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It’s too bad a lot of people are comparing the loud, grittier and sexier “Miami Vice to the cult TV series of the mid 80’s and early 90’s. Or rather, the series’ first season. Was everyone expecting pastels and Elvis the gator in this updated version? As far as I can tell, the new film with Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx is the essence of the TV series Miami Vice. Fast cars? Check. Fast boats? Got those. Threads? You bet. Sex? Guns? Rock and Roll? All done up for an R rating? What more could you possibly ask for?
Well, I could think of two things I could ask for: one is better partner chemistry between the two leads, the next, less grainy stylish shots. While my favorite filmmaker is Michael Mann, I suppose that is also my reason for disappointment. I expected a little more, although there was plenty of mileage in a rescue operation, a boat ride and a shootout, the film takes too many risks. Despite having been a fan of the show, both Foxx and Farrell don’t have the same level of style that Don Johnson or Phillip Micheal Thomas had. When the series started to focus on Crockett, the show suffered. Likewise, despite the deadly romance between Crockett and Isabella (Gong Li), Foxx’s Tubbs is all but forgotten for almost fifteen to twenty minutes. That’s a bad risk – and Foxx has top billing. But there’s a good risk Mann takes – he opens the film as if the audience has known the characters right from the start. There’s no need to introduce them, they introduce themselves.
While Tubbs is barely mentioned as being from New York City, one big change in the movie from the series is that Tubbs now has a big relationship with fellow officer Trudy (Naomie Harris) and that as a fan of the show, I was slightly happy. Whenever Trudy or Gina, the ladies of the Vice TV series showed up, they were most always on the job or getting done with the job – posing as hookers. Trudy’s role is expanded, but Gina (Elizabeth Rodriguez) has what could be the film’s best line to a bad guy: “I can put a 55-grain slug at 2,700 feet per second into your medulla oblongata and your brain will be so dead it won’t be able tell your finger to push the button.” Yes, this is a film where for the most part, the women steal Vice away from the guys. Big time steal. If you have to forget about the boys with the toys, so be it. Let Li, Rodriguez or Harris sweep you off the screen. That will do just fine.
Now, there is one element of this film which I was impressed with: the mere fact that the film isn’t crammed with car chases and shootouts, but much like Mann’s Heat almost ten years ago, personalities and characters pump up the tension until the choas of machine guns and mayhem come to a head and explode like a powder keg. More effective is the aftermath of such results, with a strong lean towards ambiguity. In fact, one plot point mentioned in the film early on regarding a leak in one of the agencies formerly involved in the drug investigation, continues as the film progresses, but is never revealed- a ghostly puppet master who can pop up or sit down at any given time. This works because Crockett and Tubb’s cover could be blown at any given time; the show of careful paranoia from the dealers, smugglers and killers is always present. It doesn’t help that some of them turn out to be jealous of Burnett/Crockett and Isabella. There is a great shot of the main villian from behind. His back to us, we cannot see his face, he is expressionless.
I never found the film boring, but I did think it was a bit slow in the takeoff. As a result, I also had a feeling that even after a little over two hours, the film would continue. I wanted a little more. Not because I ‘wanted’ more. But because I expected a little more.
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Miami Vice
Directed by Michael Mann
Starring Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris and John Oritz.
Darren Seeley (184 posts)Fave directors include David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Michael Mann, Anique Faqua, Walter Hill, John Carpenter, John Woo and James Cameron. An aspiring screenwriter, I wrote several spec scripts (platform: Final Draft) that I occasionally submit to contests, Inktip, and workshop through peer review sites like Triggerstreet and Zoetrope. I have attended The Austin Film Festival and Heart Of Screenwriters Conference in 2001 and 2002. CoP marks my third go around as an internet film reviewer of sorts. My previous film hub haunts were 'Dark Universe' and, most notably, 'The Projector Booth'. Location: MI,USA.
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I liked it! I thought Jonny Depp was a great Crockett and Orlando Bloom was a sexy love interest. I don’t think we’ve seen on-screen chemistry like this since Billy Bob and Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball! A solid 2 thumbs up and I’ll throw in 1 big toe… way up!
Comment by Henry — Mon July 31, 2006 @ 6:52Erm…. am I going crazy here? Damn Pirates fans are infiltrating other reviews.
