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Miami Vice
Movie Stats & Links

Starring: Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Gong Li, Naomie Harris, John Ortiz
MPAA Rated: R
Released By: Universal Pictures
Web Site: www.miamivice.com
Kiddie Movie: Nope, leave them at home.
Date Movie: The dudettes might like the look of the dudes, the dudes might like the look of the dudettes, but the story gets boring.
Gratuitous Sex: There is some, especially some good shower scenes, but no frontal.
Gratuitous Violence: There are some quality kills, but they don't save the movie.
Action: There is some chasing going on.
Laughs: Nah.
Memorable Scene: I did like the scene when "XXX" gets shot.  "XXX" is left out intentionally.
Memorable Quote: To give you a hint of some of the dialogue, there was a line straight from an Eagles' song, if I'm not mistaken:  "Take it to the limit, one more time."
Directed By: Michael Mann
Produced By: Pieter Jan Brugge, Michael Mann

Miami Vice
A Movie Review

MPAA Rated - R

It's 2:26 Long

A Review by
The Dude on the Right
It's another weekend when there were too many choices to make in terms of my movie going decisions, so I decided on the one that seemed to have all kinds of promise for me, with talk of nudity, sex, gratuitous violence, and action. That movie is "Miami Vice," the movie remake of the mid-to-late eighties TV hit, and it is directed by Michael Mann. This also gave me some extra hope because I was a big fan of his directing "Collateral." Here’s the basic story…

TV show aside, because this really is a different animal, Colin Farrell is Sonny Crockett and Jamie Foxx is Ricardo Tubbs. The movie opens with Crockett and Tubbs doing some vice-work with their crew of vice cops, in a Miami nightclub. But then Tubbs gets a phone call from an old undercover dude they used to work with, and the dude is in trouble. It’s a lucky day for our first round of bad guys because Crockett, Tubbs, and his team, are instantly off to try to save the other dude. Suddenly our heroes find themselves implanted in a drug cartel/smuggling ring, where somehow they seem to infiltrate said drug cartel, learning its inner working faster than you can probably say "Wasn’t Tubbs just having sex with his co-worker and now he and Crockett are having top-level meetings with the leader of the drug gang?" I guess things work fast in the world of vice in Miami, since as quickly as our heroes are having their top-level meeting, then successfully running their first batch of drugs, Crockett takes a day-trip via a go-really-fast boat to Cuba to get it on with Isabella (Gong Li), the financial genius of the cartel, and then it’s back to Miami to start transporting even larger quantities of drugs and bad stuff that our heroes have now been hired to smuggle.

But the drug world is never as simple as you might think it would be because there is always someone looking for even more money than the head dude, and he always seems to somehow get in the way of the cops doing their job. There also seem to be moles in various government agencies willing to tip off the bad guys (I’m sure there is money involved in this, also). And so we find, and I’m sorry for giving this away but I saw it coming from the minute the two of them were sleeping together, Trudy (Naomie Harris), Tubb’s main squeeze, kidnapped, by some of the dumbest criminals you have seen, and then finding herself stuck with a bunch of cops who take way too long to secure a crime scene (this scene was also telegraphed).  What does all of this lead to? Why a shootout, of course, and as apposed to the rest of the movie I do have to give Michael Mann credit because this was a kick-ass gunfight.

I guess with that last line you can guess I did not come away leaving "Miami Vice" as a fan of the movie, and if so, you guessed right. I guess the only thing I can really blame this on is the basic story getting so convoluted because the movie did have some gratuitous sex and violence, and even though lacking on the nudity front, some of the quality kills more than made up for that. But as I sat there, the story just kept jumping around at a pace that seemed wrong in the drug world, although I suppose the movie folks try to justify that by saying that both Isabella and Jose (John Ortiz), who plays sort of the "I can tell if a guy is a plant or not just by talking to him" kind of guy, were instantly able to tell that Crockett and Tubbs were on the up-and-up in the world of drug trade. And that is sort of too bad because as Michael Mann is usually want to do, "Miami Vice" is a fabulous-looking movie, with sweeping views of South American locals and some of Miami (though not as many as you might think), and all of the actors seem to try and do the best they can with the roles they are given.

Granted this movie looks great on the big screen, I’d say you could easily wait for the DVD (hopefully it will be un-rated with some blatant nudity and more violence) or even cable to catch the movie. In the end I’ve got to only give "Miami Vice" 2 stars out of 5. I had higher hopes, but maybe sometimes trying to make a movie "look" good gets in the way of also telling a great story.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

 

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