Miami Vice

The Film

I have a confession that I feel I should make upfront: I have never seen a single episode of the 1980s television series Miami Vice; nor have I ever felt particularly inclined to rectify this. As such, this review of its 2006 spin-off movie should be taken very much as a neophyte's opinion. It may well be that those with a knowledge of the series will get something else out of the film. However, as I'm sure I have argued on previous occasions, a film that cannot be enjoyed purely on its own merits is a poor film - and frankly, Miami Vice is a very poor film.

As with the series, the film focuses on Miami-based vice detectives Sonny Crockett (played by Colin Farrell in this incarnation) and Rico Tubbs (Jamie Foxx). Following a leak from inside the FBI resulting in the deaths of several agents during a drugs sting, the pair go undercover to South America, posing as drug runners in an attempt to infiltrate the clandestine smuggling organisation. Along the way, Crockett takes a shine to Isabella (Gong Li), one of the ring's senior officials, giving him intimate access to the very heart of the operation. As Crockett continues to play this dangerous game, Tubbs begins to question where his partner's loyalties lie...


With remakes and big screen adaptations of television series all the rage at the moment, at least among jaded studio executives terrified of the notion of taking a gamble with a new idea, the fact that Miami Vice made the leap to the silver screen is not entirely surprising. What is unexpected, however, is that the man responsible is the maverick Michael Mann, who served as executive producer on the original series. Rather than paying homage to the style of the 80s, Mann elects instead to update the formula and characters for the 21st century, resulting in, or so I'm told, a film that is Miami Vice more or less in name only, with even the central characters of Crockett and Tubbs undergoing substantial revisions, compared to their counterparts in the series as played by Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas.

Unfortunately, it seems pretty clear that this film is riding on the prestige of its title more than anything, because the end result is, quite frankly, an incoherent mess that I highly doubt would be capable of standing on its own two feet. Crockett and Tubbs are an attitude rather than actual characters, swaggering around various sun-drenched locales with their jaws firmly set and their designer sunglasses glinting in the harsh light. The po-faced natures of both the characters and the script, not to mention the number of times Colin Farrell slicks back his greasy hair, make the whole thing unintentionally humorous - a veritable parody of "trendy" cop series like CSI, not to mention the film's own parent show, if only it realised it. Unfortunately none of this posturing can conceal quite how empty the script is, feeling suspiciously like the plot of a 45-minute television episode stretched to a bloated 140 minutes. The dialogue is even worse: "If you can't do time, don't mess with crime" is an actual line uttered by one of the characters at one point - and I'll spare you the absolute worst exchanges.


The visual style of Miami Vice should be familiar to anyone who has seen Mann's previous film, Collateral. Mann has been a major proponent of digital photography, due to its ease of use and versatility when it comes to shooting night scenes, and as with his earlier film, he and cinematographer Dion Beebe mix 1080p HDTV footage with more conventional 35mm material. The latter is confined, it would seem, to a small handful of scenes, and by and large they are the best-looking in the film. The digital material, which makes up the bulk of the footage, ranges from generally acceptable to eye-searingly bad, with daylight shots generally faring well, albeit having a rather TV-like appearance. The much-vaunted night photography, however, is affected by poor contrast (the blacks end up looking like dull grey) and an extremely obnoxious sheen of digital noise which, unlike film grain, never feels natural and serves only to distract from the events that are playing out behind it. At times, such as during Crockett and Tubbs' rooftop conversation near the start of the film, the noise is so intrusive that it begins to resemble static on a poor antenna connection. Mann's over-reliance on jittery hand-held camerawork, meanwhile, makes the whole experience literally nauseating, with the camera dancing around in the worst Michael Bay-style fashion, and, ironically enough, distancing me from the action rather than, as I presume was Mann's intention, drawing me in. Worst of all, however, is the use of footage that seems to have been shot at 60fps and then deinterlaced, resulting in smeared, blurry movement that wouldn't seem out of place in a drug trip.

Miami Vice is ultimately close to two and a half hours of posturing, insincere characterisation and abrasive style, none of which would suggest, barring the appearance of his name during the opening credits, that a filmmaker of Michael Mann's calibre was behind it. To describe it as a failed experiment would be charitable: a mess is a more accurate description.

