Review of Miami Vice (2006) by Cindy I — 28 Sep 2009

What happened!?! How could a director of one of the coolest shows on TV miss the boat so badly directing a big screen version? I was a fan of the show, and this doesn't even BEGIN to do it justice.

Mann apparently completely blacked out his entire memory of what made Miami Vice so special. Yeah, this film had all the elements -- handsome cops, scary drug dealers, Miami scenery, cool musical score -- but SOMETHING was definitely missing. With the show, you could almost FEEL the heat of the Florida sun in the day and the balmy breezes at night. You could almost smell the salty air and the sweat of the citzens. Didn't get that at all here.

Maybe it was the casting. Jamie Foxx did an OK job with the Tubbs role, but Colin Farrell just didn't work for me as Crockett. Don Johnson at least brought a bit of good old boy humor to the role. Farrell was deadly serious throughout, almost constipative. I was over an hour into the film before he even smiled the first time.

And lord help us -- what the hell was that mustache all about? I guess they were trying to give Sonny some type of style, like Johnson had with the pastel clothes. But please. He must have stolen that thing from the set of either a 70's porn flick or a 60's spaghetti western. That greasy biker hairstyle didn't help either.

And the storyline...holy moses. I could drag a locomotive with a rope faster than this thing moved along. I think they took an hour-long episode (most of them weren't all that complicated to begin with) and just padded it to fill 2+ hours of screen time.

To be honest I didn't even finish watching the thing. It was so slow, I fell asleep halfway through. But somehow I don't think I missed anything that I'll be kicking myself for later.