Miami Vice (2006)

Michael Mann presents the city of Miami as attractive, engaging, alluring, sensual and also dangerousÂ…

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 a SWAT team surveilling you, and people are not in contact, you really are out on the edgeÂ…

Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) have to act, talk and walk like bad guys… They have to convince a mid-level trafficker, the Colombian José Yero (John Ortiz) that they are not cops… So they have to adapt themselves and change themselves to play the role they're trying to play… It's all the impulses in their personality with the volume turned up and the inhibitions turned off…

"Miami Vice" is not about one commodity, cocaine, and one geographical location, ColumbiaÂ… It's about globalized forms of traffickingÂ… Los Angeles to Port of Prince, to Guajira Peninsula, to Havana and, naturally, to MiamiÂ… Crockett and Tubbs had to deal with major narcotics traffickers that act as brilliant businessmen, at the upper echelons of command and control, sitting in luxurious houses, eating the best foods, driving the best carsÂ…

Mann has, wisely, taken the format of the show presenting two cops confronting wealth and power after the death of one informant and the killing of his whole familyÂ…

As police drama go, "Miami Vice" does exciting things when Yero jacked one of the two Miami cops' peopleÂ… The film is impeccable, especially in the last 30 minutes, when the police decided not to initiate until they've got Yero's shooters in their sightsÂ…

Fmovies: 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.

If you have seen Collateral by the same director, you have already seen a film that is almost identical in stylistic approach to Miami Vice. In fact several scenes are very similar indeed. As well as the frequent use of the vocal talents of Chris Cornell from Audioslave on the sound track.

The film is a "re-imagining", if you will, of the original TV series of which Mann was an Exec Producer. It is a Brooding and dark film that has no fear of the fantasy of giving two policemen a Lear Jet, a Ferrari, a speed boat, a Yaught and so on.

It is this marriage of action and toys with a dark and sometime incomprehensible plot that somehow works. Even at times it is difficult to understand what the characters are saying to each other.

All this aside this film is very good. The acting by Farrell and Foxx is first rate and some of the opening scenes are eye candy of the highest order. The closing gun fight is also worth seeing. If you think too hard about this movie you will see its flaws. But you won't care, and love it anyway. A unique trait that can perhaps be applied to the vagueness of the plot.

Miami Vice fmovies. From director Michael Mann and based on the 1980s television series comes this flashy, but overlong and unfocused Miami action flick about Vice detectives Sonny Crockett (Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Foxx) who must go deep undercover and throw their personal lives into disarray in order to stop an international drug trafficking scheme. Pulls you in with its stylish direction and flamboyant visuals, but the two leads have poor chemistry, character development is almost nonexistent, and the film drags on from one convoluted plot twist to the next. Action scenes provide a spark every once in a while, but overall the film is frustrating and never provides one single reason to care about any of its characters! A disappointment considering the cast and crew involved. **

The first thing you need to know when you see Miami Vice, is that it's hardly anything like the trailers. While the insanely cool trailer makes this out to be a big, loud, mindless, shoot em' up action movie filled with car chases, explosions, and damsels in distress, the movie is actually anything but. They had to advertise the movie this way if they wanted to make money, but the fact is, if you go into this expecting what it was advertised as, you will be bored to tears, and most certainly hate the movie. I myself found the movie unbearably boring the first time I watched it. However, after a second viewing that I forced upon myself in my unwilling to be disappointed by such a cool looking film, I felt completely different about it. I was thoroughly entertained. Miami Vice is a gritty, intense, and often brutal, no- nonsense suspense drama that rewards patience and attention.

The plot is fairly simple, but the realistic way it's executed makes it feel complicated. It follows Miami cops Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell), and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx), who are given a most difficult assignment. They are assigned to go undercover and infiltrate a major drug cartel, led by the ruthless Jose Yero, and find out who killed two undercover federal agents. Crockett and Tubbs, under fabricated identities, enter a world where their badges mean nothing, danger and violence is waiting around every corner, and if they show any signs of their real intentions, they will be killed on sight. It doesn't exactly help that Crockett falls in love with one of the cartel's most important members (Gong Li).

Miami Vice is a very intense film, which maintains a consistent tone of imminent danger. Although Crockett and Tubbs (or any characters in it for that matter) are never really developed, we fear for their lives when things get too far beyond their control. The knowledge of what would happen to them if their identities were to be uncovered keeps us on the edge of our seat from the moment they begin their assignment. Employing non-stop action, which many people complain about the lack of, wouldn't make sense in this movie, because it's about characters trying to avoid anything that could set it off. There is action in the film, and whenever it occurs, it is not glamorous, or stylish. It is gritty, and often disturbingly brutal. The characters aren't in control of it, they are just as confused and terrified as any normal person would be if they were caught in a chaotic shootout.

The action scenes, as gritty as they are, are still executed in a good enough way that they get your adrenaline flowing, and the climactic shootout includes one of the single best bad guy kills I've ever seen. The most suspenseful moment in the film comes from a hostage situation/standoff in a trailer park, where the tension becomes nearly unbearable. The scene culminates in one of the most bad-ass "cop movie" moments that I've seen in a while.

The cinematography and music in the film are excellent, and any fan of cinema has to appreciate it. There is little, if any artificial lighting in the film. There are beautiful shots of Miami, lit only by the lights of the city itself, and breathtaking scenes of planes in the air, soaring through the clouds. There are times when the movie almost comes to a complete halt, just to bask in the beauty of the imagery, and while many people find these scenes boring and unnecessary, I found them to be hypnotic, and I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. Personal

While this is called 'Miami Vice' and has the same names as the characters from the TV show, thats where the similarities end. This is a no nonsense undercover cop thriller. There are no 'buddy cops', wisecracks, car chases, or O.T.T action, so the casual movie goer is going to be a little bemused by what they are seeing. But fans of Michael Mann's work will be in seventh heaven, because this has all the director's trademarks.

There's some stunning camera-work (A lot of it digital), and some beautifully rendered sequences in this and some explosive action (But don't go expecting 'Lethal weapon' style action.) The trailer park stand off with the white supremacists was my favourite scene and an abject lesson in how to put suspense on screen.

Performances are all very good, right down to the smaller parts and the plot demands attention. I found the films running time flew by. Its so refreshing to see a cop thriller for adults, with no silliness and one that doesn't insult the audiences intelligence.

Best film so far this year.