Review of Miami Vice (2006) by Bill R — 01 Feb 2012

Like with Heat, it'll take a decade for this movie to be recognized for it's simply beautiful ability to turn character cliches upside down. Every review says that the Fox and Farrell lacked chemistry.

It wasn't a buddy cop movie. It wasn't a plot twist movie. It was us watching bleakly as good-guys brought bad things upon themselves. Heat caught people because they empathized with the bad guys.

.. but it was also a story about how Al Pacino's character destroyed himself and his family for the sake of his job. I think this is a deeper exploration of that concept. If there was to be a character to empathize with, it was Foxx being pulled into hell by his partner's arrogance.

This film is slow, beautiful, and almost poetic... a real gem in the action-crime-drama genre.