Director: Michael Mann
Writer: Michael Mann
Cinematography: Dion Beebe
Editors: William Goldenberg and Paul Rubell
Music: John Murphy
Notable Cast: Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, John Ortiz, Luis Tosar, Gong Li, Ciarán Hinds, Eddie Marsan, John Hawkes, Tom Towles, Justin Theroux, Isaach De Bankolé, Marc Macaulay, Barry Shabaka Henley
No one makes movies like Michael Mann makes movies. No other film ever feels like a Michael Mann film. He’s one of the few filmmakers still working whose voice is so distinct as to be a genre unto itself. And why? It’s not only because of his direction, which often unlocks pure genius levels of artistry time and time again, but the fact he writes the majority of his scripts. In fact, his weakest films are ones he doesn’t write. Mann’s use of language, the rhythm of his dialogue, is maybe the main reason no other film ever feels like one of his.
And I want to emphasize that word. Feels. Watching a great Mann film is visceral. You truly feel it on an elemental level. You feel the music. The photography. The locations. The very milieu. And if you don’t feel it, no amount of convincing will suffice. Which is why I tend to never ague about Mann films with his detractors. You can’t argue feelings. But maybe a lot of film, and art more generally speaking, is like that. You either feel it, or you don’t. Miami Vice might be his apotheosis in this regard. Nothing, and I mean nothing, feels like 2006’s Miami Vice.
Miami Vice burst onto the television scene in the 80’s like a motherfucking freight train. I was only a kid at the time, but even I remember what a storm that show created, from fashion to music to narrative boldness, it was lightning in a bottle, and more than anything cemented Mann’s status in Hollywood. He brought the silver screen to the little screen and had such a profound impact on the television landscape that it is still felt today. Funny to think that, despite Thief, Mann was primarily known as a TV guy. His first film, The Jericho Mile, was a TV film. And in the late 80’s made L.A. Takedown, another TV movie that was the precursor to Heat.
Mann’s TV output is spotty at best. While the first season of Miami Vice is pure genius, I could not get through the second season despite Mann still running the operation. But that first season was something else. And it was a first season episode, Smuggler’s Blues, that Mann adapted for his 2006 cinematic take on the series that defined a generation.
And it may arguably be the most misunderstood film of its generation. When people trudged to theaters in the summer of 2006 to see Jamie Foxx headlining a Miami Vice movie, they must’ve thought they were in for a comedic treat, and were probably expecting something more along the lines of Bad Boys, with action and comedy. Maybe a goofy 80’s throwback where they wink at the audience as guys in teal and pink outfits with loafers and no socks walk by in the background.
What they got instead was the anti-Bad Boys, a brutally serious and realistic take on what it means to truly be an undercover agent in the high-stakes world of transnational drug and weapons dealers, and they were not happy. Where’s the banter, they asked. Where’s the crocodile, they wondered. Where’s the white linen suits and no socks, they queried. Alas, none were to be found. The TV series was great for what it was and the time it was made. But that was the 80’s, and this is the 00’s! What Michael Mann did with this film is a masterclass in how to adapt IP for the big screen. Make a 150 million dollar art piece. An avant-garde action film. An experimental summer blockbuster. And boy, did Mann deliver.
But how were the 1ST 5 Minutes? Well, in a 1ST 5 Minutes…uh, 1ST, we have TWO different 1ST 5 Minutes for the same film, owing to the fact that a theatrical cut and a director’s/unrated cut exists, the latter of which has a completely different 1ST 5 Minutes than the theatrical.
How does each one measure up?
1ST 5 MINUTES – THEATRICAL
In media res is defined as beginning in the middle of things, rather than at the very start of a story. If in media res was a film unto itself, it’d probably be this one. It’s the most in media ressy film ever made! And this opening is why. We start with the Universal logo, but there’s complete silence, we don’t hear that familiar Universal theme song. Then we cut to a second of black and immediately hear the powerful opening notes to the Linkin Park/Jay-Z song, Numb/Encore. Yup, this is definitely 2006! I don’t know about you, but this song is still hot as shit, and what a way to open a film. After a second or two of the opening of the song, we are immediately thrown into a nightclub on a Saturday night in Miami. Zero context. Zero reference. Zero fucks given.
The first thing that strikes you is how realistic and accurate the lighting is here. Most films, when they shoot at a nightclub, are overly lit so nothing is obscured and all the actors are easily seen. Not here. Realism rules the day in this film, and I am here for it! While I love Paul Verhoeven’s classic, Basic Instinct, the club scene in that film is exactly the wrong way to shoot a nightclub. Michael Mann makes no such mistake.
