While part of Miami Vice plays out as well-researched and credible, there's some mighty sloppy scripting.
Miami Vice (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:186
Fresh:88
Rotten:98
Average Rating:5.5/10
Consensus: Miami Vice is beautifully shot but the lead characters lack the charisma of their TV series counterparts, and the underdeveloped story is well below the standards of Michael Mann's better films.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for strong violence, language and some sexual content
Runtime: 2 hrs 26 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
Theatrical Release:2006
Box Office: $63,378,610
Synopsis: The cocaine cowboys of the '80s are gone, but Miami's Casablanca allure, the undercover cops and the attitudes of Michael Mann's culturally influential television series have been enhanced by time... The cocaine cowboys of the '80s are gone, but Miami's Casablanca allure, the undercover cops and the attitudes of Michael Mann's culturally influential television series have been enhanced by time in the feature film version of Miami Vice. Ricardo Tubbs (Academy Award® winner Jamie Foxx of Ray, Jarhead) is urbane and dead smart. He lives with Bronx-born intel analyst Trudy, played by British actress Naomie Harris (28 Days Later, upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean II and III), as they work undercover transporting drug loads into South Florida to identify a group responsible for three murders. Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell of S.W.A.T., The New World) ]to the untrained eye, his presentation may seem unorthodox, but procedurally he is sound] is charismatic and flirtatious until-while undercover working with the supplier of the South Florida group-he gets romantically entangled with Isabella, the Chinese-Cuban wife of an arms and drugs trafficker. Isabella is played by the Chinese actress Gong Li (Raise the Red Lantern, Memoirs of a Geisha). The best undercover identity is oneself with the volume turned up and restraint unplugged. The intensity of this case pushes Crockett and Tubbs out onto the edge where identity and fabrication become blurred, where cop and player become one-especially for Crockett in his romance with Isabella and for Tubbs in the provocation of an assault on those he loves. Miami Vice, as a large-scale feature film, liberates what is adult, dangerous and alluring about working deeply undercover...especially when Crockett and Tubbs go to where their badges don't count... Miami Vice stars Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Gong Li, Naomie Harris and Ciarán Hinds and is written and directed by Michael Mann, who also produces along with Pieter Jan Brugge; Anthony Yerkovich serves as executive producer. -- © Universal Pictures [More]
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris, Justin Theroux, Ciaran Hinds, Luis Tosar, Barry Shabaka Henley, John Ortiz
Director: Michael Mann
Director: Michael Mann
Screenwriter: Anthony Yerkovich, Michael Mann
Producer: Michael Mann, Pieter Jan Brugge
Composer: John Murphy
Studio: Universal Pictures
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Reviews for Miami Vice
Michael Mann's big screen adaptation of the seminal '80s TV series Miami Vice looks great but the weak plot and lack of chemistry between Colin Farrell and Gong Li ultimately detracts.
Sensual and scary, the movie is so visually textured you feel as though you're brushing against the screen.
Perhaps had they been given a script, a purpose or a mission, Miami Vice the movie might have been something worthy of the talented Mann's attention.
As with most of filmmaker Michael Mann's works, this one is far too long -- at least by 20 minutes. But it does have just enough visceral thrills to separate it from most of the cinematic pack.
As it passed the two-hour mark, I began to fear the ending might never actually end. That it finally did was one of the movie's highlights.
The overall effect is still striking and often unexpected, with an impact that grows and lingers long after the final, abrupt shot.
Miami Vice exudes the kind of gritty life we expect, so much so that you might argue that neither Crockett nor Tubbs deserves to be called a main character; Mann reserves that role for crime itself.
The film, like its oddly rumbling sky, promises more than it ever delivers. Granted, it can look cool. But more often, as we wait for the lightning that never arrives, it frustrates.
If you really must see Miami Vice (and you mustn't), buy a ticket to something better, then slip into Vice at the 95-minute mark and watch the last third of the movie.
The action begins immediately, without even a title credit, and the movie ends abruptly and almost arbitrarily, as if we have witnessed an almost literal slice of life, snipped off at either end by a pair of editor's shears. Life -- and crime -- goes on.
This updated version, starring Colin Farrell as Crockett and Jamie Foxx as Tubbs, is far from a disaster, but doesn't rank with Mann's best work.
Gong Li's face and form are made for this: she absorbs the movie's energies and just like that, it hardly matters what Crockett or Tubbs thinks he's doing.
Characters gather in really cool places (million-dollar apartments, speedboats, South American warehouses, etc.), look really serious and read expository dialogue in a low murmur.
Even as a strictly superficial survey of Michael Mann's world, there's still an electric charge from all its nabs, jumps and gets. It's not Mann's usual poetry of pushing the existential envelope, but it's a skillful action film.
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