I remember when Miami Vice was on television back in the 1980's. I didn’t watch that show that often and I really didn’t care for it. Of course at the time, I was much younger than the target audience for the show. I wasn’t sure if I wanted the see the movie Miami Vice when I first heard about it and the first trailer I saw didn’t make me want to rush out to see the movie. I did end up going to see the movie for some reason that I’m still not sure of. I think I should have gone to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest again instead.

Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs were partners and detectives on the Miami police force. They were at a nightclub working on a case when Sonny got a call from a former informant that was talking about a deal going bad that involved undercover FBI agents. Agent Fujima got Sonny and Rico to go undercover in the drug organization. Once they established their covers, Sonny got involved with Isabella, a woman that worked for the drug organization he and Rico were going after.

Even though I really didn’t like the television show, I did see some of the episodes every so often. I only remember a few things, mostly connected to Sonny. I know he wore pastel shirts with white suits, didn’t wear socks, drove an insanely expensive sports car, and lived on a boat with an alligator. Or maybe it was a crocodile. I did wonder how Sonny could afford that car being a cop. The only story line I remember from the show was when Sonny was dating a singer and how that relationship predictably ended. I really can’t remember anything about Rico. Really the only other thing I remember from the show was that each episode featured a lot of music that I usually didn’t like. I think the television show wasn’t as dark even though it dealt with drugs. I’ve read how a few people laughed some when watching the movie. I didn’t think anything in it was funny. Miami Vice was a very dark, serious movie. As far as I could tell, really the only things that were the same from the television show and the movie were the character names and that Sonny and Rico were vice detectives in Miami. Music, that was sometimes too loud for the scene, played throughout the movie like was done for the television show. I hated some of the music while other pieces were all right.

I never did figure out anything that was supposed to be in Miami Vice from the trailer except for Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx being in it. I was expecting the movie to have more action that it ultimately ended up having. I’m not really sure what gave me that idea to begin with though. There were some action scenes in the movie, but most of the action was concentrated into just a few scenes. There were a few explosions and one of them didn’t look as good as it could have. Something with the effects in that shot just seemed a little off. There was a lot of action and even some graphic violence in those few scenes. Early in the movie the deal that went bad was shown as well as how the drug dealers reacted with their huge guns. I’m almost certain I saw an arm blown off. Before seeing the movie, I was thinking there would be more violence than there was. I didn’t have a problem with that. Some of the shots in the few violent scenes were very graphic and could bother some viewers. The violence defiantly played a part in the movie being rated R. This was not a movie to take children too.

Miami Vice was more of a drama movie that just happened to have a few action scenes added in. Maybe a few other sequences, like when Sonny and Rico were shown racing through the streets of Miami or when Sonny was racing along in a boat were supposed to add more action. Those scenes did nothing for me. Overall, I thought the movie was boring and just too long and drawn out. There were all sorts of shots that didn’t need to be included and were just pointless and wasted time. Sonny and Rico flew to other countries, mostly in South America, in very nice private plans as part of their covers. Every time they flew somewhere, there were shots from several different angles showing the plans flying. At one point, Sonny took Isabella for a ride in a go fast boat and they ended up going to Cuba. The two did talk briefly and then the movie cut to shots from different angles of the boat racing across the ocean. Too many times characters were shown just staring off into the distance with brooding looks on their faces. All of those things just slowed the pace of the movie to a snail’s pace and bored me silly.

I felt like a of time in Miami Vice was devoted to build up that just didn’t go anywhere. Once Sonny and Rico were under cover, Sonny decided it would be a good idea to start a relationship with Isabella even though he thought she was married to the main drug boss at the time. She explained that she was just a business woman working with him. Time was taken away from what I thought would be the main focus of the movie - Sonny and Rico going undercover to catch the bad guys and figure out where a leak came from - to show Sonny and Isabella getting involved. I didn’t feel like I ever really knew why Sonny went after her to begin with. He had only seen her a few times by that point and she’d barely said anything when he was around. Then all of a sudden, they head off to Cuba in a go fast boat and that night were having sex. There were times after the sexual part of the relationship started that it seemed like there was some caring between the two. It just seemed like something was missing from the beginning of the relationship. Rico was shown with his girlfriend Trudy a few times though I felt like that relationship was developed even less. They were already a couple when the movie started and they ended up with very few scenes together.

