BEFORE: In another happy accident, this is the third film in a row from director Michael Mann. This is the 2006 update of the 1980's TV show - I was a big fan of the show, I even bought a white sportcoat to wear to high school, over pastel t-shirts. That look didn't go over so well in suburban Massachusetts...
THE PLOT: This update focuses on vice detectives Crockett and Tubbs as their respective personal and professional lives become dangerously intertwined.
AFTER: This was something of a disappointment to me - the 80's show was hip, flashy and action-packed. When Crockett and Tubbs go undercover as drug couriers, to determine which government agency is leaking information about drug busts, there are some tense negotiations as they work their way up the drug chain, but except for an action-packed finale, there wasn't much going on here.
Congratulations, you found a way to make undercover work and drug smuggling boring. And the parts that weren't boring were somewhat confusing. Crockett and Tubbs become defacto federal agents (but double-secret ones) so right there, they've contradicted their essence. They're vice cops, says it right in the title - it's not "Miami Federal Agents".
What made Crockett think it was a good idea to mix pleasure with business, by romancing the top woman in the drug ring? And why would the woman in charge fall in love with a lowly courier? (I know, because he's Sonny Crockett...) Gee, I can't imagine that causing problems later on...
They do have an ingenious plan to discover where the leak is on the inter-agency task force - they tell the DEA that the shipment's coming in on Monday, the FBI that it's coming in on Tuesday, the Customs Dept. on Wednesday. Then they wait to see which day turns up in the drug ring's memos. It's such a great plan, I wondered why they didn't just try that in the first place, without anyone needing to go undercover and risk their lives...
The team has a chance to bust the shipments, but they turn it down, in order to land some bigger fish. But doesn't that mean that they let some drug shipments get through, in order to gain the confidence of the smugglers? Doesn't that make our heroes into, you know, ACTUAL drug smugglers? Is it OK to let drugs hit the streets, in the course of your undercover work? Does this mean they're in too deep?
Well, at least there was an action-packed finale. But again I was reminded of "Grand Theft Auto" - if I see someone with a sniper rifle shooting gunmen on a ship in the harbor, naturally I think of the "Bomb da Base" mission from GTA3. But the moral of the story seems to be that you can't trust white supremacists, which they probably should have known in the first place...
The cool Jan Hammer synth-music was sadly missing, but at least they ran an updated version of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" during the end credits, performed by Nonpoint. Nice harmonies!
Starring Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx (last seen in "Ray"), Gong Li (or is it Li Gong? Get it straight, people...), Ciaran Hinds, Justin Theroux (last seen in "Zoolander"), John Ortiz (last seen in "Public Enemies") and John Hawkes (last seen in "American Gangster")
RATING: 4 out of 10 safehouses
I can't pinpoint the exact moment when I realized that the human race and I weren't going to get along. I don't think it was far away from the day that I was in a store and saw a kind of electric shaver that was designed to leave behind a layer of "Miami Vice"-style stubble.
ReplyDelete