Miami Vice
“Miami Vice” proves that even when the content is second-rate, Michael Mann is capable of breathtaking cinema. It’s his first original screenplay since his masterful “Heat,” and the story never quite comes together. At the end, you might wonder, well, who cares? That question rings especially true if you think the so-called war on drugs is a colossal failure. But if you appreciate pure moviemaking verve, “Miami Vice” is a bliss-out. Shooting almost exclusively at night, Mann creates a sinister but alluring Miami out of black and deep blue. As in “Collateral,” he works in both 35mm film and high-definition video, the latter allowing him to pick up heart-stopping details literally miles in the background while using only the available light. Even the weather cooperates, with distant flashes of lightning that make Mann’s vision truly electric.
Mann’s aesthetic rigor complements the movie’s themes. Undercover vice detectives Ricardo Tubbs and Sonny Crockett, played by Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell, inhabit a supercharged environment in which professional and personal lives are hopelessly intermingled. Tubbs happily cohabitates with a female detective, while Crockett rolls the dice and romances the companion of the drug dealer they’re pursuing. Each will face a reckoning that tests his commitment to the relationship and the job. The crisis becomes tactile particularly in Crockett’s case. Gong Li plays his would-be love, and in front of Mann’s camera she’s commanding yet vulnerable. She captures the essence of this new “Miami Vice”: gorgeous but tinged with stoic regret.
LISTEN: Miami Vice