Review: Miami Vice

There’s a scene in Michael Mann’s Collateral, a film which I was originally apathetic towards but have come to respect upon repeat viewings, in which vicious coyotes ravage a nighttime Los Angeles cityscape amidst the director’s trademark style of grainy digital-video set to a heavy musical score. The passage perfectly summarizes the narrative-tension looming in the plot at the given moment; as Tom Cruise’s antagonist’s evil reaches its crescendo, such is epitomized in the primal nature of the behavior of his animal counterparts. Mann’s vision for Collateral worked perfectly because it was able to support the film’s tightly-constued storywork.

Miami Vice draws upon the same visual and auditory techniques as its predecessor, but this time around, all of Mann’s tricks are out of place. What enhanced Collateral diminishes this odd-ball TV-show remake’s quality because of the lack of developmental support displayed by the story. Here, there isn’t any character development or coherant plot to speak of; the only bone in Miami Vice’s body yearning to show the audience something is that which is embodied by Mann’s sweeping, turquoise, island-fever-esque visuals. And, unfortunately, with few other inspired elements to hold these in place, they only serve as deceptive marketing-assets that were used in making titilating trailers to lure a crowd into see the film only to come out disappointed. The same goes for the performances of leads Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx (Gong Li, on the other hand, is inexcusably awful); their worthy efforts are drowned out in the nonsensicality of Miami Vice’s whole. Had he not written the script, one may have been able to forgive Mann for merely choosing a braindead screenplay to adapt, but that isn’t the case. This is a complete and utter failure for the filmmaker, who audiences have rightly come to expect more from given his seasoned body of work.