Posted: 07/26/2006

Miami Vice

(2006)

by Hank Yuloff

Vice is good.

Flashbacks of a white suit worn to the wedding of an ex-girlfriend’s sister went through my mind when I saw that Hollywood was going to send us another Television show turned movie. Go ahead and laugh, but I am sure more than one of the men out there had an Angel’s Flight suit or some other Don Johnson knock-off piece of 80’s kitch clothing.

A quick rundown of those TV-shows-made-into-a-movie horror stories would include: Car 54, Bewitched, The Honeymooners, Scooby Do and I Dream of Jeannie (sorry, this one is being uncorked later this year - what a stinker). Some decent ones have been The Addams Family and Charlie’s Angels. But there has yet to be a truly well done lifting of a television premise to the big screen. Until writer/director Michael Mann, executive producer of the original series, brought a new twist to the old standard. The man who brought us Heat, Ali, and Collateral adds another action film to his collection of hits with this version of the Miami Police Department’s vice detective team of James ‘Sonny” Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. They are the guys who show up and make happen what the CSI folk figure out later.

In this Vice story, our vice heroes are about to break up a prostitution ring when they get a call from a non-active informant saying that there is something major going down and he is leaving. The fact that this first story line goes away is good because it will give you a chance to get up to speed with the movie which starts above the speed limit in the very first frame and you need to get ready for the ride. This informant leads them to be assigned to an FBI task force investigating a drug ring that is going to involve Russians, Skinhead Nazis, Colombians and anyone else that can be thrown in. But that’s not the important part. What is important is that the FBI task force has a leak that is getting agents killed. And since Miami PD is not part of it, Crockett (Colin Farrell from Phone Booth, Daredevil) and Tubbs (Jaime Foxx from Jarhead, Ray, Collateral) can be trusted to help the Feds get to the bottom of it.

Part of the charm of Vice is that it does not stop to explain things to the slow kids in the audience. To Mann’s credit, he does not dumb down the dialogue (speaking of CSI) to let us know the intricacies of what the main characters are talking about. There are no “Gee, if there is a bullet in his brain he was probably killed by the impact of it” pabulum that invades television cop shows. The characters all know what they are talking about and expect us to keep with them or catch up during gunfire scenes. And there are plenty of those. Also to Mann’s credit, he does not throw in a stupid twist like Crockett and Tubb’s boss is part of the conspiracy. That would have sucked. Don’t worry, their boss is a good guy, like them.

The violence of Vice is another thing that is not dumbed or numbed down in this film. You don’t just see a man getting shot and flying backwards from the impact, you see his insides come outside as each piece of lead tears apart the body. This is an R-rated film and it earns it. A strong warning to parents here if you think that the kids have seen cop shows and this is going to be the same….. NO…. This is a lot of violence and it is not hidden by quick cuts and editing tricks. Oh, and for those parents who don’t mind their kids seeing bodies being ripped apart sinew by sinew, there are people having SEX, too! Good sex. With a 228-mile boat ride full of foreplay.

And speaking of those racing boats, I have a quick side note here. This may be a plot problem but I am not sure. You know those Go-Go boats? The really fast racing ones? Do they have enough range to get from Miami to Havana? I didn’t know the answer to that one and it might be something that needs ‘xpalining. But by the time you see this scene, you will probably be completely entrenched in the story and can’t wait to see the two characters in the boat get to Havana for a mojito and sex that you won’t care.

I had been dreading this movie because if Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx were expected to act at all like their predecessors, it would have been a long couple of hours. But that did not happen. Farrell gets more screen time than Foxx, but they are both terrific. In looking back at Foxx’s career, it was in another Mann film, ALI, that his career truly turned and he began getting away from the dufus parts to the serious Leading Man roles that he has had since. It was good to see him team up with Mann for the third time. He is an actor who is honing his craft and has become a reason to see a film. The best acting bit in the movie is turned, however, by John Ortiz, who plays Jose Yero, a mid-level management type in the crime syndicate. He is smart, and not so much evil as ruthless in running the business. Yero has been a lot of crime movies - The Opportunists, Narc, Ransom - but never anywhere close to top billing. This film could and should get him a lot more work, higher up the cast list. The Farrell love interest (there always IS one - it’s in his contract) is Li Gong, last seen as the badass hooker Hatsumomo in Memoirs of a Geisha. I feel she was a little stilted and tight, but that might be the language block. When she is in scenes where she does not speak - and just relies on her body language, we see more of her abilities The soundtrack and sound are also terrific. Gunshots are loud and jarring and the background music makes you feel the heat on screen.

I really enjoyed Miami Vice. It was so much better than I expected and that does not happen enough for me. You need to like action flicks. Or watching Foxx and Farrell and Ms. Li. And that is not at all difficult here. Let it be your own little vice and see this one on the big screen.

Hank Yuloff is a co-founder and film critic living The Valley.

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