- Let me admit up front that I'm an unabashed fan of the TV show Miami Vice. I own Jan Hammer's Escape from Television album, my closet contains a small number of bright neon T-shirts, and I've ordered a food item called the "Rico Tubbs Risotto" from an inexplicably short-lived restaurant that shared my enthusiasm for the show. In my opinion, Miami Vice was one of the only shows from the 1980's to demonstrate any serious ambitions concerning its cinematography, location filming, and set design, and the show's employment of pop music soundtracks was downright revolutionary. It was with this appreciation for the television show that I approached Michael Mann's feature film Miami Vice.
- From the moment its understated deep blue title appears onscreen, it is obvious that the film version of Miami Vice is not looking to reproduce the TV show's glitzy aesthetics and pop sensibilities. Sure, Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) are back, complete with their stern lieutenant (Barry Shabaka Henley) and supporting vice squad (Naomie Harris, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Domenick Lambardozzi, Justin Theroux), but don't let the names fool you. Whereas the TV show regularly careened between moments of levity and pathos, this movie is strictly business. Gone are the pet alligators, phony Jamaican accents, goofy surveillance schemes, and comic-relief informants. Thankfully, the interests in cinematography, location filming, and set design are still present.
- The plot description is exactly what you would expect from something called Miami Vice, namely that a dead informant (John Hawkes) and live FBI agent (Ciarán Hinds) convince a skilled detective unit to go undercover and target a set of connected Latino drug dealers (Luis Tosar, John Ortiz). Perhaps needless to say, one of the detectives falls for a businesswoman (Gong Li) who negotiates for the drug cartel, but it is not obvious that she can be trusted. Just as predictably, another of the detectives is captured and needs to be rescued. You may have noticed that I haven't provided proper names for the vast majority of these characters. That's because the film deals strictly in archetypes--call them by whatever names you'd like.
- With this film and Mann's later Blackhat, the director has essentially invented a completely new film category: the abstract procedural. Predictable events take place and familiar characters react, but the details are intentionally hard to pin down. One is reminded of the careers of Claude Monet or any of several avante-garde jazz musicians who specialized at making their subjects more interesting by keeping them slightly out of focus. In this case, the characters stand out only in contrast to the digitally filmed distant thunderstorms, dark oceans, diffuse city lights, and bullet-torn battlefields that serve as their backdrops. The result isn't as satisfying as one of Mann's several great films, nor as memorable as the revolutionary TV show, but it may be the most subtle and experimental remake of a TV show that I've ever enjoyed.
