Miami Vice (2006)
Directed by Michael Mann
A case involving drug lords and murder in South Florida takes a personal turn for undercover detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. Unorthodox Crockett gets involved romantically with the Chinese-Cuban wife of a trafficker of arms and drugs, while Tubbs deals with an assault on those he loves.
30 connections found
View:
30 films that influenced Miami Vice
What critics say influenced Miami Vice
A final comment for film buffs: I don't want to reveal the ending, but let's just say that it is an interesting commentary on changing values in well-made American crime movies in the past 65 years to compare what happens between Colin Farrell and Gong Li at the end of "Miami Vice" with how existential hero Humphrey Bogart treats Mary Astor at the end of "The Maltese Falcon."
From "Thief" and "Manhunter" to TV's "Miami Vice" and "Crime Story," Mann always gets a special look to his thrillers, a drop-dead veneer, a mechanical gleam.
Writer-director Michael Mann, the creator of "Miami Vice" and director of "Manhunter" and "The Last of the Mohicans," is a masterly image-maker.
You know you will get high style and hard-bitten romanticism from the man who made "Thief" and "The Last of the Mohicans," and TV's "Miami Vice" and "Crime Stow."
(Adamson, who died in 2008, co-created the series “Crime Story” and wrote for “Miami Vice,” which Mann produced and directed.)
The former executive producer and sometime director of TV's "Miami Vice"as well as creator of such films as "Manhunter" and "The Last of the Mohicans"Mann makes full use of the filmmaker's arsenal, seducing his audience with the contrast between the hot sensuality of his editing rhythms and the chilly spareness of his compositions.
An intense armored car bust, a high-tech bank heist and a series of expertly choreographed face-offs combine to give "Heat" that stylish Michael Mann look ("Miami Vice," "Last of the Mohicans").
At its best, the picture is like Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye : a story of a world torn apart and reordered under the terms described by the animal logic of pissing contests.
(Don't even ask why Miami vice cops are called in on this!) Once they infiltrate the mob, they discover that the head of the operation (Jon Ortiz, Take the Lead) is only a middleman, and the real brains behind it all are Arcangel de Jesus Montoya (Spanish actor Luis Tosar) and his mistress, Isabella (Gong Li, Memoirs of a Geisha).
The great Chinese star hasn't seemed comfortable in Hollywood fare ("Memoirs of a Geisha"), but Mann locates the lusty vulnerability under her snarl.
Tubbs is given virtually no character-building elements other than his relationship with Trudy Joplin (Naomie Harris), a police intelligence agent; Crockett is meant to be given much more chance to grow and be interesting in his developing infatuation with Isabella (the film's nod to the Mannian theme of men betraying their code of conduct), but unfortunately both Farrell and Li drop the ball on that storyline with fierce abandon: Li because she has clearly learned all of her dialogue phonetically (in the previous year's Memoirs of a Geisha , she was even more stilted and awkward), and Farrell because he... is Colin Farrell, and simply not given to all that many good performances.
With sheer bravado and the approval of Isabella (Gong Li, "Memoirs of a Geisha"), the right hand of the real power behind the throne, Arcángel de Jesús Montoya (Luis Tosar, "Mondays in the Sun," "Take My Eyes"), Crockett and Tubbs get into the drug transportation business.
For westerners who may be laying eyes on Li for the first time, as well as for those familiar with her work in major Chinese productions from 1987 ("Red Sorghum") to 2005 ( "Memoirs Of a Geisha" ) a great cinema treat is in store.
This is Mann’s second movie in a row with cinematographer Dion Beebe — he won the Oscar for dazzling, cinema-of-quality 35mm cinematography on Memoirs of a Geisha — who’s breaking the early rules of digital cinematography by exploring the breaks these new cameras make from film, rather than the ways they’re similar.
Advertisement
They keep trying to act the scenes, paralyzed into blank male-model visages by how little the script is furnishing them, while the surrounding movie makes clear that it isn't any more interested in them than Barry Lyndon was in Ryan O'Neal.
For what it's worth, the many interstitial scenes of Mav riding his motorcycle have that weird eighties neon patina coined by Michael Mann's work on "Miami Vice"--and it's this ineffable quality that dates the thing more quickly than either the chart-topping soundtrack or Kelly McGillis' giant head's giant hairdo.
With sheer bravado and the approval of Isabella (Gong Li, "Memoirs of a Geisha"), the right hand of the real power behind the throne, Arcángel de Jesús Montoya (Luis Tosar, "Mondays in the Sun," "Take My Eyes"), Crockett and Tubbs get into the drug transportation business.
With sheer bravado and the approval of Isabella (Gong Li, "Memoirs of a Geisha"), the right hand of the real power behind the throne, Arcángel de Jesús Montoya (Luis Tosar, "Mondays in the Sun," "Take My Eyes"), Crockett and Tubbs get into the drug transportation business.
Advertisement
Mann captured the essence of Chicago in Thief, and Miami was more a developed character than Crocket and Tubbs ever were on his television hit, Miami Vice.
Even so, Mann--who's also made "Thief" and TV's "Miami Vice"--is definitely one of the premier crime moviemakers around, a worthy noir heir and a hell of a guy with a chase or a gunfight.
If this sounds not so much dicey as vicey -- that is, "Miami Vicey" -- it should; the director, Mann, brought this form of jazz cool to crime stories many years ago on "Miami Vice" and other television work.
As ever, it’s worth noting that plenty enough movies have managed to be great without making a bit of sense (The Big Sleep?), and anyhow, anyone who can be bothered to fret about plot when something as delectable as this is unspooling in front of them just shouldn’t be trusted.