July 25, 2006 @ 10:38 am

Miami Vice Movie Review

by: Danielle Houston

The film opens with a glimpse of the gritty Miami club scene as Det. James ‘Sonny’ Crockett, played by Colin Farrell, Det. Ricardo ‘Rico’ Tubbs - Jaime Foxx in his first good role since Ray - and their squad stakeout a prostitution ring servicing club goers. At the club, they get sidetracked with a frantic call from Alonzo (John Hawkes), a former informant whose family is murdered as a result of a security leak in the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force. The Miami authorities are not compromised and the FBI asks them for help. The task falls on the shoulders of Crockett and Tubbs, who go undercover as smugglers in order to determine the source of the leak and take down dangerous drug traffickers.

left Tubbs lives with girlfriend Trudy (played by Black British actress Naomie Harris) who is also an intel analyst who helps Tubbs and Crockett create false identities to help them infiltrate the treacherous world of international trafficking. Harris refreshingly handles herself well with Foxx and the two have a sensual chemistry on screen. Things slow down in the middle of the film until Crockett gets cozy with Isabella (Li Gong), a sexy criminal who is involved in the drug underworld Crockett is intently trying to bring down.

Of course, things don’t go as well as planned for Crockett and Tubbs– the lines between their personal and professional lives get more and more blurred. Everything ultimately comes to a head, with Crockett and Tubbs fighting not only for the case, but also for the lives of the people they love.

Mann does a good job by not trying to recreate the popular 80s series he created and produced but rather gives the film a fresh and unique perspective. The cinematography of the Miami landscape is breathtaking and at the same time chaotic, paralleling the disorder and lawlessness of the Miami drug trade. The violence is a bit gratuitous but enjoyable and gives the movie the needed momentum to move from scene to scene.

It does run a bit long at a little over two hours and some of the dialogue is missed especially that of Gong’s due to her thick Chinese accent, which makes the plot hard to follow. Don’t come expecting the film to be just like the series, in fact, you will be pleasantly surprised it’s not.

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Article tags: Miami Vice, Miami, Vice, Jamie Foxx, Jamie, Foxx, Colin Farrell, Colin, Farrell 

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