Comment by suzero — Mon July 31, 2006 @ 8:54LOL!
Comment by paco — Mon July 31, 2006 @ 11:05Oddly, Henry didn’t mention Naomie Harris- who changed accents for “Vice”. Harris appears as one of Sparrow’s crew in all the ‘Pirates’ films; but folks may also remember her as being in “28 Days Later” as well.
Comment by Darren Seeley — Mon July 31, 2006 @ 13:37I went to see Miami Vice the other night, I wanted to do it without reading anything or hearing anything from anybody, and I managed to do that.
I’ll start out by saying Wow! Fantastic!
The opening sequences are the epitome of the Miami club scene, fantastic music as is always the case in Michael Mann’s movies. I couldn’t help moving with the beat.
Something you notice immediately about this movie is the manner in which its shot, lots of tight close frames that actually give something of a closed in feel, this works well in these opening sequences where people are packed into this club, immediately you get the sense of being in the crowd, a rather confusing mass of arms and bodies and faces. Somehow this is indicative of Miami. It’s a technique which sets up a pattern throughout much of the rest of the movie. It seems as if the steadicam is turned off much of the time, as if you were actually walking or moving your head in the scenes. Quite daring I think.
The opening action sequences are confusing from the audience’s perspective you’ve just stepped into Crockett and Tubbs’s life in the middle of some kind of operation. No set up whatsoever. This doesn’t much matter since you’re being given so much to look at, you hardly notice you don’t have any idea what’s going on initially.
Immediately we move to a speeding car flying underneath the yellow orange sodium lights which dominate the highways overpasses and flyovers of Miami. From there to a shot of the Miami skyline taken from the top of one of a downtown building, the sodium lights stretching to the horizon. Somehow this Miami is a more accurately portrayed than any I’ve seen in any movie to date. It’s only at this point do we get an idea of what’s happening in the storyline.
Spoiler alert. So read on if you dare.
We move to a shot of a drug deal gone bad, which is something of an understatement. Be warned the violence in this movie is brutal and vicious. The exchange of gunfire in this scene is the type of thing you might see in Iraq right now. 50 caliber sniper rifles opening up on a vehicle, and the frighteningly realistic effects of those projectiles on that vehicle and the people inside, shockingly depicted in painfully slow motion. From there we go to a roadside scene under the sodium lights again where we get to see something that only Florida State Troopers and traffic cops usually run across. The money shot is only a few seconds, but it is sickeningly realistic as well.
It’s obvious that this movie was shot during the summer, the moisture in the air distorting the lights into a kind of diffuse halo so familiar to anyone who’s lived here. In the summertime Miami is about as tropical as cities get in the US. This is in contrast to the night shots in Michael Mann’s last movie Collateral, where the lights are crystal clear in the dry air of LA.
We are only 10 minutes into the movie, and we’ve already seen more action than you would normally see in the first 30 minutes of your standard action flick. It’s a good thing you only get small doses because it’s very intense.
Although Miami is a virtually flat city with no geographic elevation changes, between the high-rise shots, the elevated highway shots, and a downtown rooftop parking garage shot, the cinematographer has given us multiple perspectives of the same area, providing a relieving counterpoint to the earlier tight shot technique, setting up another visual theme throughout the movie, multiple perspectives of all the locations and action. This method moves you from being an observer from a distance, to intimately involved in the moment.
At this point I think I began to realize that the dialogue was less important than the shots of people’s faces. They were telling the story while the dialogue just filled in some of the gaps.
Again we are immediately transported to the site of a bust, once again closing in the camera work to tight shots which create the feeling of confusion once again. You find yourself on the ground as if you were the perp being cuffed. At this point I heard the Haitian Creole phrase “ferme bouche” (shut your mouth) something one of my friends says to me often. It’s rather rude, the kind of thing that either makes someone smile, or makes them angry, depending on where it’s coming from. Nice bit of realism.
Next we are given a Florida morning shot from a condo on the beach, hazy and undefined, it’s hard to tell exactly where the clouds and sky end and the water begins.
Naomi Harris, the British actress from 28 Days Later plays Trudy in this movie. She’s hot and she can act. We see her in a shower scene with Jamie Foxx using the same tight shots once again. Nice to see people bodies depicted as they really are in these situations. The shots are intimate without being graphic or vulgar in any way. The bodies of the actors are not objectified just shown. Between the city night shots and these scenes you begin getting a sensation of heat that seems to build throughout the movie. Heat is a big part of the life down here, and it seems to affect everything, people’s sexuality not the least. A level of warmth is also reflected in the actors emotional behavior in this scene giving you an idea of their relationship.