HD DVD Presentation

Miami Vice arrives in high definition on a dual-sided HD DVD/DVD combo disc. The DVD side contains the theatrical cut, while the HD DVD side features an extended edition. That different cuts are to be found on each side is a little strange, especially given that it means that those still restricted to standard definition are unlikely to buy the combo release when the extended cut can be bought separately on DVD.

Anyway, the 1080p, VC1-encoded transfer is impressive: undeniably, it shows all the flaws of the source material, but the compressionists have done a stellar job with the often poor quality footage with which they had to work. The daylight HD scenes look incredibly smooth, and the smattering of 35mm footage is most impressive, making me wish that the entire film had been shot that way. The night scenes, predictably, showcase virtually every single artefact of digital photography known to man, and it is in these instances that the encoder occasionally slips up, with the minutest traces of artefacting visible in the backgrounds during hand-held scenes with a prevalence of noise. In a sense, it's very difficult to review the image quality of a film like this, given that there are moments that are going to look absolutely awful no matter how they are treated. Therefore, given the lack of edge enhancement or any signs of digital tampering (barring the original photography itself!), and given the obvious high quality of the 35mm elements, I'm going to err on the side of caution and assume that the HD DVD looks more or less as good as it possibly could have.

The sound is not quite in the same league. Originally, the HD DVD was announced as featuring a Dolby TrueHD track, which was dropped mere weeks before it hit the streets. I'm not convinced that a TrueHD track would have made much of a difference, though, given that my main complaint about the sound, the fact that the dialogue is damn near incoherent at times, seems to stem from a combination of factors other than the disc itself - the recording, the performances, the use of overbearing music, and so on. This is definitely not "demo material", but, as far as I can gather, it corresponds with Mann's intentions.

English, Spanish and French subtitles are included, although these don't cover the audio commentary or U-control features.

Extras

The bonus materials are split across both sides of the disc, with the standard definition side containing two brief and not particularly illuminating featurettes, entitles Miami & Beyond: shooting on location and Miami Vice Undercover. The titles are pretty self-explanatory, detailing the decision to film in South America and the two leads training with real life undercover agents, respectively. Both run for a little over 10 minutes each.

The high definition side, meanwhile, contains an audio commentary by Michael Mann, which actually turns out to be somewhat better than the film itself, as the writer/director discusses a wide range of issues, including changes made to the characters compared with the TV series, the perils of shooting in South America, the unique technical challenges posed by shooting in high definition, and the minor alterations made here and there between the theatrical and extended cuts. Mann proves to be a lucid and entertaining speaker, and he clearly has a great love for the finished product, but unfortunately I can't say his enthusiasm rubbed off on me.

HD DVD Exclusive Extras

As with a number of their HD DVD releases, Universal have fashioned Miami Vice with an array of interactive features, presented here under the label of "U-Control". Corny name aside, this proves to be a rather apt title, because it requires some degree of user input, instead of simply playing of its own volition in the manner of the "In-Movie Experiences" found on the likes of V for Vendetta and Constantine, or the "Instant Access" material on Universal's own Miami Vice.

A wide variety of different materials are on offer here, ranging from interesting to frightfully dull - the obvious benefit being that the user can select what to view, thereby allowing you to avoid the materials you don't find interesting. If, like me, you have no interest in learning the details of the various cars, boats and planes Crockett and Tubbs ride throughout the film, you're free to ignore them and instead concentrate on, say, production photographs or various picture-in-picture features, which include interviews and behind the scenes footage.

The downside to all of this, of course, is that you can't simply sit back and let the thing play itself. The various features don't play automatically, instead requiring you to actually select the appropriate icon when it appears - with which owners of the original DVD of The Matrix and its "Follow the White Rabbit" mode will be all too familiar. Personally I would have appreciated an option to, say, automatically disable GPS tracking and enable picture-in-picture before starting the feature, but unfortunately nothing of the sort is provided.

Overall

Universal have served up a rather impressive HD DVD for this shambolic mess of a film, with the quality of many of the extras outstripping that of the main feature. It's difficult to recommend this disc even from a purely technical perspective, but fans of the film itself should be well pleased with this release.

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