How often have you seen, in movies, a shot of a plane flying through clouds? So often, I suspect, that you barely even see such shots any more. They transmit very basic information (we’re changing locations), and that’s that, we move on. Moreover, they always look like stock footage.
Not for Michael Mann, though. In his feature version of Miami Vice, a small plane flies from the United States to South America, and we have a few seconds of that flying-plane shot. Yet the cloudscape is so beautiful, with the plane so dwarfed by such magnificence, and the trajectory of the plane so artful, that this usually mechanical movie moment registers on the eye with a shock.
That’s director Mann for you; his movies insist on a visual quality that is purely cinematic. While some filmmakers seem to aspire to make movies that are really novels, and some seem to secretly want to be in TV, Mann is undeniably a film director.
But, two decades ago, he was an executive producer on the Miami Vice TV show — that monument to Eighties trash, remembered mostly for the clothes and the holiday locations. In the rush to turn all those old TV series into movies, perhaps it seemed natural to hand Miami Vice over to its former executive producer, though anyone who knows Mann’s career as a director was going to see that he wouldn’t merely retool the TV show.
And, duly, his Miami Vice is as unlike the TV show as possible. It is set in the present, not the Eighties, so there’s no chance of any style nostalgia. It’s dark where the original was sunny; it’s entirely humourless. Pity, though, that in reinventing Miami Vice Mann ended up with something that feels like a hundred other, more recent TV cop shows, especially those that rely heavily on hand-held camera and zip pans. I walked out of Miami Vice feeling like I’d just sat through four episodes of NYPD Blues in a row.
Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx play the cop partners going undercover to bust a big drug syndicate. Luckily for them, they have a huge array of resources at their disposal: from small planes to extra-fast speedboats that can run over to Cuba in no time and look like stealth bombers on water. Oh, and the large team of Swat-type back-up people with lots of shiny, heavy weaponry. James Bond would be envious.
Like Mann’s previous movie, Collateral (also shot by Dion Beebe), this one has interesting cinematography, an off-centre way that melds vérité and gloss. As far as I could tell at the screening I attended, where the projector seemed distinctly underpowered, it looks great.
In fact, the cinematography would seem to be the movie’s strongest suit. The dialogue is all staccato cop-speak; there is no chemistry between Farrell and Foxx, but then that would have dissipated the studied machismo. Not that either actor projects enough personality or individuality to spark any chemistry, anyway.
What distinguishes Farrell and Foxx here is how they look: the former’s long rat’s-tail hair and biker moustache; the latter’s Thelonious Monk beardlet and apparently painted-on hair. And, perhaps, here is the true genealogical link back to the TV show: looks are the key thing, and the rest is just another cop movie.