Next we find ourselves in South America, an entirely different place, but the heat keeps building. Multiple images cross over each other and blend together transporting you along without anything being said. If you look here you’ll notice another continuing theme throughout the movie, shots of people’s hands moving through the shadows blurring and swinging out of frame drawing your eyes but reminding you that things are happening outside of the shot that you can’t see.
Next you see Ricardo on a Lear jet, and we are transported to Haiti. Stitched together power lines over narrow streets and old small buildings from the 40s and 50s, peeling paint and pastel colors with a kind of fluorescent Caribbean twist. Here we get to see Crockett and Tubbs do their undercover thing, revealing themselves to be just as crazy as the people they go after. Some of that famous attitude that these characters had in the old show is touched upon.
This isn’t a remake of Miami Vice, its Miami Vice with the volume turned all the way up to 2006. I think this was the show that Michael Mann wanted to make all along. Maybe we’re just now getting to see it.
In one of the first scenes, with Li Gong (Isabella) we see close-ups of people’s hands again, so close you can see the imperfections in her manicure. Looks and glances are saying things well beyond the surface dialogue, and none of it is obvious or overly contrived.
Once again we are off, this time on some of the most advanced civilian turboprop aircraft available today skating through the kind of rugged vertical greenery you’ll only find on mountainous Caribbean islands like Hispaniola, beautiful aviation footage.
The locations change so fast it’s hard to keep track, next we are in the Overtown part of Miami with another kind of aging architecture, the kind that’s disappearing all over South Florida except in those depressed areas where no one has an interest in rebuilding. From there to a high dollar modern home on the water in the old Florida style, manicured grounds contrasted with wild mangrove on an island nearby. Soon Crockett takes off with Isabella for Cuba. This reminded me of when my mother was young, and everyone who lived or came to Miami would always go to Cuba. As in the movie, with a fast boat on a calm day you could hit the northern coast of Cuba in an hour from Key West. If it weren’t for Castro, everyone would go there on the weekends still.
Again you can feel the heat, heat permeates this movie. And the sexuality which comes between the male and female characters seems to follow as a natural result of that heat. This is the Caribbean and the Florida that I know. The camera work which felt so closed in during the action shots effectively pulls you into these scenes between the men and women making you almost a part of the intimacy.
There is a second shower scene, this time with Crockett and Isabella, sunlight filtering in revealing them selectively. Dark hair matted across Li Gong’s wet skin glowing in the warm sun, so close you can almost feel her. The Digital filmmaking used in this movie seems to reveal a depth and quality of detail different from film. The texture of skin and the subtleties of sweat on a brow are somehow different and new in this film. Some of the shots even have grainy quality, but this distortion seems to add to the realism of those images somehow.
Late in the movie we get to see some of those familiar blue under bridges and elsewhere perhaps paying homage to what was so common to the Miami Vice TV show.
Michael Mann does violence the way no one else seems able to capture, all in your face. It’s rather unappealing much like real violence, just rather awful and final.
Much like the original show, Tubbs doesn’t have a lot of lines, but Jamie doesn’t seem to need them to make his presence felt. He’s always there to back up his partners, no-frills or hype or funny lines, just business. As the music is queued up at the culmination of almost every dramatic scene we are again given shots of hands, gripping the edge of a doorway, removing an explosive device, holding the phone, tapping a keyboard, limp on the ground after an explosion. It’s a subtle and effective dramatic device throughout the movie.
I’m not sure if this is an art film masquerading as entertainment or an action flick masquerading as an art film, but I am sure that Michael Mann has woven something together which is a work of art, and more entertaining than most movies that try much harder to entertain. Like good writers and storytellers always do, Mann gives just what is needed to tell the story, and discards the rest. This movie is all meat, no side dishes. In one showdown, Mann proves once again that he is the undisputed master of the firefight. The audio recording of the gunfire is nothing less than a masterwork. All in all a stupendous flick which proves that a great action flick can also be a well told story. It’s the kind of movie I’ll watch again and again soaking up all the visual imagery with delight.
