the skinny
Alright. 
jadefire88 and I and my bro and our friend Joyus Frius went to the midnight show of Miami Vice.
What I learned:
1. Midnight shows at our favored theatre are much... rowdier... than we're used to, even for the District. Like seeing a film at Union Station. If you've ever experienced that, you'll know what I mean. People tend to talk alot, come and go at random and laugh whenever anyone gets shot. It's... distracting.
2. Apparently I've gotten old. Staying up that late has left me feeling much like I got hit by a bus.
3. It's cliche, but Colin Farrell is a crappier actor than I remembered.
4. Gong Li can manage to break my heart even when the rest of the movie remains expressionless.
5. If the rest of your team goes on a bust and you stay back to get groceries, you're a sitting duck for meth-addled white supremicist whackos who will use you for some unspecified blackmail attempt. After you are rescued, you shouldn't linger in the doorway of the trailer where you've been held captive, as it may just explode.
6. If you're a cold-as-ice business woman in the hyper-masculine underworld, be aware that if you inexplicibly take a romantic jaunt to Cuba with a low-level operator (and undercover cop) he just may use you to further his own agenda rather than love you and leave you, which ultimately might have been preferable.
Okay. The good:
1. Visuals - when Michael Mann is on, he's hot shit. I've never seen the sky filmed the way he did in this flick. Huge, billowy clouds, lightening, the heaviness of a coming tropical storm... just breathtaking. Most directors avoid real-life weather, as it makes continuity between shots difficult. The weather was practically another member of the cast here.
2. Camera work - while there were some murky, grainy shots (the film was actually digital video, and the graininess was intentional, but it didn't do anything for me) there were also snatches of almost abstract imagery and surprising angles. Shots where the immediate foreground stays out of focus and the background is in crisp focus, and stays like that for longer than I am used to, and doesn't always resolve the way I expected. All of this without becoming stale or overly pretentious, even if it was self-conscious here and there.
3. The fire-fights - very different from typical action movie fare, though I can't put my finger on why. The violence was startling, and the final shoot-out filmed more like a guerrilla war instead of the "duel at twenty paces" action that normally makes up scenes like this. The gunshots tended to pop instead of boom, if that makes sense. It was more realistic and yet abstract.
4. The ending. Liked how it just stopped, very much like the show.
The ambiguous:
1. the way the movie just starts, with no introduction of who the characters are or what they're doing. You're dropped into the midst of the story with very little to hang on to. It's disorienting and to some extent I liked that, it made you feel like you were part of the action rather than an observer. On the other hand, I had no clue that the tough blond chick, the skinny guy and the bald beefy guy were vice cops Gina, Zito and Switek. At least I assume they were, only Zito was referred to by name, and that was in the final scenes of the film. It wasn't entirely clear that Trudy was a cop either at first. Forget figuring out what the relationships were between the various baddies.
2. a theme the film tried to develop was that the further you go "under" the harder it is to draw the line between your "real" self and your cover. There were moments where this worked, but overall the film failed to show any of the characters when they weren't undercover, so there was no contrast there. You never see the "real" side of the characters. You're not even sure what their motivations are, particularly. These aren't guys who are straddling the line between cop and cover. These guys forgot about the line years before the movie started.
The disappointing:
1.The music. Music was such a vital force in the show. Here there was really only one or two scenes where I felt it was used effectively. Otherwise the music was unmemorable.
2. The relationships: there weren't any. Crockett and Tubbs are shown to have a well-oiled working relationship, but there wasn't any chemistry between them, you didn't get the feeling that either of these guys would take a bullet for the other. And random shower sex does not an intimate relationship make. (FYI, both Crockett and Tubbs had shower sex, but not with each other. Might have been more interesting if it was).
3. The acting: with the exception of Gong Li and John Hawkes (known better from Deadwood) the acting was nonexistant. I normally like Jamie Foxx okay, but here he was almost as expressionless as Colin Farrell. Gong Li and Hawkes (who was not in the movie long) were very good. They were the only characters I cared about.
4. The plot: also nonexistent. Either it was far too complex for me to follow or there wasn't one. It was hard to tell. It required the characters to travel a great deal, and scowl alot.
