Having never seen a single episode of Miami Vice on television, I will not be able to bore you by regurgitating the standard opening lines critics constantly use to describe Michael Mann’s latest film. I am not familiar with the pastel colors, the cheesy music, or the ins and outs of 80’s fashion, and barring a three-minute clip of the original series on YouTube, I can proudly claim to have gone into the newest incarnation of Miami Vice a total virgin. That is, of course, if you don’t count my being in the audience during the Universal Studios Miami Vice Action Spectacular theme park ride. Because of this unfamiliarity with the original source material, I can appreciate it as just a film and not as an icon of eighties television. To me, Miami Vice the very definition of summer counter programming. This moody and entertaining film offers up cool by the bucketful, going so far as completely ignoring plot holes and narrative logic to simply indulge in its coolness. What other film can get away with its main characters calling fast boats, “go-fast boats”, or taking a timeout to head over to Cuba for mojitos?
First, this is a Michael Mann film, which means it’s populated with good-looking men, women, cars, and clothes that all radiate an existential malaise that you will not find in your typical Michael Bay helmed summer action blockbuster. Miami Vice pulsates with an energy that only Mann’s digital photography can capture, so much so that even when Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) do nothing but strike poses, there is something breathtaking about it. The camera is always there; close enough that you might be able to make out the designer label on their suits, or possibly catch a whiff of Crocket’s after-shave lotion. Sure, this might all sound superficial, and in a sense, it is, but in a Michael Mann film, vocation, demeanor and style typically define his characters.
Following two Miami undercover agents Crockett and Tubbs, Miami Vice is strenuously plotted, even when the plot is somewhat irrelevant. After a mole exposes an undercover informant – leading to the death of his family and his eventual suicide - Crockett and Tubbs take the reigns and go undercover in Arcángel de Jesús Montoya’s (Luis Tosar) Columbian cocaine empire. Things get complicated when Crockett is smitten with Montoya’s right-hand woman and lover, Isabella (Gong Li). The attraction, it seems, is mutual. Isabella convinces Crockett to take a go-fast boat to Cuba for mojitos, dancing, and a passionate night in old Havana. Meanwhile, the boys are always in the precarious position of exposure, thanks to Montoya’s assistant, José Yero (John Ortiz) and his scheming with the Nazi Aryan Brotherhood. The stakes heighten when the Aryan’s kidnap Tubbs’ girlfriend (or is it his wife?) Trudy (Naomie Harris) and hold her ransom, leading to a terrific rescue scene and gun battle in a trailer home. All of this description, though, is pretty much window dressing. The real fun of Miami Vice is the spectacle it creates on-screen.
Less nuanced and shallower than Mann’s previous films, Collateral and Heat, Miami Vice is however just as fun. Mann spends a lot of time carefully observing the characters, whether they are at a club, speeding in their boats, driving around, or gettin’ it on with their woman in the shower. That it is totally engaging is less a testament to Farrell’s and Foxx’s acting talent – although they are both good in the film – and says more about Mann’s mythic brand of filmmaking. Characters don’t talk like you and me; they talk in a hyper-stylized, macho code. In addition, when they are not talking, they communicate through moody glances and head nods. I’m telling you, if I were a couple of years younger, I would be walking around the streets with a permanent cowl and a hushed squint.
Enough can’t be said about the look of Miami Vice. Michael Mann and his cinematographer, Dion Beebe, shoot almost the entire picture at night, capturing Miami and several other locations in a strange, ghostly glow. The low contrast lighting helps illicit a cool dreaminess that matches the characters’ own sense of brooding and moody detachment, like the shots of Crockett’s total indifference to a dance of lightning way above him in the clouds. There isn’t much action in Miami Vice, but when there is it’s memorable and totally intoxicating. A silent raid on the trailer park by Crockett, Tubbs and their crew climaxes with a standoff that ends with just one gunshot that literally jolts through your bones and creates an urge to jump up and cheer. At the end, a muted and confusing gunfight is somehow just as realistic and intense as the extended robbery shootout in Heat. The hushed out sounds of the machine guns, shotguns, and handguns sound immediate and more dangerous than the regular cartoonish sounds of gunfire we are accustomed to from other action films.
There are stretches, though, where Miami Vice fails to deliver a coherent narrative. The plot strands are sometimes hastily put together or simply abandoned. Exactly why did the Aryan skinheads kidnap Tubbs’ wife? Who was the mole that led to the informant’s suicide in the beginning? Why does a Columbian drug lord have an association with Aryans to begin with? Answers are not given, and if they were, I didn’t notice them. Besides, stressing over the plot is not the goal here. Instead, the intent with Miami Vice is to absorb and delight in the feast of sights and sounds Mann throws on screen. Go ahead, allow yourself to indulge in the rush of a cool breeze, the soothing light of a warm sun, and the taste of a damn good mojito, because Miami Vice is one of the best films of the year.