If you appreciate real movies, quality entertainment and superior artistry in cinematography, do yourself a favor and go see it. You won’t be disappointed.
Comment by Aaron — Tue August 1, 2006 @ 17:40I predict many awards for this film, and Oscar nominations for best picture, best director and cinematography.
I wouldn’t go that far, Aaron. Mann has had most of his films shot this way, with the possible exceptions of “The Keep” and “Last Of The Mohicans”. But if you see “Thief”, “Manhunter”, “Insider” and “Heat”, you’ll notice, aside from the stylistic grain, the placement of closeups, shadows and objects, his work on ‘Vice’ is fairly signature.
For example, 95% of Mann’s films go for the psychology of film theory; several uses of metaphor storytelling, (like when there is an ocean view and it looks like a character is “drowning”) a strive for as much authinticity as much as possible, and a build up of events that could lead to a powder keg exploding (so to speak) or something ambigious yet realistic (such as one of the last scenes in ‘Vice’)
And while you put a disclaimer of spoliers, I feel that you have given away too much; therefore I’m going to draw attention to that announcement, and I have also edited out a small few major spoliers regarding the ending of the film. I know you enjoyed the film a lot more than I did, but many have not yet seen the film.
Comment by Darren Seeley — Wed August 2, 2006 @ 2:57Bit of a dissapointment, I am affraid. I agree that there was not enough chemistry between Crockett and Tubbs. Also, could Gong Li please be banned from doing an English spoken movie EVER AGAIN!!!! What the hell has happened to this very talented actress? She is bland, emotionless and unintelligable. She looks like a botoxed robot with a badly programmed voice module. What a waste.
Comment by Mariken — Wed August 9, 2006 @ 18:04Also, with a cast like this at his disposal, Mann can do better. I was hoping for more Heat or Insider, and a bit less of the testosterony shootout stuff he is presenting us with here.
Oh, and for the record: I missed Elvis.
Somewhat dissapointing.
I mentally whipped myself up for this film and felt somewhat let down by Mann. After the artwork that is Heat, which has a sophisticated, rather unpredictable plot, great actors etc. this felt like a budget film in some ways.
The grainy outdoors scenes felt very realistic and there should have been more of it, the dialogue was a bit stilted between the characters, but when Crokkett lets go a tirade at the FBI man and tells him where to go, realism returns. There wasn’t much dialogue, and as there are so many characters to meet and greet (pardon the pun), there needs to be a suitable development so that we actually like them a bit.
The plot was the big let-down, it was good, but became too disjointed by scenes interspersed between. I can only describe the plot as broken. Heat on the other hand is well structured, the plot flows, is unpredictable, we feel drawn along with it, and although the ending was somewhat drawn out, the plot succeeds totally.
I enjoyed the following scenes. The clandestine visit to Cuba where Crockett and Li’s character fall in love. A bit swift but otherwise convincing and somewhat touching. Li’s performance here is convincing, it gets a bit frivilous later on.
The dealers working for the FBI being whacked. The shots through the car looked very real and devastating. A bit of slo-mo never hurts.
The hostage rescue scene was well done, I enjoyed that a lot. Well shot in the same gritty, grainy manner, and Mann didn’t go short on the gore. Tubbs and Crokett are directly involved and not armchair quarterbacking it which makes the scene better.
Jamie Foxx’s acting was good, there wasn’t much connection developed between Crokett and Tubbs, remember that these men are supposed to be partner’s that spend most of their time together and some of that would presumably rub off on the audience. When he’s waiting for his wife to come around you really feel for him.
The final shootout left me pretty cold. This was intended to be the highlight of the film, but looked as if it was shot on a handycam. This was the obvious aim to add some sort of immediacy to the shots, but I can tell you now, shooting these things in gonzo just doesn’t work.
Have a look in Heat, characters are moving about in scenes, but the camera isn’t pointing at the street or sky and the lighting is fine to see what is going on. The same can’t be said for this scene. Some of the shots are taken just over the shoulder in the shoot-out in Heat and this achieves the same immediate, involved feel that Vice pretty much fails to. All in all a waste of SFX if not captured properly on film.
Anyway I could go on. It had the potential to be something really special, it only makes it some of the way. At best I’d give it 3 stars.
Comment by Mikey — Thu August 10, 2006 @ 17:18