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Miami Vice By Harry Forbes Catholic News Service NEW YORK (CNS) -- Fans of the pastel-saturated and stylish 1980s TV show had better lower their expectations. The lead character names and the Florida locale are about the only holdovers in this somber retread. In the big-screen "Miami Vice" (Universal), vice cops Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) go undercover for the FBI's Special Agent Fujima (Ciaran Hinds) with the approval of their boss, Lt. Castillo (Barry Shabaka Henley), after a drug sting ends in the deaths of a couple of federal agents. They set out to find the culprit, but as the convoluted plot ricochets around Haiti, Uruguay, Paraguay and Cuba -- you'll find it hard to keep track -- they convince drug runner Jose Yero (John Ortiz), who works for Latin American drug czar Montoya (Luis Tosar), to hire them to smuggle drugs into Miami. Tubbs is romantically involved with his intelligence-analyst girlfriend, Trudy (Naomie Harris), and before long Crockett falls for the attractive Chinese-Cuban Isabella (Gong Li), the cartel's financial officer, who is apparently involved with Jose. Crockett falls hard for Isabella, and they have an idyllic tryst (including a gratuitous shower scene that parallels an earlier one between Tubbs and Trudy), though Crockett knows it can't last. Other villains include members of the Aryan Brotherhood, who, in one of the film's most harrowing sequences, kidnap Trudy to force Crockett and Tubbs to deliver a promised shipment. Farrell wears a glum, hangdog expression throughout most of the film, and Foxx, even without his Ray Charles shades, is scarcely more expressive. Li's English sounds as if it was learned phonetically, but otherwise projects some interesting, if weathered, glamour. Director-writer Michael Mann's stated intent of showing "the first postmillennial examination of what globalized crime looks and feels like" is well and good, and perhaps undercover agents do sometimes blur the lines, but the film still feels like an empty exercise. The final well-choreographed shootout is ugly and, while not glamorized, wallows in lurid detail. Is Mann attempting to show the hard brutality of the drug world? Or is he just trying to generate a visceral excitement? At a recent screening, the approving exclamations behind me which punctuated every gruesome act would seem to indicate the latter. Dion Beebe shot the film in high definition, allowing more nighttime shooting but generating less visual richness. Mann, who produced the original series, has opted for grit and realism, eschewing the elements that made the show so popular. His humorless script is dull, while the plot beyond the general story arc is annoyingly dense, and at 133 minutes exceedingly long. Fans of Mann may admire his austere approach, but chances are no one's going to have much fun. The film contains sporadic but ugly violence, profanity, rough and crude language, sexual encounters with partial and rear nudity, innuendo, and lots of drug dealing, capped by crime without punishment. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is O -- morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. - - - Forbes is director of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. More reviews are available online at www.usccb.org/movies. END Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed. CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250 |
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