Review of Miami Vice (2006) by John M — 21 Jan 2011

Don Johnson is a Golden Globe winning actor for his role in Miami Vice series, a winner of the APBA Offshore World Cup, and has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Now, coming from that to this. Very unsatisfactory!! I was big fan of series and this represent shame to it!

Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Matthew McConaughey were all considered for the role of Det. Sonny Crockett. Two of them are natural blonde, Colin's fake blonde hair does not go along with black moustache, just wrong. And also, what is with stupid facial hair, Fox got extended beard like some spiderweb and Colin's moustache is off balance.

Miami Vice was all about expensive suits, fast cars, which they showed but not enough hot girls. Two girls, two romances, two sex scenes, two shower scenes, two girls in distress scenes...is that it for 2 hours of movie?! Also, to much guns flashing and clicking but not enough shooting scenes, almost none. Talking about shooting, at the end of the movie, big shooting scene, why stretched so much, why snipers didnt kill the rest of the bad guys? It would be easier, safer and logical.

Scene where Sonny and Ricardo meeting Jose for the first time, they got searched and later on, Sonny pulls out a hand grenade...wow..where did that come from....pulled out of his ass I presume?

Knocking on bad guy's door and representing yourself as pizza guy and he still opens the door, come one, does that trick still work? Couldn't they come up with something more original. Even bad guys watch movies and know that trick. Pathetic!

Dull acting. There is no bonding between Fox and Colin. No face expressions, no emotions. I am just completely let down by the acting of both leads. The characters were not even properly developed. Farell and Foxx had no chemistry whatsoever. They barely even looked at each other.

So it was with Miami Vice that I didn't think Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx as a team were right for the roles. I also believed that the idea of recreating Miami Vice was a pure marketing scheme.

It is hard to replace Don Johnson, he was a cool dude with plenty of style!

You can't relate to any of the characters. All presented in very fantastic heroism jumbled by dialogue, dialogue and more dialogue.

I found myself straining to hear most of what the actors were saying.

The first thing I picked up on was the lack of lighting. Where is Miami sun? Quite a lot rainy days for famous sunny part of USA.

Foxx was characterized as unpleasant to work with. Foxx refused to fly commercially, forcing Universal to give him a private jet. After gunshots were fired on set in the Dominican Republic on October 24, 2005, Foxx packed up and refused to return. This forced Mann to re-write the ending of the film, an ending that some crew members characterized as less dramatic than the original.

Where was the boat? The alligator? The ex-wife? The kid? Where was Miami? The scenes shot there could have pretty much been anywhere on the coastline of the States or even South Africa :).

Some really cool speed boats, I must admit.

What was great about the series was the style, the attitude, the music. The film got one out of three of those right. Soundtrack was ok, but still not the main theme.

Finally, Mann left most of the plot twists hanging and unanswered. Who was the FBI leak, what was in the Russian crates, why was a Montoya a Russian working with a Chinese national using American skin heads as muscle, why did they need to be deputized by the FBI and what the hell ever happened to the FBI in the movie, did Montoya escape or got captured and jailed??

Overall, very slow and long, bad script, no tension, poor with action. Series were so much better.