Miami Vice

The only remotely interesting action in the film takes place in the first and final twenty minutes. During the long stretches in between we get to see Jaime Foxx brooding in the shower, Colin Farrell driving an expensive sports car no honest detective should be able to afford; the virtuous Foxx sticking up for a working girl by working over two body guards who seem so transfixed by his talent that they walk into his faux Kung Foo kicks; and then there’s Farrell, his sunglasses cemented to his helmet hair, channeling Joe Friday as he castigates the lead investigator with mono-syllabic threats. Everybody loads and reloads their guns, and when they’re really angry they load and reload bigger guns.

As for the so called plot, it starts off promisingly when two undercover agents are murdered during a drug buy. In the movie’s only original scene, the audience gets to view the agent’s annihilation from the back seat of their car. There’s plenty of shattered glass and cannonball sized bullets passing through the bodies. Viewed from the front of the car the scene would be too gory for even a morgue attendant to stomach. Although there can be no doubt about the agent’s fate, by shooting the action from the rear, there’s still a lot that’s left to the viewer’s imagination.

Crocket and Tubbs volunteer to go under cover to nail the Cuban drug cartel responsible for their fellow agent’s deaths, and are immediately tested by the cartel’s middleman, Jose Yero (John Ortiz). After a successful first run, Crockett and Tubbs are entrusted with the super bowl of drug deals. Yero is suspicious of the hot shot Americans, but Isabel (Gong Li), the cartel’s money launderer, predictably falls for Crockett. The two begin a time consuming affair while everyone else stays busy checking their guns. Yero and his boss, Jesus Montoya (Luis Tosar), finally catch on that they’ve been set up and kidnap Tubbs’ girlfriend in the hopes he’ll go away quietly. Now Tubbs really has a reason to brood and everyone finally has a reason to shoot the humongous weapons they’ve been furiously loading and reloading. The climax is predictable -- gee, who’s going to win, the bad guys who know they’re facing their Waterloo and bring the slowest, biggest targets they can find, or the two scruffy faced bad asses with unlimited firepower out for vengeance? Two guesses and the first one doesn’t count.

Foxx’s wide range of acting skills consists of raising his left eyebrow in a threatening manner, piloting a plane, or guiding a speedboat at high speed – and you can bet he had a stand-in for the last two tasks. But Foxx isn’t the only one mailing in his performance. Co-star Colin Farrell, essaying the role of playboy detective Sonny Crockett, must consider suppressing his Irish brogue adequate acting because he also subscribes to the school of thought that creasing one’s eyebrow conveys deep emotion. At least Farrell gets to look at Gong Li, who is wholly unconvincing in her role as Isabella, Montoya’s financial wizard. A superstar in her native China, Li is indeed beautiful, but should have picked a more defined role for her stab at mass exposure in the U.S. She’d have been better off being exposed to bubonic plague than being the love interest in this paint by numbers remake. Her English is perfect one moment and impenetrable the next, but the blame has to rest with director/writer Michael Mann, who chose to saddle her with a lion’s share of tongue-twisting dialogue. The other actors twitch, snarl and manipulate their ponderous expressions like mimes with stomach cramps. Equally perplexing is Isabella’s sudden shift from exotic ice queen to weak-kneed geisha at the mere site of Sonny Crockett. Okay, so maybe Colin Farrell is a hunk, but Mann asks the audience to suspend belief past the breaking point by having Isabella and Crockett take off to Cuba in his boat on a whim. (Crockett asks Isabella where he can find a good mojito and she offers to show him. The mojito happens to be in Cuba. Never mind that her boss is expecting her to move a huge drug shipment ,and Crockett is under cover trying to bust her boss, or that they waltz into a communist country with no questions asked – love conquers all.) Gong Li’s scenes with Farrell are laborious; they have absolutely no chemistry together, barely look one another in the eye and then suddenly become pretzel- locked like two wrestlers in a steel cage match. At one point during their contorted lovemaking the camera focuses on the glistening tears in Isabella’s eyes. You’ll be crying too, wondering why you’ve already wasted so much of your free time.

