Movie Review: Miami Vice

By Maura Reilly Jul 27, 2006, 3:36 GMT

The cocaine cowboys of the \'80s are gone, but Miami\'s Casablanca allure, the undercover cops and the attitudes of Michael Mann\'s culturally influential television series have been enhanced by time in the feature film version of "Miami Vice".Ricardo Tubbs (Academy Award® winner Jamie Foxx of Ray, Jarhead) is urbane and dead smart. He lives with Bronx-born intel analyst Trudy, played by British actress Naomie Harris ("28 Days Later," upcoming "Pirates ...more

Director Michael Mann has returned to his old stomping grounds of South Florida to resurrect old friends from the 80’s, giving them cooler cars and bigger guns.

Miami Vice starts as if mid-episode from the TV show with Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) in the middle of a prostitution sting operation.

A frantic phone call from a former informant launches them into an investigation of drug smugglers, the Aryan Brotherhood, and murdered Federal agents. Crockett becomes emotionally involved with a drug Cartel’s financial advisor (Chinese actress Gong Li).

When Tubbs’s girl and fellow officer Trudy Joplin (Naomie Harris) is held hostage it all comes to a head in an explosive showdown.

A lot of this movie is just surface. Immediately Tubbs is understood to be the nurturing one, ready to help a friend in need, devoted to his girlfriend.

Crockett is the flirt. There’s trouble always brewing just below the surface of cool bravado.  

Once those characteristics are assigned the two never really develop beyond them. With a director like Mann you expect more in-depth character studies. Given the complexity of undercover work, you would assume you’ve got much to delve into as in other films like Donnie Brasco (1997) or Rush (1991).

But like the fast boats used to run drugs into Miami, the story just skims along never breaking the glassy, still water.

It seems the power in this film is in the performances of the women. Naomie Harris and Elizabeth Rodriguez portray Trudy and Gina with more guts and intelligence than the characters from the TV show.

Their value to the team is readily evident.

Gong Li plays the flint cold business woman really well.  However it’s the glimpses at the unguarded woman that are truly compelling to watch. The joy that registers across her face as well as the bitter betrayal makes the convenient love triangle storyline plausible.

Rounding out the Vice team are the ever cool Justin Theroux as Zito and Domenick Lombardozzi (seen most recently on “Entourage”) as Switeck.

Rumor has it Edward James Olmos was offered the opportunity to reprise his role of Castillo for the film but respectfully declined. This time Barry Shabaka Henley is the no-nonsense Lieutenant.

Classing up the joint a bit is Ciarán Hinds as the FBI Agent who enlists the help of Crockett and Tubbs when his own agency is compromised. And would someone please give Tony Curran an honest-to-goodness role instead of these bit parts as the muscle for the bad guys or a half-bat creature?

Use of handheld digital camera footage interspersed into the film give it an intimate, immediate vibe.  That is in contradiction with the fact that pacing is not immediate. 

What was a 2 hour film could have been pared down to a slick hour episode for TV.  The film features music quite a bit.  Audioslave and Moby provide a few songs to the soundtrack.  Coupled with long shots of sideway glances or contemplative expressions the music video feel continues as with the show. 

Miami Vice isn’t a bad film.  There was potential here: potential to really explore the complex double life of undercover agents, potential to invigorate perhaps reinvent a tired genre, potential to revisit some favorite characters and add some new layers to them.

What is there is a slick looking film with little real substance.

I guess we’ll have to wait until next week’s episode to see what happens next.

Opens wide July 28th. MPAA rated "R" for strong violence, language and some sexual content.