I'm pretty sure that I've never seen a full episode of the television series Miami Vice. I know I've walked through the room when my roommate has been watching it though, so I have some limited knowledge of what it entails.
Colorful shirts.
Cocaine.
A black actor with three first names.
Cocaine.
Colorful shirts.
Cocaine.
It was a pretty popular show when it hit the small screen in 1984, and for good reason. The "buddy cop" set-up was at its peak, cocaine was an enormous part of pop-culture, and Murder, She Wrote, The A-Team, and Knots Landing were three of the top ten shows in America. But in 1989, after scoring lower with viewers than Anything But Love, Unsolved Mysteries, and (I'm not joking here) ALF - it was time to go. Twenty years later, executive producer turned acclaimed film director Michael Mann, gives us a much newer, much darker, and much different film version of a Sonny and Rico escapade deep behind enemy lines.
As a film, Miami Vice stands on its own. How well it stands is a point for debate, but there is no question that Mann deliberately stayed away from any sort of direct deposit of the old 80s product onto the screen. Hawaiian shirts and 1984 style police issue weapons would have looked campy and ridiculous. Instead we get modern clothes, vehicles, and guns (sounding and looking perhaps as realistic as weapons ever have in an action film).
Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx do a fine job in this movie, but they aren't given a whole lot of work. Most of their lines are meant to move the plot along, or convey to the audience for the 7,000th time just how seriously they take their work and partnership.
"I'm with you 100 percent."
In a movie like this, I don't really need deep and emotional dialogue. Badasses talk and operate like badasses - they don't suddenly let down their guard in the middle of a tough jam to reveal that their father was killed in the line of duty and in-case-you-didn't-know that's why they always wanted to be a cop. You're not ever going to get pulled over for speeding and then hear a monologue about how the constant grind and drain of being an officer of the law has destroyed someone's marriage or relationship with his children.
If it doesn't happen in real life, it doesn't need to happen in the movie.
What does happen quite often in real life however, is a multi-tiered drug organization shipping copious amounts of cocaine up the Miami river in "Go-Fast" boats while their business manager (a semi-attractive Asian woman who can't speak coherent English to save her life) is having unprotected sex with the undercover police officer in the guise of a trafficker.
And yes, that's how you spell "trafficker". I don't make the rules.
Would it have hurt Michael Mann and his casting department to find a somewhat sexier woman who at least spoke the language of this country? Didn't she have to read lines in her audition? Who else was trying out for the part? Helen Keller? I honestly could not understand her in half of the scenes, and it seriously detracted from my enjoyment of the film.
A few other questions:
Did we really need the Jamie Foxx shower scene?
Why is the KKK buying drugs?
What is Rico doing while Sonny is off for his romantic weekend in Cuba?
How did I make it through an entire 2+ hour movie about coke without seeing a single person bang out a single line?
My few qualms aside, this was a good film. It wasn't Collateral and it certainly wasn't Heat, but for a summer action movie, it was far above average. In fact, it was probably a hotter chick, a few boob shots, and one drug-dealer-who obviously-used-too-much-of-his-own-product-and-has-passed-the-point-of-no-return away from being an "A" or "A-" film. I would give it a B+, but that damn Asian bitch needs to go to night school and learn how to communicate.
The Verdict: B