Miami Vice (2006) review

Unfortunately, Michael Mann's adaptation of the 1980s cop show of the same name, Miami Vice, kind of sucked.

The precision, skill and attention to detail that I came to expect from Mann after Heat, Collateral and Thief is nowhere to be seen here. Where those movies feel precise and intricately constructed, Miami Vice feels a lot more improvisational and like Mann was experimenting with digital cameras like David Lynch did with Inland Empire, but I don’t think it pays off at all. The movie looks ugly, the pacing is way too slow, the sound quality and mixing was really all over the place, the characters are bland as can be and the action scenes are terrible (especially when you remember that Michael Mann directed fucking Heat and Collateral) and the story is mostly unengaging and dull to watch. It felt like I was watching the second season of True Detective again, and Colin Farrell looking exactly like he did in that didn't help those feelings.

Farrell, as well as Jamie Fox, do what they can with the material, and are able to pull off watchable performances, but it's too little to salvage the movie.

If I wasn’t aware of Michael Mann’s work I would’ve shut this off after probably 30 minutes, but I expected *something* to happen in the plot that would justify or recontextualize some of what I was perceiving to be flaws. So, I stuck with it expecting a pay-off, but it never happened. It just played out like a generic, dull cop movie. I don’t understand the cult following this has at all, the defense of this movie I see looks like grasping for something that isn’t there.