At first I didn't think I was going to qualify to write a comment on this film since I walked out after 30 minutes. But seeing that about half of the comments here seem to have the same opinion as mine and they watched over 2 hours of it to get there, then my relatively short endurance doesn't seem that bad in retrospect.
Where did it go wrong? A jerky start to the movie as if reel number one went missing in the projection booth, we're in some dance club somewhere, but praise the gods, it is Nina Simone on the soundtrack with the Felix Da Housecat remix of Sinnerman! I'm thinking - confusing start to the movie but Mann has not lost his instinct for the good soundtrack so let's call it a draw to start with and keep watching. In the murky darkness Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx as Crockett and Tubbs begin to be apparent. They are staring into the distance across the club for most of the time except for when Crockett heads for drinks and puts the moves on the bartenderess - then back to more staring. At what we are not sure of, some sort of honey trap sting? Some guy meets another guy who gives him his female escorts and the guy heads into the back room to party down but the cops have it wired and are watching it on screens anyway, so what are Crockett and Tubbs looking at? Then for some reason they punch and kick their way across the room to get to somebody for who knows what reason - at least I think it was them fighting their way across the room because it was pretty dark and hard to tell. Then they go out on some balcony to take some private calls with their confidential informants on what they themselves even admit are un-secured un-encrypted phone lines. Turns out their buddy informant (played by John Hawkes, i.e. Sol Star from TV's Deadwood, yeah!) is in trouble and is on the run from the drug dealers he snitched out who meanwhile in a cutaway shot proceed to wipe out the FBI guys (we're gonna need some more FBI guys) that the informant linked them up with. Crockett and Tubbs get the triangulation somehow on their runaway buddy and within a minute (remember they were on the disco balcony seconds before) are driving right up beside him on the freeway and get him to pull over. Meanwhile the guy's family has been wiped out by the drug gang and when Crockett and Tubbs give him the word on that. he walks in front of an approaching transport truck. Turns out of course that the FBI has a leak and Crockett and Tubbs have to go undercover without anyone knowing who they are so that the leak won't give them up. So the drug dealers are in it with some drug importers who have fast boats and a warehouse of drugs so Crockett and Tubbs knock over the warehouse, blow up the boats and rip off the drugs - presumably so that they can offer themselves as replacement boat drivers cause the importer is gonna need a replacement shipment ultra-fast (we're gonna need some more drugs pronto). Then the whole cop posse is intimidating some hood who presumably has to hook them up with the dreaded drug importer gang. Then Tubbs & his lady friend cop are back at his/her place taking a shower and start to get it on and then...
I don't know what happened next, because that was when I got up and walked out.
Because somewhere on the way to that scene I had just lost interest in the movie and wasn't even interested enough in the 2 characters making out to care what was going to happen next to them.
In this Miami Vice, I didn't know who these characters were, had no empathy for them and pretty much could roughly guess the rest of the plot from that point forward when I stopped watching. This was when it was possible to tell what I was watching in the murk and the graininess because a lot of the time it was pretty unclear what was going on. And I have no trouble with hand-held - I even liked the Bourne Supremacy's car chase with the crazy out of control hand-held - but I was shocked at the shakiness and graininess and darkness of some of this footage. And then I read they spent $135 million on this?
And I have no attachment to the old TV Miami Vice. I haven't seen an episode in probably almost 20 years. But I seem to remember that Crockett and Tubbs were cool bad-a$$ cops with fast cars and attitude and cool clothes for the time and they were tight with each other and would back each other up to the death and always had a fast wise crack ready.
The Crockett and Tubbs in this movie did not give off any of that chemistry, didn't have lines with any cool dialogue and the whole thing seemed to be pretty darkly and confusingly filmed.
Maybe I missed something by walking out, but according to a lot of these reviews I apparently didn't.
Where did it go wrong? A jerky start to the movie as if reel number one went missing in the projection booth, we're in some dance club somewhere, but praise the gods, it is Nina Simone on the soundtrack with the Felix Da Housecat remix of Sinnerman! I'm thinking - confusing start to the movie but Mann has not lost his instinct for the good soundtrack so let's call it a draw to start with and keep watching. In the murky darkness Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx as Crockett and Tubbs begin to be apparent. They are staring into the distance across the club for most of the time except for when Crockett heads for drinks and puts the moves on the bartenderess - then back to more staring. At what we are not sure of, some sort of honey trap sting? Some guy meets another guy who gives him his female escorts and the guy heads into the back room to party down but the cops have it wired and are watching it on screens anyway, so what are Crockett and Tubbs looking at? Then for some reason they punch and kick their way across the room to get to somebody for who knows what reason - at least I think it was them fighting their way across the room because it was pretty dark and hard to tell. Then they go out on some balcony to take some private calls with their confidential informants on what they themselves even admit are un-secured un-encrypted phone lines. Turns out their buddy informant (played by John Hawkes, i.e. Sol Star from TV's Deadwood, yeah!) is in trouble and is on the run from the drug dealers he snitched out who meanwhile in a cutaway shot proceed to wipe out the FBI guys (we're gonna need some more FBI guys) that the informant linked them up with. Crockett and Tubbs get the triangulation somehow on their runaway buddy and within a minute (remember they were on the disco balcony seconds before) are driving right up beside him on the freeway and get him to pull over. Meanwhile the guy's family has been wiped out by the drug gang and when Crockett and Tubbs give him the word on that. he walks in front of an approaching transport truck. Turns out of course that the FBI has a leak and Crockett and Tubbs have to go undercover without anyone knowing who they are so that the leak won't give them up. So the drug dealers are in it with some drug importers who have fast boats and a warehouse of drugs so Crockett and Tubbs knock over the warehouse, blow up the boats and rip off the drugs - presumably so that they can offer themselves as replacement boat drivers cause the importer is gonna need a replacement shipment ultra-fast (we're gonna need some more drugs pronto). Then the whole cop posse is intimidating some hood who presumably has to hook them up with the dreaded drug importer gang. Then Tubbs & his lady friend cop are back at his/her place taking a shower and start to get it on and then...
I don't know what happened next, because that was when I got up and walked out.
Because somewhere on the way to that scene I had just lost interest in the movie and wasn't even interested enough in the 2 characters making out to care what was going to happen next to them.
In this Miami Vice, I didn't know who these characters were, had no empathy for them and pretty much could roughly guess the rest of the plot from that point forward when I stopped watching. This was when it was possible to tell what I was watching in the murk and the graininess because a lot of the time it was pretty unclear what was going on. And I have no trouble with hand-held - I even liked the Bourne Supremacy's car chase with the crazy out of control hand-held - but I was shocked at the shakiness and graininess and darkness of some of this footage. And then I read they spent $135 million on this?
And I have no attachment to the old TV Miami Vice. I haven't seen an episode in probably almost 20 years. But I seem to remember that Crockett and Tubbs were cool bad-a$$ cops with fast cars and attitude and cool clothes for the time and they were tight with each other and would back each other up to the death and always had a fast wise crack ready.
The Crockett and Tubbs in this movie did not give off any of that chemistry, didn't have lines with any cool dialogue and the whole thing seemed to be pretty darkly and confusingly filmed.
Maybe I missed something by walking out, but according to a lot of these reviews I apparently didn't.