F orget about the pet alligator.
Forget about the loafers with no socks, and forget about the pink-and-aqua fashion scheme. The new big-screen “Miami Vice” is the least nostalgic, least self-referential version of a TV show ever made.
It’s also a pretty terrific movie, despite some problems. But so much of this film is so good, especially in a summer of juvenile entertainments, that I hesitate to point out the problems. I’d rather enjoy the smooth, cool ride.
“Miami Vice” is written and directed by Michael Mann, the man most responsible for the look and feel of the 1980s TV series. This new movie actually feels closer to Mann’s “Collateral” than the TV show.
The film gets off to an electrifying start, with a nightclub sequence that abruptly drops us into the world of vice cops Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx). Almost immediately, in a startling scene involving a snitch (John Hawkes) on a highway, they are jerked into a different story.
This drug-smuggling plot will provide the main through-line, and it must be admitted that it feels generic: a South American drug lord (Spanish actor Luis Tosar), his suspicious henchman (John Ortiz), and much undercover skullduggery for Crockett and Tubbs.
The film is being sold as a tale of undercover cops who get in “too deep,” another generic convention. Actually, the movie doesn’t spend much time with that. It lavishes much more attention on Sonny’s romance with a financier (Chinese superstar Gong Li) working with the illegal cartel. Somewhat less attention is paid to Tubbs and Miami vice partner Trudy (Naomie Harris, the voodoo lady in the new “Pirates of the Caribbean”).
Also surprisingly underplayed is the buddy-cop angle, which was the backbone of the great first season of the TV series. These two guys don’t seem to share anything except the same excellent tailor.
No, this is a film about muggy atmosphere and sudden, superbly executed action. The violence here is extreme and almost painful, and a climactic shootout isn’t tidy but chaotic and realistic.
But you can’t take your eyes off this movie, even when it’s bloody. Mann and his “Collateral” cinematographer Dion Beebe have once again used high-definition video to create a new kind of movie look: humid stormy skies at night, a bridge illuminated with fluorescence, a speedboat skating across the dark water. Almost the entire movie takes place at night, and much of it is set outside Miami (locations included Paraguay, Uruguay and the Dominican Republic).
Despite the lack of chemistry, Foxx is on his game. But he’s second fiddle to Colin Farrell, and that’s a problem – Farrell doesn’t bring much to the party, except an impressive semi-Fu Manchu mustache.
This is one of those films you can get high on if you’re not overly troubled by a listless plot or occasionally clunky dialogue. It’s operating in the zone of sensation, and Mann knows that turf well.
Jamie Foxx (left) and Colin Farrell star in “Miami Vice.”
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