Miami Vice

July 29, 2006

Rated: R Runtime: 135 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Miami Vice is yet another Hollywood effort to use a popular TV title to make a theatrical release with a built in audience. The problem is whenever they do this, the director and producer are faced with three basic choices. One is try to use the original cast and pick up the story some years later. This works ok for TV reunions, but not for a major theatrical release as the original crew has either aged or died. Second option is to go with campy nostalgia ala Charlies Angels, Starsky and Hutch, et al. The third option is use the title, character names and basic premise but make an entirely new movie ala Mission Impossible. This is the direction Michael Mann went with Miami Vice.

Miami Vice So here’s the deal. Although Michael Mann is the person behind the TV series as well as the movie, this is a totally different Vice. Don’t expect pastel colored sets that look like a 55 gallon drum of sherbert blew up in the middle of them. You also shouldn’t expect Don Johnson and his linen suits, Elvis the alligator or a Jan Hammer soundtrack. The only real nod to the old series is Crockett still drives a Ferrari. The ‘rosa is gone, he now has a very nice F430.

In lieu of 80’s nostalgia, what you get is Colin Ferrell as Sonny Crockett and Jamie Foxx as Rico Tubbs. They’re still vice cops in Miami. In this episode, err movie, they find themselves going deep undercover for the Feds to try to help bust a drug cartel that is running narcotics and other contraband into the U.S. by way of Miami. This really does feel like we tuned into an episode of a TV series. A series that is a lot like Miami Vice, but not quite Vice.

Part of the problem here is we already supposedly know the characters, so there’s little to no character development. Unfortunately, Foxx and Ferrell do their own versions of Tubbs and Crockett. Only Barry Shabaka Henley, playing Castillo, seems to try to really play the character the way we remembered him on the TV series.

Mann took a huge risk by removing all of the things Miami Vice has become known for and that the fans no doubt expect. With that gone, the movie has to stand on it’s own merits. The original Vice was cutting edge TV, but that was 20 years ago. Now, there are shows like The Shield which make Michael Mann’s original creation seem pretty tame. And that’s a problem here. To gain a whole new audience for Miami Vice, the intensity needed to be raised several levels. Instead we received something that felt like an episode of an 80’s cop show.

If we viewed this movie without the Miami Vice title snd without the familiar character names, we would have liked some of the cool visuals, breasts and cars, but would’ve otherwise found it uninspired. And that’s how we’re going to score this one. As such, we’ll give it 3 stars, barely.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Posted by Billy Bob | Filed Under 3 Stars, Action, Ciaran Hinds, Colin Ferrell, Drama, Gong Li, Jamie Foxx, Naomie Harris, R, Theatrical