By Fred Topel | Image property of Universal Pictures.
Miami Vice Poster
I’m going to be bold and go on record saying
Miami Vice
is worse than Annapolis. I’m in the heat of the moment
right now, and I’ve had some time to cool down since January, but
Annapolis was simply inept on every level. Miami
Vice thinks it’s intense but it’s laughable.
Miami Vice Review
In the movie version, Tubbs and Crockett go undercover in South America
to bring down a white supremacist gang that killed some undercover cops
thanks to a leak in one of three agencies. They make a deal with a Latin
druglord and Tubbs romances his Asian emissary.
The whole movie ends up being a long, boring procedural investigation. There’s
a whole lot of shop talk, working deals, forming and cultivating relationships.
Why spend a whole second act on another drug deal? Who cares?
The characters are such ridiculous caricatures, it doesn’t work with
Mann’s ultra serious tone. Crockett seems to seduce bad girl Isabella
just because she’s there. The music playing during their love scenes
is borderline porno synth, but their chemistry is less convincing than Ron
Jeremy’s.
All the macho cops with their tough talk, everybody’s posing. They
try to get philosophical. “You can’t negotiate with gravity.”
If you think a recycled drug deal plot is grave, you seriously need some
perspective.
And for the South American druglords, they could have just pulled a cartoon
out of a Simpsons McBain movie for all that pointed accent and
broken English. Are they serious with rico suave threatening ebonics at
the cops?
If it’s all about the procedural, they should have had it make a little
bit of sense. Why the hell are they going after drug dealers when they want
to hit white supremacists? And where the hell did the white supremacists
come from after they spent an hour on the drug deal? Who was the leak? They
never address it.
The action thinks that being big, loud and ultraviolent makes it cool. It
doesn’t. It feels just as procedural as the rest of the script. My
balls are still vibrating from the super bass sounds of gunshots and explosions.
And that CGI fire looks so stupid. What did you think would happen when
Tubbs said, “You wait here in the room with all the explosives while
I go outside”?
I’m just baffled by how bad Miami Vice is. It’s
not just a matter of trying something new with an old show and failing.
It’s not just about being a mediocre cop movie. It is reprehensible
on every level.
Add to Heffee!
