Movie of the Week: Miami Vice

   

 

    Movie of the Week (7/7/13-7/13/13): Better late than never, eh? Well, I decided to pull a movie out that wasn't very popular with the critics of the general audience this week. In the 1980's there was this T.V. show called Miami Vice, which was very popular with everybody. But, then came along 2006 when one of the original show's creators, Michael Mann, decided to do an updated version of the classic show of the same name. Did Michael Mann do a good job on his new take on the show? Is it worth the watch? Well, let's find out about the 2006 Miami Vice.
    The movie revolves around two detectives, Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs, played by Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx respectively. They go undercover to help run a drug operation in the islands around Miami with the eventual task of taking down the drug lords. But, things take a nasty turn when one of their own is kidnapped as insurance along with the soon discovery by the bad guys that they are policemen. The story seems kind of generic, we have seen this story before in other action films, so there is nothing special about the story with this film.
    Michael Mann tried to write a good crime drama, with a lot of drama, in fact there is too much drama. The drama in it never really grabs you enough to pull you in, unlike another Michael Mann movie that does just the opposite, Heat. The dialogue is fine, it is just that we are given too much explanation about what is going on through words instead of through actions and at times the film gets boring to watch. He seemed to try too hard to make the perfect update of his show and it is easy to tell.
    That being said, we do get a couple well choreographed shootouts, although one is very short and takes place in a car, but they are very realistic looking and exciting to watch. It's a good thing they are exciting to watch because if they weren't, the movie would have been terrible, although Michael Mann is known for giving us good shootouts. What also helped the movie was how it looked. A lot of scenes take place at night and with Michael Mann's shooting style and Miami as his back drop, it really is a very beautiful film to look at, especially the night scenes. The film had good cinematography.
    Although we have good performances from the two leads, the film never really takes off like it should have. It is slowed down by a script that was just trying too hard to make a perfect remake of a show, there is too much stuff going on personally and professionally that it doesn't mix well. At times the film seems quite dull. What saved it from being terrible was the performances from Farrell and Foxx, the two good, and short, shootouts, and how it looks. In the end it is not a movie to call your friends over and watch. If you're a fan of the old show you probably won't like it, but if you're a fan of Michael Mann's style of filming, you might like it. It doesn't quite do the show justice and it's one of those that you might watch once and put it in you collection for a couple years until you think you want to watch it again just for the heck of it.
2.5/4 Stars