Lynne P
This movie is boring, too long and full of empty scenes with absolutely nothing going on. In fact it is so boring I can't even come up with the 5 lines needed for this review so I am just typing away which in turn is probably a lot like how they came up with those empty scenes... OK boring boat scene where it just goes through the water... typie type type... boring plane scene... 97 mins of boring dancing... have we filled the quota yet?
dbrhett-77863
I can't tell you how much I loved this movie. The wonderful soundtrack and great pictures of Miami and the Caribbean. Loved the cast and the chemistry. Loved the snappy dialog and the realistic sets. Action, scenery, music... so great. I know there was some reason Michael Mann did not want to produce another follow up to this movie. I don't know why. But all I can tell him is this was great. I appreciated it beginning to end. Would love to see another one.
jmosser-99099
As a fan of the original series, I was beyond disappointed. When I heard they were making a 'vice' movie, I was excited. There's so much material and fertile ground to work with, that you have to really try hard to make a bad film based on Miami vice. The film makers succeeded in doing just that. First off the casting. You can't underestimate the impact Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas had in making the show such a huge hit. Even without great acting, just on visual appeal alone they were very intriguing. If you get that part wrong, you ruin the whole thing and that is what happened here. Apparently Jamie Foxx suggested this film to Mann after working with him in Ali. This pretty much guaranteed the part of Tubbs to Foxx, dooming this picture from the start. I think Foxx may be the most over rated actor of the past decade. While certainly not Oscar-worthy, he did do a decent job of portraying Ray Charles, but I have never been able to take him seriously as an actor and any time I see his face I keep waiting for some buffoonish punchline ala in living color or the Jamie Foxx show. He comes across as cheesy and fake and it is impossible to take him seriously in any dramatic role. With humor being his strong suit, you would think they would have given him a couple of jokes, as even the original Tubbs had his share of punchlines, but Foxx remains overly serious and stiff throughout. It was rumored that Will Smith was considered and he would have suited the role of Tubbs much better. Colin Farrell makes an equally bad Sonny Crockett. Part of Crockett's appeal was the fact that he was a plain spoken all American guy working in a vibrant international city. Put in a foreign looking guy with a foreign accent and it just doesn't work as well. Apparently Don Johnson himself suggested Ferrell. What was he thinking? Another element of the TV series appeal was the surrounding characters. Zito and Switek. Gina and Trudy. And of course Lt. Castillo. In the movie, these characters are completely under developed or nonexistent.As for the plot, it was throw away. Generic international smuggler routine taking us around the globe. The beauty of vice was it's focus on Miami. There's so much potential for juicy plot lines right there that there's no need to go overseas. The villains in the TV series, although stereotypical, were very colorful and more believable to the city. The Italian mafia goons, Cubano, Colombian and Jamaican villains that inhabited Miami in the TV series should have been reprised here. Instead they chose to go for a non believable neo nazi type. What white supremacist would ever live in Miami? the least white major city in America.While the cinematography was okay, it did not do the legacy of Miami Vice justice. The original Miami Vice was criticized for style over substance. The movie took away the cool style and left zero substance. What made Vice so iconic was the bright sunny Miami backdrops. Beach scenes, beautiful women, groundbreaking wardrobe and awesome houses cars and boats. They would do scenes right on Ocean Drive surrounded by highly recognizable Miami landmarks. They were known for using bright neon and art deco colors. In the film they went for low lighting and dark and grey color schemes. Gone are the neon cityscapes, bright south-beach scenes and the beautiful women. Take all that away and Miami vice just isn't Miami vice. The digital photography gave the film a feeling of a bad reality TV show. The Miami of the 80's was fast paced, dangerous, and is remembered as a mythical time. By setting the film in modern times it just becomes somewhat stale and boring, but even with a modern day setting it could have been way more interesting and entertaining than it was. The pacing and lack of action in this movie are inexcusable especially with 100 million plus budget. The great thing about the TV show was the high action. The fist fights, the shootouts, the car chases, the boat chases, the explosions. The movie overlooked these almost entirely and opted for blood and violence just for violence sake. While the TV show had a lot of killing, there was a lot less blood. More of the actual violence was left to the imagination.Overall, the movie is Miami Vice in name only. They very loosely follow the formula of the original in that it is set in Miami, there are smugglers to be caught and the bad guys get killed. But they do this without any of the charm that the show so masterfully employed in getting us from point a to point b. The eye candy and the danger of Miami at the time, laced with a little bit of humor, an authentic Miami feel, a clever twist at the end with some folksy cop wisdom of lessons learned by Sonny usually followed by a catchy phrase, beautiful Miami sunset and credits. I think part of this movies problem is that it takes itself too seriously while the series was somewhat tongue in cheek. They have done a great disservice to the franchise. People who never saw the show will think 'what was all the hype about Miami vice' and people who did see the show will assume the film makers were trying to distance themselves too much from the original. The film doesn't stand alone on it's own merits or in comparison to it's predecessor. It shows that Mann probably had little to do with the TV show's success. Then when it came time to do the movie he really had nothing. They had one shot to get this right as the 20 year nostalgia cycle was coming around and they completely blew it.Skip this movie, especially if you liked the series.
Filipe Bezerra
Saw this one back in 2007, the theaters here in Brazil didn't seem to make money out of it so I waited until the DVD release. And now I just came from a unrated version that sincerely blew me away even more than the first time.You have to see it as more than a simple action flick and embrace the audacity of the cinematography - the noisy shots from pre-4k- cameras are a charm for themselves.The characters are also very strong and they are nothing like the heroes that we usually see in pure commercial-action movies. They are the heroes of Mann's world: strong, relentless, intense.The storytelling does not tell you more than the wide camera shots, the moody blueish noir, the sad and deep look from the actors or the amazing sound design. It is a movie that exists deeply in the details way more than it does in the surface.A hidden masterpiece.
