Film of the Week: Miami Vice

Miami Vice, Michael Mann's 2006 adaptation of the TV series of the same name of which he was also a major creative figure, opens and closes abruptly. In the film's opening minutes, we see our duo of Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) already on assignment, in the midst of an undercover sting on a high-profile pimp, while the film's closing is Crockett en-route to the hospital, checking on a member of the team (and Tubbs's wife) as she awakens from a coma, much of the film's major conflicts seemingly unresolved. It's somewhat jarring, but rather than feeling as though the story is to a degree incomplete, it almost feels, fittingly, episodic. Rather than a sweeping, loud shoot-em-up, the film instead feels strangely intimate, a peek into the lives of our troubled heroes for just a little while. It's that emphasis on the human connection that helps Miami Vice, a reevaluated cult classic of 2000s cinema, stand out so beautifully.

While the focus of this review will largely be on the film's strangely human elements, it is worth mentioning that as an action-thriller police procedural, Miami Vice absolutely whips. Michael Mann, aided by Collateral, shoots the film in a unique mix of digital cinematography and close-up, shaky shots, giving it an often dreamlike energy as we seemingly exist as a third party observer to the action. The story, an undercover mission featuring the two detectives enrolled in an elaborate international conspiracy, is suitably tense, with a particular highlight being Crockett and Tubbs's sit-down with a cartel intelligence officer. What is on paper a basic conversation feels suitably tense as Mann highlights the sheer number of criminals surrounding the duo, it's escalation naturally fitting while it's resolution, Crockett pulling a grenade and channeling his best loose cannon, is effectively thrilling. Mann knows how to shoot a set-piece, and the film gives him ample opportunity, from car chases to stand-offs to warehouse raids, in his classic coldly clinical style.The final shootout in particular is vicious and to-the-point. There's no surprise ambushes, no last words, and no last-chance second winds. If you're hit, you're dead, and we regularly watch as both cartel goons and cops are ripped to shreds without mercy or exception.

Where the film truly sings is in it's quiet moments. Miami Vice is often fascinated by the personal lives and mindsets of it's subjects, and the humanity with which Mann treats them makes the film as a whole feel tenser and nastier when violence rears it's head. The film's establishing moment is truly when criminal informant Alonzo Stevens (John Hawkes) discovers that his wife, a hostage of the cartel taken to force him to give up information, has been killed. The depiction of the wife's death, her body sprawled in the background as a white supremacist hitman roots through her fridge, is chilling, and Hawkes absolutely kills what is ultimately a very minor role, and we see him go through a whirlwind of terror, desperation, and cold desperation in a matter of minutes as Stevens realizes she's gone before taking his own life. It's a sobering moment that makes the film's stakes feel very real.

These stakes hang over Crockett and Tubbs in every moment, especially as their own personal lives become dangerously intertwined. The portrayal of these personal lives do somewhat fall into a pitfall of Mann's, his tendency to make women accessory to his protagonists, but the quiet moments, like Tubbs taking a shower with his wife, are strangely moving. There's a feeling of quiet familiarity to it, of people who've known each other for so long that words just aren't needed to convey it, and it goes a long way to making these feel like real, established relationships. A particularly beautiful moment is Crockett taking Isabella (Gong Li), financial adviser and wife to cartel head Arcángel de Jesús Montoya (Luis Tosar), dancing, a first step in an apparent plan to earn her trust that rapidly evolves into something much more real. Crockett and Isabella talk about their lives and relationship with the world of crime, but when they're on the floor, no words are spoken, their bodies moving in motion with a mixture of mambo and, surprisingly. The chemistry between Li and Farrell is simmering, quietly erotic and seemingly evolving before the audiences eyes, and you genuinely come away feeling the two's connection, even as it explodes into tragedy.

This fascination with humanity even extends to Montoya, the film's ultimate villain. Rather than a generic, menacing cartel bad guy, Tosar injects a strangely affable nature to Montoya, who speaks calmly and plainly in his various interactions. The one peek we get into his relationship with Isabella, a calm discussion about her evaluation of Crockett and Tubbs, is not a fight or a husband exerting authority, but a simple, trusting conversation. Rather than defang the villain, it makes him intriguing and often unnervingly reasonable. Montoya is no ruthless gangster, he's a businessman willing to tolerate our heroes so long as they don't affect the bottom line, and it's the moment he, manipulated by the embittered intelligence officer with eyes for Isabella, betrays this idea that you instantly feel the noose tighten. 

I watched Miami Vice largely just to chip in on the inexplicable Twitter discourse surrounding it, and I'm delighted to confirm that it's supremely my shit. A beautiful, emotionally-driven action movie exactly within the wheelhouse of it's auteur director, full of thrills and ending on a perfect melancholy note. I guess you could say I'm a fiend for this type of stuff.