlike ambience of nocturnal Los Angeles in Mann’s 2004 thriller ?Collateral? — gives the film a hazy look that deepens the gritty atmosphere of modern day Miami.

But where Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx should have been well cast as Crockett and Tubbs, their performances are so brooding and ponderous that they never project enough buddy-cop chemistry to make the film register on a more emotional level. Of course they each get their own love stories, but Foxx’s relationship with ?Pirates of the Caribbean? star Naomie Harris (who plays his intel-analyst girlfriend) is more believable than Farrell’s courtship of the sometimes hard-to-understand Gong Li. But perhaps the film’s most dynamic performance belongs to John Ortiz, who plays the cartel middleman whose instincts about Crockett and Tubbs are proven true with devastating results.

?Miami Vice? is loaded with stilted dialogue until about 90 minutes in, when the first gunshot is fired in an effort to free a captive hostage. That’s when the film finally kicks into high gear, building to an explosive shoot-out that recalls the excellent bank heist scene from ?Heat.? But by then, it’s too late to redeem ?Miami Vice,? which ends up being Michael Mann’s weakest film yet. So while he may have come full circle on some levels, it appears that he didn’t come full enough on others.