Miami Vice: The Movie Actually Captures the City"Miami Vice†was released July 28, 2006. The film’s domestic box office gross was $63,450,470.
 When the Miami Vice movie came out last year, a lot of people didn’t have a lot of nice things to say. Things like “Colin Farrell is a bad actor,†and “The show was much better†and “The movie was way too long.†And while it would be hard to argue against those points, I’m going to go ahead and say it right here: I liked Miami Vice the movie. And not because I’m some huge fan of everything Miami or anything Jamie Foxx does. It’s just that, unlike most films set here, this movie actually manages to portray Miami in a manner somewhere in the neighborhood of reality. Miami Vice is dark, gritty, ambiguous and violent. Very few scenes in the film are shot during the day, and each character is a grim portrayal of both sides of the law. The film is one of the first I’ve seen to take place in Miami that almost entirely avoids South Beach, showing Miami as a troubled city and not a vacation paradise. And, as most movies that take place here fail to do, this film accurately represents the overwhelming Hispanic population. That is, Hispanics in this film are not just the dishwashers and gardeners (as LA-dwelling directors and producers often assume they are) but are the police, the air traffic controllers, and the normal people walking down the street. MICHAEL MANN CAPTURES MIAMI  Anyone who was a fan of the show is likely a fan of director Michael Mann. His style is not for everyone. It is characterize\ed by short, indirect dialog, dark plotlines, and abrupt, unsatisfying endings. You have to really be paying attention to know what’s going on to understand one of his movies. And Miami Vice is no different. People who remember the old TV show remember the pastels and the colorful cars, but what they forget is that it was classic Mann; extremely dark and bordering on depressing. Mann trades the pastels and stucco for a humid nighttime where the streetlights show the water in the air and the towers of downtown shield the world from the insanity happening below. Crockett and Tubbs are just as dark and troubled as they were in the TV show, although Colin Farrell is a disturbingly awful actor who might make Don Johnson roll over is his career’s grave. DON JOHNSON WOULD HAVE DONE IT FOR FREE While Foxx pulls off the hard-nosed black cop very well, Farrell suffers form the “Kevin Costner in Robin Hood†disease where his accent changes from scene to scene. His character is supposed to be from Georgia, and occasionally a slight southern drawl comes through. But sometimes he’s plain American, sometimes a hint of Irish, and sometimes unintelligible garble. While the 70s porn star mustache and long hair make him distinguishable, they still look a bit out of place. Casting may have been this movie’s fatal flaw. A PLOT AS COMPLICATED AS YOUR TYPICAL DRUG DEAL  The plotline is as complicated and indirect as any on the TV show, it just lasts for 140 minutes instead of 60. It begins with an attempt at a prostitution bust at Mansion (which is actually the Conrad in Brickell. While this movie did capture the character of Miami pretty well, it still had more than a few technical mistakes) that gets interrupted by a drug deal gone bad. Sonny and Rico are recruited by the FBI to go undercover, posing as transporters, to infiltrate an international drug operation. Or, basically, the plot of every episode of Miami Vice ever.  Along the way, Sonny falls for the female head of the Colombian end of the operation, a stunning Cubnaese named Isabella, played by Gong Li. After seeing Cocaine Cowboys, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Griselda Blanco and Mickey Munday (although Farrell and Li are considerably better looking) and wonder if they ever took passionate weekends away in Cuba. I’m going to guess not, but the romantic interludes in the film serve as a nice “what might have been.†Deals go bad, cops get blown up, and eventually the film ends with the classic Miami Vice ending of Sonny having to watch another woman he cared about leave his life because of the job he does. It is in very much that old-western style of “I must be moving on now. Don’t think about me anymore,†that went out with the genre. Mann seems to like bringing it back. Tubbs is also on the verge of losing a woman he cares about, except his is fellow vice cop Trudy who is abducted by a gang of skinheads and blown up by a ruthless drug middleman. The film ends ambiguously, as most of the episodes did, and leaves you wondering what happened to many of the important people you’d come to follow. But this is the genius of Michael Mann: Nothing is obvious, nothing is on the surface, you must dig deeper and think critically to get what he does. This may be why many people thought the movie was worse than it was. IF THE WORST MISTAKE YOU MAKE IS CONFUSING YOUR BRIDGES, YOU’RE DOING OK  As I said before, the film had its glaring physical inaccuracies. The final shootout is supposed to happen under the 27th Ave. bridge, but as anyone who lived on Brickell in the summer of 2005 knows, it was shot right near Miami Ave. This was when we would perpetually get fliers in our mailboxes saying “Due to the filming of Miami Vice you may hear some gunshots late at night. Do not be alarmed.†I’m sure when they filmed the TV show in the 80s they didn’t circulate the same fliers. Mostly because they couldn’t guarantee that their bullets were the only ones in the air.  They also seem to drive everywhere via the stretch of I-95 from the Macarthur Causeway to the end at US-1. Again, I remember them shutting this stretch down every night for a large part of the summer, but anyone in Miami knows full well that to get to the port you do not go south on 95 from downtown. But as far as Miami errors go, this movie does a better job than any work of fiction I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure why so many people dogged Miami Vice the movie. Maybe they were expecting it to be exactly like the TV show, and were disappointed when they found it to not be what they had remembered. Or maybe it’s because time has led us to think of the old TV show as light and fun because of the colors and the wardrobe. Maybe people forgot that Michael Mann left his footprint on that show just as much as he did on the film, making it dark and complicated. And maybe people just don’t like that anymore. But if you are from Miami, or at least live here, this move stays truer to the city than most Hollywood offerings, and that alone is reason enough to overlook Collin Farrell.
You Deserve More Than an Ordinary Vacation.
Travel with Miami Beach 411 Today!
The Miami Beach 411 Travel Store is Open 24/7.
8 Comments on"Miami Vice: The Movie Actually Captures the City"
|
Like what you see? Let's talk about how
we can help your vacation --> Contact Us |
|
Like what you see? Let's talk about
how we can help your vacation
--> Contact Us
how we can help your vacation
--> Contact Us
Scott says:
I actually loved this film. One of the things that I so enjoyed about it was that the original show was always about setting a mood and a tone and this film delivered that as well. Thankfully, with a modern edginess rather than trying to capture that 80s feel.
Great review, Matt.
Posted on 01/26/2008 at 9:47 PM