I had heard that there were steamy sex scenes in Miami Vice. Well. I must have dozed off or something because the only sex scenes I saw were just blah. The only steam I saw came from a shower in one scene. I’d seen Jamie Foxx talking about having a sex scene in the shower. His bare behind was shown briefly in that scene when Trudy joined him in the shower. She washed his back, she washed hers, and then he left the shower. Now maybe I blinked and missed something, but that was not a sex scene. Trudy did join Rico in bed after her shower for the first sex scene in the movie. There were several close up’s of Rico’s back, Trudy’s arms around him, one of her legs and that was basically it. Trudy’s bare back was shown when she got in the shower, as well as her bare behind and the side of a breast briefly. The sex scenes between Sonny and Isabella were just more of the same, with Sonny’s bare back being what was mostly shown. The camera did a lot of focusing on elbows, arms, legs, or knees during the sex scenes.
The sex scenes were boring and added nothing to the movie. Horrible music that made me cringe played during the sex scenes that just made the scenes worse.

In the last several years, I have seen more and more movies that have jerky pictures because of the way the movie was filmed. I think that happens more when hand held cameras are used, but I could be wrong about that. I’ve heard that Mann and other directors do this because they want more realism in their movies. I just don’t get how having the picture bounce around so much that I can’t tell who is who or what is going on add realism. I didn’t think the camera work added any realism to Miami Vice. Call me crazy, but I kind of like to be able to actually see what is going and tell who is who when I watch a movie. I hate when directors film movies in such a way that the final picture is so jerky that I can barely tell what is going on. It annoys me and has even given me a headache in some instances. The camera work annoyed me more than once in this movie. It didn’t get as bad as the camera work in The Bourne Supremacy though.

I really didn’t care for the way a lot of scenes looked in Miami Vice. The picture looked very grainy in several scenes, making some of them look absolutely horrible. For some scenes it seemed like there was a lighting problem of some kind. I’ve read that Mann used HD to film this movie. I really don’t know anything about HD and how that makes a movie look. I thought HD was supposed to give better quality, but if this movie is typical of what one filmed in HD looks like, then something needs to be fixed. The quality of the picture was very bad and even had a cheap look in several scenes. Some of the scenes looked like they had been shot on the security surveillance cameras that some stores use. Maybe Sonny’s hair kept looking like it was changing colors because of the HD. In some scenes it looked all dark and in other scenes it looked like he’d colored it blond, or at least tried to. That wasn’t a good look, though it looked better in some scenes than others. At one point, even his eyebrows and stubble looked lighter. I didn’t notice any problems with the picture quality when I watched Collateral, another Mann movie that was filmed in HD.

There were several characters in Miami Vice and I really didn’t feel like any of them were developed that much. It was hard to understand a lot of the dialogue, either because the characters were talking so low or because of an accent. Sonny and Rico had been partners for an unknown amount of time before the movie started. They worked well together, though it really wasn’t shown if they were friends away from work. Sonny received a little more attention only because so much time was taken to show him going after Isabella. Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx were good in the movie, though I did think that Foxx was under used. I usually like Foxx and don’t really have strong feelings one way or the other about Farrell. The only other movie I’ve seen him in is S.W.A.T..

Trudy and Rico were involved and I think they had been in a steady relationship for a while before the beginning of Miami Vice. She wasn’t in that many scenes and she was rather flat. She was around during some of the times when Sonny and Rico were working, and she seemed to have had something to do with the creation of their covers. I never did figure out if she was another cop or with the district attorney’s office of what. Naomie Harris was fine in the part. The part of Trudy might have been slightly larger than the one she had in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. If I remember right, she had a larger part in After the Sunset. Isabella worked with the drug dealers and was involved with the man in charge. She did seem to have some say in how jobs were done. I did have trouble understand what she was saying in a few scenes because of her accent. Gong Li was fine in the part.

Sonny and Rico were the main characters and the main ones really involved in the undercover work. A few other cops were also involved, acting as people that worked for Sonny and Rico. Those characters were really just there in the background and didn’t do much of anything important. I don’t even remember hearing their names. Agent Fujima was only in a few scenes, so he really wasn’t developed. Arcangel de Jesus Montoya and Jose Yero, the two main drug dealers were in a few scenes with Jose turning up a little more than Arcangel. They were both flat characters.

Main Cast

Colin Farrell - Sonny Crockett
Jamie Foxx - Ricardo Tubbs
Naomie Harris - Trudy
Ciaran Hinds - Agent Fujima
Gong Li - Isabella
John Ortiz - Jose Yero
Luis Tosar - Arcangel de Jesus Montoya

I didn’t care for Miami Vice overall though it wasn’t a really horrible movie. There were some things that were well done. I wasn’t really interested in seeing the movie to begin with, so that probably contributed to me being less than thrilled with the movie. People that liked the television show may like this movie as long as they keep in mind this is a different Miami Vice. Fans of Jamie Foxx or Colin Farrell may like the movie. Anyone expecting a non-stop action movie will be disappointed.



Recommended: Yes