5. The setting: generic. There was very little to hang on to. It's been noted in the reviews, but the movie could have been set anywhere. NOt much to tie it to Miami, no real sense of the city as a place.
The Bad:
1. The dialogue: Michael Mann should stick to directing. I vaguely remember that there were some good writing moments in "Heat" but this... argh. The dialogue was ridiculous. Most of the time I couldn't understand any of the characters (which granted is a delivery/direction problem and not a writing problem). The script was truely bad.
2. Colin Farrell. Ugh. He comes across as if there is nothing going on upstairs. No life in his eyes, his face hardly ever changes expression, his delivery was consistently monotonous and not in a good way. (Monotonous can work. See Lt. Castillo from the original series). Triple ugh. I knew I didn't like him, but this settled it.
And the inevitable:
I tried hard to go into the movie with no intentions of holding it up to the show. I had heard that Michael Mann wanted to avoid that. But comparisons were unavoidable, because the movie didn't work as a movie and therefore the show consistently upstaged the movie.
The "In the Air Tonight" sequence from the show's pilot had better acting, writing, and direction than the entire film.
The show, while occasionally cheesy, cared about its characters. Here I completely agree with the Washington Post review I quoted previously. Don Johnson, much mocked as he has been, showed more charisma and depth of characterization as Crockett than all of the characters in the movie combined. For that matter, one silent glare from Edward James Olmos as Castillo conveyed more than all the brooding dramatic posturing of the stars of the film.
It's like Mann tried so hard to prevent comparisons to his past show that he avoided anything that made the show good while filming the movie. I don't understand why this film even got made. Why bother calling it Miami Vice, naming the characters Crockett and Tubbs, when there is nothing at all in common with the show. The film was a fairly mixed bag, an interestingly constructed action film with substandard dialogue and wooden acting. There was little to tie the film to the setting of Miami. Mann didn't seem to be trying to say anything new, but he also didn't develop or embellish the achievements of his past.
wow. Okay, I just wrote a book about it. I'm gonna stop now.
jadefire88 and I and my bro and our friend Joyus Frius went to the midnight show of Miami Vice.
What I learned:
1. Midnight shows at our favored theatre are much... rowdier... than we're used to, even for the District. Like seeing a film at Union Station. If you've ever experienced that, you'll know what I mean. People tend to talk alot, come and go at random and laugh whenever anyone gets shot. It's... distracting.
2. Apparently I've gotten old. Staying up that late has left me feeling much like I got hit by a bus.
3. It's cliche, but Colin Farrell is a crappier actor than I remembered.
4. Gong Li can manage to break my heart even when the rest of the movie remains expressionless.
5. If the rest of your team goes on a bust and you stay back to get groceries, you're a sitting duck for meth-addled white supremicist whackos who will use you for some unspecified blackmail attempt. After you are rescued, you shouldn't linger in the doorway of the trailer where you've been held captive, as it may just explode.
6. If you're a cold-as-ice business woman in the hyper-masculine underworld, be aware that if you inexplicibly take a romantic jaunt to Cuba with a low-level operator (and undercover cop) he just may use you to further his own agenda rather than love you and leave you, which ultimately might have been preferable.
Okay. The good:
1. Visuals - when Michael Mann is on, he's hot shit. I've never seen the sky filmed the way he did in this flick. Huge, billowy clouds, lightening, the heaviness of a coming tropical storm... just breathtaking. Most directors avoid real-life weather, as it makes continuity between shots difficult. The weather was practically another member of the cast here.
2. Camera work - while there were some murky, grainy shots (the film was actually digital video, and the graininess was intentional, but it didn't do anything for me) there were also snatches of almost abstract imagery and surprising angles. Shots where the immediate foreground stays out of focus and the background is in crisp focus, and stays like that for longer than I am used to, and doesn't always resolve the way I expected. All of this without becoming stale or overly pretentious, even if it was self-conscious here and there.
