MIAMI VICE

by Joe Barber on Jul.28, 2006, under Joe Barber's Movie Reviews

MIAMI VICE

In 1984, then-television producer Michael Mann helped to change the way television looked and sounded. His police drama, “Miami Vice,” featured two undercover detectives working out of that wildly wealthy and popular city who dressed and looked like expensive bad guys. The show utilized popular music and culture in ways no prime time police series, or prime time series in general-ever had. In addition to launching the career of actors Don Johnson and Phillip Michael Thomas, the show propelled Mann into a major career as a filmmaker whose hits include :Heat,” “The Insider,” and “Ali.”

Now Mann has returned to his roots with a brand new film version of “Miami Vice.” Starring Oscar winning actor Jamie Foxx and Collin Farrell as Tubbs and Crockett, the film, which opens this weekend, has style to spare. What it lacks, however, is a coherent plot that gives moviegoers something to sink their teeth into. There’s plenty of sizzle here, but not much steak.

As the film opens, the detectives are on the hunt for a white supremacist group that’s funding their activities by selling drugs. They’re distracted from that case when an informant they used to work with calls them in a panic. He’s been forced to reveal his connection to the Federal agents he’s working with to a major international ring. The DEA asks Crockett and Tubbs to go deep cover with them to track down the new gang and the source of the leak that cost the DEA agents and the informant their lives.

Mann, who also wrote this new film. has done a good job of updating the look and feel of “Vice” to a new generation. The “dangerous after dark” feel of the film’s cinematography and locations deliver some of the old charge a fan of the show would cherish. His terse, to the point dialog, spoken with conviction by Farrell and Foxx, does add an edge of anxiety to the action. But, unlike the pilot episode of the TV series, long acclaimed by critics as one of the best pilot shows ever done, this re-launch does little in the way of character development to make us invest any emotion in the heroes. While there are some moments of action that will get your palms a bit sweaty, the overall story leaves you wondering what all the fuss was about twenty years ago.

Missing the grit and work a day cop humor that gave the original “Miami Vice” a depth beyond the clothes and cars, the movie talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk.

MPAA RATING: R for profanity, nudity, sexual situations and violence.
JOE’S RATING: TWO AND A HALF STARS.