The film seemed more interested in the torrid romance between Crockett and Isabella (Gong Li), a drug cartel money manager, than in any policier elements there were more shower scenes than standoffs, more salsa dancing than shootouts. Mired in procedural details, the plot (much like the digital cinematography) sometimes felt murky.
#Series miami vice series
Nor was it a kitschy, colorful snarkfest like Starsky & Hutch (2004) or The Dukes of Hazzard (2005), two comedies that had helped fuel this interest in revamping old TV series for the big screen. It didn’t really look hip by either 2006 or 1986 standards.
#Series miami vice movie
Many assumed Miami Vice (the film) would reunite him with that aesthetic.īut the movie turned out to be nothing like the show. (The genesis of the series had been two words scribbled on a piece of paper: “MTV Cops.”) Mann had already made the visually prophetic Thief in 1981, well before Miami Vice (the show) came around, and he carried some of that sensibility into subsequent features like 1986’s Manhunter and 1995’s Heat. Although the series had been inspired by the operatically violent and downright Tolstoyesque Miami drug wars of the 1970s and ’80s, its carefully posed characters, pastel outfits, color-coordinated compositions, and drifty moods embodied a chill, escapist, very au courant New Age style, an alluring strain of the same commodified minimalism that graced Tower Records calendars, Yanni albums, and Vintage Contemporaries paperback covers. The show was also painterly and contemplative - at least, painterly and contemplative by mid-1980s Friday night primetime NBC standards.
The TV series it’s based on, which Mann executive produced in the 1980s, had become a pop culture touchstone thanks to its cool locations, its cool cars, its cool boats, and especially its cool music. Michael Mann’s 2006 Miami Vice film wasn’t supposed to be anything like this. If I could compare this to anything, it would be to a dream. Even Alonzo’s highway suicide happens in a mute flash, a fleeting blood smear quietly materializing beneath the semi before we cut away to the next scene. All throughout these frenetic opening passages, scenes start too late and end too early.
Don’t look to get your bearings just yet, however. Then, they watch helplessly as the devastated man steps in front of a tractor-trailer. “It’s Neptune’s lucky night”: Literally within seconds, Crockett and Tubbs have abandoned one case and are on the other, tearing down the highway (helicopters hovering, searchlights spinning), pulling Alonzo’s car aside and telling him, after checking with a SWAT team that’s been sent to his ruined house, that his wife has been murdered.
Suddenly, amid the chaos, Crockett and Tubbs are whisked away to a phone call from a distraught informant, Alonzo Stevens (John Hawkes), who is speeding and swerving down the highway in his Bentley and wants to say a desperate goodbye to our heroes, while a sting operation involving neo-Nazis and FBI agents that he snitched out violently unravels elsewhere. Before any credits roll, without any scene setting or throat clearing, we’re already a few bars into “Numb/Encore” in a sweaty, crowded Miami club, with Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) and their team about to pounce on a sex trafficker named Neptune (Isaach de Bankolé). Head to Vulture’s Twitter to catch his live commentary. This week’s selection comes from Vulture critic Bilge Ebiri, who will begin his screening of Miami Vice (which turns 15 this year!) on October 6 at 7 p.m. At regular but sometimes unpredictable intervals, Vulture selects a film to watch with our readers as part of our Wednesday Night Movie Club.
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