3. The fire-fights - very different from typical action movie fare, though I can't put my finger on why. The violence was startling, and the final shoot-out filmed more like a guerrilla war instead of the "duel at twenty paces" action that normally makes up scenes like this. The gunshots tended to pop instead of boom, if that makes sense. It was more realistic and yet abstract.
4. The ending. Liked how it just stopped, very much like the show.
The ambiguous:
1. the way the movie just starts, with no introduction of who the characters are or what they're doing. You're dropped into the midst of the story with very little to hang on to. It's disorienting and to some extent I liked that, it made you feel like you were part of the action rather than an observer. On the other hand, I had no clue that the tough blond chick, the skinny guy and the bald beefy guy were vice cops Gina, Zito and Switek. At least I assume they were, only Zito was referred to by name, and that was in the final scenes of the film. It wasn't entirely clear that Trudy was a cop either at first. Forget figuring out what the relationships were between the various baddies.
2. a theme the film tried to develop was that the further you go "under" the harder it is to draw the line between your "real" self and your cover. There were moments where this worked, but overall the film failed to show any of the characters when they weren't undercover, so there was no contrast there. You never see the "real" side of the characters. You're not even sure what their motivations are, particularly. These aren't guys who are straddling the line between cop and cover. These guys forgot about the line years before the movie started.
The disappointing:
1.The music. Music was such a vital force in the show. Here there was really only one or two scenes where I felt it was used effectively. Otherwise the music was unmemorable.
2. The relationships: there weren't any. Crockett and Tubbs are shown to have a well-oiled working relationship, but there wasn't any chemistry between them, you didn't get the feeling that either of these guys would take a bullet for the other. And random shower sex does not an intimate relationship make. (FYI, both Crockett and Tubbs had shower sex, but not with each other. Might have been more interesting if it was).
3. The acting: with the exception of Gong Li and John Hawkes (known better from Deadwood) the acting was nonexistant. I normally like Jamie Foxx okay, but here he was almost as expressionless as Colin Farrell. Gong Li and Hawkes (who was not in the movie long) were very good. They were the only characters I cared about.
4. The plot: also nonexistent. Either it was far too complex for me to follow or there wasn't one. It was hard to tell. It required the characters to travel a great deal, and scowl alot.
5. The setting: generic. There was very little to hang on to. It's been noted in the reviews, but the movie could have been set anywhere. NOt much to tie it to Miami, no real sense of the city as a place.
The Bad:
1. The dialogue: Michael Mann should stick to directing. I vaguely remember that there were some good writing moments in "Heat" but this... argh. The dialogue was ridiculous. Most of the time I couldn't understand any of the characters (which granted is a delivery/direction problem and not a writing problem). The script was truely bad.
2. Colin Farrell. Ugh. He comes across as if there is nothing going on upstairs. No life in his eyes, his face hardly ever changes expression, his delivery was consistently monotonous and not in a good way. (Monotonous can work. See Lt. Castillo from the original series). Triple ugh. I knew I didn't like him, but this settled it.
And the inevitable:
I tried hard to go into the movie with no intentions of holding it up to the show. I had heard that Michael Mann wanted to avoid that. But comparisons were unavoidable, because the movie didn't work as a movie and therefore the show consistently upstaged the movie.
The "In the Air Tonight" sequence from the show's pilot had better acting, writing, and direction than the entire film.
The show, while occasionally cheesy, cared about its characters. Here I completely agree with the Washington Post review I quoted previously. Don Johnson, much mocked as he has been, showed more charisma and depth of characterization as Crockett than all of the characters in the movie combined. For that matter, one silent glare from Edward James Olmos as Castillo conveyed more than all the brooding dramatic posturing of the stars of the film.
It's like Mann tried so hard to prevent comparisons to his past show that he avoided anything that made the show good while filming the movie. I don't understand why this film even got made. Why bother calling it Miami Vice, naming the characters Crockett and Tubbs, when there is nothing at all in common with the show. The film was a fairly mixed bag, an interestingly constructed action film with substandard dialogue and wooden acting. There was little to tie the film to the setting of Miami. Mann didn't seem to be trying to say anything new, but he also didn't develop or embellish the achievements of his past.
wow. Okay, I just wrote a book about it. I'm gonna stop now.