#Miami vice movie movie
Miami Vice is an action movie that takes us to foreign landscapes, beyond Miami, and often into the uncharted and ill-defined borders of the sea itself. Nonetheless, the element of risk and fear is there. The minimal conversation within the narrative makes it difficult to understand some of the plot’s details, which includes a forbidden (and rather fascinating) love affair between Crockett and the financial director of the trafficking gang, Isabella (Gong Li). The story embroils Tubbs and Crockett into an undercover scheme to oust a murderous drug trafficking organization. In Mann’s picture, every constituent part of Miami, right down to the infinite points of light that subtly flicker across the night sky, are characters of their own. Mann can grab snapshots of movement within the city, nuances like reflections of buildings and trees on the windshield of a moving car, which registers more flatly on film. The result is a picture that looks a little more dimensional, almost 3D in some scenes. The film is shot digitally, Mann’s second feature film to use this format (his first was Collateral ), which picks up different tones and shades of light that traditional 35mm film stock can’t. The director’s cut, which is actually one minute shorter than the theatrical version, begins before that, with introductions to the main characters Tubbs (Jaime Foxx) and Crockett (Colin Farrell) and the bad guys they’re after.Įven with these very small narrative additions, the movie emphasizes the landscape, culture, and dark underside of Miami. In the original release, the film simply began: there were no opening credits and he dropped the audience into a nightclub scene, smack in the middle of a story that presumably began before his cameras started rolling. In the new unrated DVD Director’s Cut of Miami Vice he responds to his critics, adding a little more narrative and a bit more dialogue from his characters, but still maintains the integrity of his style from the theatrical version.
#Miami vice movie tv
It’s tough to make an artistic picture from the glossy material of the TV show, but if there is a director to do it, it’s Mann. I can sympathize with an audience who anticipated the prototypical action film replete with explicit dialogue and testosterone-boosting shoot-outs (and there are still plenty of these), but most importantly, a nostalgic look back at the two TV heroes, Tubbs and Crockett.
#Miami vice movie series
Mann’s icy lighting and grainy-textured images were probably a tough sell to devotees of the TV series (on which he served as producer, and writer of one episode), and an audience that probably anticipated more verbal interaction with the film’s two stars, two of the biggest names in Hollywood, Jaime Foxx and Colin Farrell. The movie, released in theaters last summer, met critics who described it as too heavy on look and design and weak on narrative. If you have heard any criticism of Michael Mann’s Miami Vice, the film version of the 1980s television series, it was undoubtedly describing the movie as over-stylized.