One Good Vice

Miami Vice

(R)

originally published August 2, 2006

A bestubbled Don Johnson, blazer sleeves pushed to the elbows, and the more nattily attired Philip Michael Thomas posed against the colorful backdrop of southern Florida are emblematic of the 1980s, leaving writer-director Michael Mann (Heat, Collateral) with a critical decision regarding the transportation of his popular television series to the big screen: kitsch or grit? He opts not to bank on nostalgia. No Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller as Crockett and Tubbs, no pastel color scheme, no houseboat or pet alligator, and no Jan Hammer theme tune. Still, the core of “Miami Vice” - speed - remains.

The cars, the boats and the girls all go very fast, as do undercover narcs Detective James “Sonny” Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Detective Ricardo “Rico” Tubbs (Jamie Foxx, who Academy Award or not, is still relegated to Philip Michael Thomas' second banana). The two must live like extravagant billionaire drug lords else they’ll blow their cover. Taking charge of a federal sting gone bad, the two hook a much larger fish than originally intended: kingpin Arcángel de Jesús Montoya (Luis Tosar). Soon, Crockett has fallen for Montoya’s lady, Isabella (Gong Li, Memoirs of a Geisha), and the duo has run afoul of the trafficker’s intel-gathering right hand (John Ortiz). I’m a little fuzzy on the specifics, as Mann tricks up the deals considerably with what I call "trees for the forest" syndrome. I can see the whole forest, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out the species of every tree.

Yet as dense and hard to follow as Vice can be, the film thankfully hardboils down to an old-fashioned undercover cops-and-robbers tale. Mann does shock with some ballsy emotion, dicey stuff for a summer action movie that should be populated with sports cars, go-fast boats, hot girls and guns (of which the non-clichéd Vice has fleets). But Vice is more complex than that. Mann beautifully sketches the life and partnership of his two dedicated ciphers. Showing us little of Crockett and Tubbs’ off-the-clock personal lives (a brief shower scene between Tubbs and his lady, a fellow officer played by Naomie Harris of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, is about it), he intends his heroes to be all business, which becomes risky when things get personal, as it does between Crockett and Isabella. Fortunately, the cooler of the two, Tubbs, senses the personal risks of deep cover and stands ready to rescue the reckless Crockett when he starts drowning in this tempting false reality. Wiping away the glitz of Hollywood action to reveal the grimy veneer of the drug world, this Vice edges away from sleek entertainment toward realistic crime drama. Good thing telling those tales is tougher-than-tough guy filmmaker Mann’s virtue, not his vice.

Drew Wheeler

Drew Wheeler