The main villains in the film couldn’t scare Don Knotts. John Ortiz, who plays middleman Jose Yero, looks like a geeky version of Che Guevara, and judging by the circles under his eyes and his protracted speech patterns, the balding Tosar appears to have gotten little sleep before taking the role. He’s either sitting in a limo, sitting on a bed, or sitting behind a desk, looking as bored as the audience. His unlikely alliance with the trailer trash Neo Nazis who kidnap Tubbs’ girlfriend Trudi is never fully explained, nor is Gong Li’s Chinese/Cuban heritage. And Crockett’s crystal clear phone reception from Miami to Isabella in Geneva? Hey, get me one of them phones. Any writer worth his laptop would’ve had a creative catharsis with these nuggets, but for Mann just putting them out there with his name behind it seems enough.

The minor roles in the film are equally miscast – Naomie Harris, who plays Foxx’s girlfriend Trudi, is tougher than he is – a biotch so testy she’s lucky to have a boyfriend, even if he’s a macho lunk head. Not since Lucretia Borgia has there been a woman so deserving of death. But despite getting beaten, blown up and burned, Harris’ Trudi comes back more times than a bad burrito. Jowly Barry Shebaka Henley is completely miscast as Lt. Castillo, previously assayed with a steely stare, clenched jaw and believable authority by Edward James Olmos. Henley looks like a cross between Yogi Bear and the Michelin Man and is as threatening as Santa Claus. John Hawkes, excellent in the HBO western “Deadwood” as Sol Starr, suffers the indignation of playing Alonzo, the jittery informant responsible for getting the first pair of undercovers riddled like moth-eaten jackets. As a reward for his traitorous act his family is slaughtered, and knowing he’s next, Alonzo attempts to bolt the dark metropolis. Crockett and Tubbs talk him down, but Alonzo escapes retribution by stepping in front of a bus. Let’s hope Hawkes can get this cameo removed from his resume. Elizabeth Rodriguez (Detective Gina Calebrese) is one step removed from a raging hormone, a walking, threat-spewing, gun-happy knot of muscle who seems to get louder in every scene. At least she leaves an impression. Justin Theroux (Detective Larry Zito) seems to exist only to get shot.

In an attempt to match the whirlwind climaxes on the TV show, Mann shoves Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” into the soundtrack. “In the Air Tonight” was one of the then current songs used on the TV version to accentuate the tension in the atmosphere whenever a shootout was imminent. Too bad he didn’t use the original version of the song – instead Mann cops a discordant, gnarly version that even Trent Razor would reject. It’s just another watered down substitution for quality that comes up short when compared to the original.

“Miami Vice” may be worth looking at for the glimpses of places you’re glad you’re not in, or for Elizabeth Rodriguez’s pint-sized meltdowns. You’ll drool over the expensive gadgets and Gong Li (hey, I’m single, I can say that), but you’ll probably wind up mostly drooling on yourself, because you’re bound to fall asleep before the big shootout.

Miami Twice – The Extras

The DVD extras lean heavily on Mann, and why not, he wrote the movie, directed it, selected the locations, and even shot the opening scene in the speedboat from below decks himself when rough seas forced the rest of the camera crew topside. Now that’s a Mann. Viewers will also get an inside look at how one of the trickier scenes in a Haitian hotel was blocked out. The most enlightening and fun feature is the gun training sequence in which Steve Mesa teaches Colin Farrell, Jaime Foxx and Elizabeth Rodriguez how to shoot convincingly. It’s no surprise that Foxx plays the fool and Rodriguez is game; but Farrell might surprise you with the flippant request for a chiropractor after firing one of the weapons. And Justin Theroux gets more lines in the extras than in the entire movie, including his critique of some of the less than charming locations: “You can’t Google some of the places we’ve been in.” Despite the informative behind the scenes vignettes, “Miami Vice” is best seen in reruns on TV Land, rather than on your DVD player. At nearly two and a half sluggish hours you’ll say to yourself, “Mann, you’ve got to be kidding.”