MOVIE: Miami Vice
Deep-Chested Aryan Brother: [Holding detonator] Shoot me, she dies. Shoot me, go ahead. Fuck it, we can all go. That's cool.
Det.Gina Calabrese: That's not what happens. What will happen is... what will happen is I will put a round at twenty-seven hundred feet per second into the medulla at the base of your brain. And you will be dead from the neck down before your body knows it. Your finger won't even twitch. Only you get dead. So tell me, sport, do you believe that?
Deep-Chested Aryan Brother: Hey, fu... BOOM
[Calabrese shoots him through the head]
MIAMI VICE
Michael Mann – Director/Writer/Producer
Jamie Foxx, Collin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris
2006 Universal Pictures / 134 minutes
We were in the mood. DaFrank and me went to the new Michael Mann movie, a director we both admire and like. Watched it in Tuschinski, the most beautiful theatre in Amsterdam.
Liked the opening, the story simply starts, and we never got any titles. Draws you in at once. And they were actually doing Vice work for once!
STORYLINE: On a job to catch a pimp Sonny (Farrell) gets a panic call from an old contact, whose cover is blown. The FED running that show tells them there’s a mole somewhere, and asks them, as outside Vice cops, to go undercover in the drug scene.
Sonny and Tubbs (Foxx) rapidly establish themselves as couriers, and work there way up to the leader of the organization Arcángel de Jesús Montoya. Sonny gets involved with Isabella (Gong Li), the mistress of Montoya, something Montoya doesn’t care about until he finds out that it is becoming personal for her. So in the last drop our cops do, their death is wanted.
I liked the movie, only because a bad Michael Mann movie still makes for better quality then the average Hollywood stuff. There’s a lot of his moving camera, working with unfocussed shots or his big blurry shadows in the foreground. Filmed great, but I have my doubts about the editing. Maybe they didn’t have enough time for Mann’s usual clear style.
Mostly the sound sucked. Big-time. DaFrank was the first who made me aware in the beautiful way Mann uses sound, and the rare but well placed points of silence. In Vice the sound was flat, like we watched TV, however the shootout scenes had great sound FX. In one of the opening scenes some great shots from the inside of a car getting blasted away by a Barret .50, makes you shake in the seat. Loved the little flapping arm moment.
Collin Farell wasn’t good, wasn’t bad. He has made some very good movies (Tigerland, Hart’s War, Phonebooth), but I’ve not yet formed a final opinion on him. And as DaFrank said, maybe he just isn’t American enough to play Sonny.
Jamie Foxx is rapidly becoming one of my hero’s. He rules. (Denzel should start to feel Foxx breathing in his neck). He uplifted the part of Tubbs from a sidekick to a human cop, who is still the “Brain” part of the team, as Sonny is still run by his emotions. The relation with Trudy (Harris) felt a bit obligatory though she plays it very well.
Loved the back round team, they did not get much lines, but somehow I really cared for in the climactic battle in the end.
Elizabeth Rodriguez as Gina Calabrese dragged everything out of her part, hope to see her career launch.
Same goes for Domenick Lombardozzi, a rock in the back.
Montoya (Luis Tosar) was great. He had about as much expression as a snake, which made him scary in an emotionally desolate way.
The 2nd evil Jose Yero (John Ortiz) started nice, but became boring fast as he didn’t rise above looking psychotically evil from behind his graphic designer glasses. A shame because he was actually the main evil in screen time.
Compared to the old series, what I really missed was the vibrant Miami colors, the undercover haggling with the criminals, and the banter of the two leads, they were always serious. And I think that maybe Mann, in upgrading the concept of Miami Vice to his present standard as filmmaker, he forgot the camp that is actually was.
So, for the Mann lovers and Miami Vice fans of old, go see it. And it is one of the best action pictures this year.
But for a Mann movie it’s one of his worst.
Det.Gina Calabrese: That's not what happens. What will happen is... what will happen is I will put a round at twenty-seven hundred feet per second into the medulla at the base of your brain. And you will be dead from the neck down before your body knows it. Your finger won't even twitch. Only you get dead. So tell me, sport, do you believe that?
