The Many Reasons Why Miami Vice Sucked! (A Review)

Shawn and I saw this ridiculous mess of a movie over the weekend. Awful, awful, awful. Let me count the ways…

First) Where's Miami? Hello, it's in your title. Half the movie took place in other, admittedly prettier places than Miami, and yet I felt the city played no part and had no place in the film expect to be occasionally mentioned in the abstract like some dark evil land like Mordor.

Second ) Sunshine. I'm not the biggest fan of it, but in Miami, it's something we got lots and lots of. Yet, this movie is perpetually dark. Occasional bits of city lights visible in the distance do not a city make. Where's the sun, the palm trees, the Art Deco buildings? I had read before seeing the movie that the director, Michael Mann, didn't want to feature South Beach because he'd "been there, done that" with the series, but, excuse me if I'm wrong, but I believe South Beach of today looks a LOT different than the 80's and would have been a welcome addition of color to this film.

No single scene or set even remotely reminded me of Miami. There was a couple scenes inside apartments that were inexplicably at night so that there was no view or nothing. The one scene in someone's apartment during the day showed endless water with not a single glimpse of Miami-ish scenery (i wonder why.)

Third ) Pacing, exposition, and character development. Failed in all three aspects. The movie begins in in medias res with no preamble in the middle of a crowded club during some kind of prostitution sting. We know who the cops are because they're the only ones who look like they're not having fun. That scene - with almost no dialogue expect meaningful glance - gets interrupted by a phone call from some random person speeding down a highway and shouting something important. Quick, Robin, to the bat-mobile! Suddenly, our police officers are flagging this guy down on the highway (Shawn and I laughed; as if you can get anywhere in Miami in under twenty minutes!) and there proceeds more and more meaningless sideways-talk and cop-speak to try and (confuse? confound? enlighten?) the audience.

And this was the first ten minutes. About an hour in, my utter confusion as to what the hell was going on was replaced by a sharp sensation in my jaw. What is that? Oh yeah. The urge to yawn. This movie's pace was either way too fast or ridiculously slow. The whole thing just felt off, as if the editor and director fell asleep while doing their edits and accidentally sent the wrong draft of the film to the studio. The actual version - the "Director's Cut" (the one that actually makes sense - wow, who knew there were so many similarities between Miami Vice and The Lord of the Rings) - will be out with the DVD.

As for characters, I came away from this film with no idea whatsoever who the main characters were, what they were about, or what they wanted. There was no time where they talked or conversed in any meaningful way. Half of the time they were undercover and yet there didn't seem to be any difference between them as cops and them as drug runners.

Fourth ) Action. There was some gleeful shouts from males in the audience during a couple of the action sequences when someone got a whole shot through them or something equally bloody, but in my seasoned opinion gore does not make an action sequence, rather creativity and ingenuity makes a good action sequence. Both, notably absent.

You know how a lot of movies these days do protracted "heist" sequences ala' Mission Impossible? Where there's a lot of set up and cool camera angles and voiceovers and then something goes wrong and it's all exciting and everything plays out in a tense way? None of that. None at all. There's one short (like 90 second) sequence where a plane masks its entry into the U.S. And then a shot of two boats flying past the Miami Port. That's all you'll get in terms of tension and excitement. Really, shameful.

Fifth) Spanish. HELLO!!! Where's the Spanish? Where's the characters eating empanadas and drinking cafe con leche's against some beautiful palm trees? Even a white boy like me walks into a place around this town and says, Hola! There was not a single spanish-influenced scene in the entire film, save a sequence drinking mojitos in Cuba. That doesn't cut it, in my opinion. You could have done the same exact scene in some hidden away bar in Little Havana.

Now, I talk shit about Miami constantly. But there are a lot of things about this town that stand out, especially visually. The producers and cinematographers of this movie did not present this city at all in the film. That, plus the confusing plot, the empty characters, and the yawn-inducing action sequences, all combine to make this easily the worst movie of the year, possibly the decade.