Deep-Chested Aryan Brother: Hey, fu... BOOM
[Calabrese shoots him through the head]
MIAMI VICE
Michael Mann – Director/Writer/Producer
Jamie Foxx, Collin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris
2006 Universal Pictures / 134 minutes
We were in the mood. DaFrank and me went to the new Michael Mann movie, a director we both admire and like. Watched it in Tuschinski, the most beautiful theatre in Amsterdam.
Liked the opening, the story simply starts, and we never got any titles. Draws you in at once. And they were actually doing Vice work for once!
STORYLINE: On a job to catch a pimp Sonny (Farrell) gets a panic call from an old contact, whose cover is blown. The FED running that show tells them there’s a mole somewhere, and asks them, as outside Vice cops, to go undercover in the drug scene.
Sonny and Tubbs (Foxx) rapidly establish themselves as couriers, and work there way up to the leader of the organization Arcángel de Jesús Montoya. Sonny gets involved with Isabella (Gong Li), the mistress of Montoya, something Montoya doesn’t care about until he finds out that it is becoming personal for her. So in the last drop our cops do, their death is wanted.
I liked the movie, only because a bad Michael Mann movie still makes for better quality then the average Hollywood stuff. There’s a lot of his moving camera, working with unfocussed shots or his big blurry shadows in the foreground. Filmed great, but I have my doubts about the editing. Maybe they didn’t have enough time for Mann’s usual clear style.
Mostly the sound sucked. Big-time. DaFrank was the first who made me aware in the beautiful way Mann uses sound, and the rare but well placed points of silence. In Vice the sound was flat, like we watched TV, however the shootout scenes had great sound FX. In one of the opening scenes some great shots from the inside of a car getting blasted away by a Barret .50, makes you shake in the seat. Loved the little flapping arm moment.
Collin Farell wasn’t good, wasn’t bad. He has made some very good movies (Tigerland, Hart’s War, Phonebooth), but I’ve not yet formed a final opinion on him. And as DaFrank said, maybe he just isn’t American enough to play Sonny.
Jamie Foxx is rapidly becoming one of my hero’s. He rules. (Denzel should start to feel Foxx breathing in his neck). He uplifted the part of Tubbs from a sidekick to a human cop, who is still the “Brain” part of the team, as Sonny is still run by his emotions. The relation with Trudy (Harris) felt a bit obligatory though she plays it very well.
Loved the back round team, they did not get much lines, but somehow I really cared for in the climactic battle in the end.
Elizabeth Rodriguez as Gina Calabrese dragged everything out of her part, hope to see her career launch.
Same goes for Domenick Lombardozzi, a rock in the back.
Montoya (Luis Tosar) was great. He had about as much expression as a snake, which made him scary in an emotionally desolate way.
The 2nd evil Jose Yero (John Ortiz) started nice, but became boring fast as he didn’t rise above looking psychotically evil from behind his graphic designer glasses. A shame because he was actually the main evil in screen time.
Compared to the old series, what I really missed was the vibrant Miami colors, the undercover haggling with the criminals, and the banter of the two leads, they were always serious. And I think that maybe Mann, in upgrading the concept of Miami Vice to his present standard as filmmaker, he forgot the camp that is actually was.
So, for the Mann lovers and Miami Vice fans of old, go see it. And it is one of the best action pictures this year.
But for a Mann movie it’s one of his worst.
Labels: Movie Review
posted by Stuka at 4:33 PM
1 Comments:
First of all, thanks very much for the comment.
Now then -- as you know I'm from Miami, and grew up in the 80s, which means that I went through a Vice-worshipping phase (the teen years were just pefect for that kind of thing). Haven't seen the new movie, but I've heard good things.
The only real-life knowledge I can drop on you is that if the movie is soaked in drugs and violence (which I assume it is), then it pretty much sums up the city of Miami perfectly.
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