We are then introduced, wordlessly, to Trudy (Naomie Harris, with a truly awful Brooklyn accent) and Sonny (Colin Farrell, with a truly Oscar worthy mustache and mullet), quickly followed by Tubbs (Jamie Foxx). They’re all just looking out at the crowd, surveying the scene, very intense. There’s no jokes, no banter, they’re all business. But what business? What are they looking for? Farrell leaves Harris and Foxx, and we get more shots of the crowded nightclub and our first look at Gina (Elizabeth Rodriguez) and Switek (Domenick Lombardozzi). We have no idea who they are at this point, but they’re also scoping out the crowd.
Cut to grainy surveillance footage of a bed in a hotel room, and then our first look at the great Justin Theroux as Zito (criminally underused here), who seems to have jacked into the club’s closed circuit system on the roof in order to surveill whatever the hell they’re surveilling. I just love how we’re over a minute into the film and still have no clue what any of them are up to. But what we do have is incredible atmosphere, a mood and place setting. Are you out on a Saturday night watching this movie in the theater? Sonny, Tubbs and the crew are also out on a Saturday night, but they’re working.
Sonny goes to the bar to order a drink and flirt with the bartender, Rita. Nice, quick little interaction showcasing Sonny’s easy way with women. As he makes his way over to the bar, the music changes to Felix da Housecat’s Heavenly House Mix of Nina Simone’s Sinnerman. Again, the realism here as juxtaposed to the club scene in Basic Instinct or even last week’s Bad Boys. Usual club scenes in movies, the music doesn’t change, it’s just one song for the whole scene. Real clubs aren’t like that, it’s a constant mix from the DJ, and Miami Vice reflects that.
This remix of Sinnerman is fantastic as we then cut to the exterior of the club to see two baller white Range Rovers with white diamond rims pull up to the club. This movie is almost 20 years old at this point (!?) but these cars to this day look modern and sleek. When I was a kid, 20 year old cars looked 20 years old. But not today. Which goes to a bigger point about the flattening of our modern culture that I won’t really get into here. But the basic gist is that culture, in my mind, has kind of stopped. Songs from 20 years ago sound just as fresh today, they don’t sound old the way 60’s music sounded in the 80’s. Same with cars. When you got a 10 year old car in the late 1980’s, you got a car that looked it. Now, you could get a car from 2005 that still looks basically the same as that model from 2017. There’s a flattening occurring. Almost like forward progress has stopped and we’re encased in amber. I don’t know, it’s a theory I’m still working on, what do you want from me?
Out of the cars comes the great Isaach De Bankolé as Neptune, followed by some beefy dudes and sexy chicks. They are let right into the club, skipping the long line. As Neptune and his gang enter the club, the music shifts to hard techno, and they find Switek. It soon becomes clear that Neptune is a pimp and these girls are hookers that work for him. No explanations or exposition, the audience needs to keep up, no one is holding your hand in this movie. At this point we assume their mission tonight is to bust this pimp and his prostitution ring. One thing I love about this movie is it shows how the Vice cops do everything from small time pimps with goofy names like Neptune all the way up to international drugs and weapons dealers, no job too small or big!
Switek tries to give Neptune the money, but Neptune is unworried, tells him to “hit me later.” Neptune’s delivery of this line is so good. Iconic. With that devilish grin. One of the girls looks like she’s obviously been trafficked and is not into whatever nefariousness Neptune is forcing her to do. Switek, playing his undercover role perfectly, notices this and tells Neptune, who responds, “She’s sick, man.” Another great line and delivery by De Bankolé. Switek says he’ll just take two girls instead of the three they apparently agreed on beforehand. Neptune acts like it’s cool, but as soon as Switek departs with the ladies his fury at the “sick” girl is palpable.
We then realize the surveillance was set up to record Switek with the girls upstairs in the room as evidence for their bust. Tubbs notices Neptune aggressively taking the sick girl away and follows, making his way across the crowded dance floor, followed closely by Sonny. Tubbs watches as Neptune brutally punches the girl in the stomach, complaining about how much money she cost him. Some guy tries to stop Tubbs, but that’s a mistake as Tubbs dispatches him easily by breaking his wrist/hand/fingers and then stomping on the guy’s balls once he’s on the floor in agony. Another guy tries to come up behind Tubbs but Sonny makes quick work of him. These partners are in sync. Sonny calms Tubbs down, tells him to take it easy, that Neptune’s day will come. He doesn’t want Tubbs blowing their cover. Then Sonny gets a phone call, which is what sets the rest of the film into motion. Turns out this opening scene has nothing to do with the rest of the film’s plot, at all. Almost like a pre-credits sequence in a James Bond film.
I don’t know about you, but between the music, the photography, the grittiness, the in media res, Neptune’s dialogue, I am loving this movie so far. There’s a certain taste level, and it shows. NO WAY am I taking the movie off after a 1ST 5 Minutes like this. Are you?
1ST 5 MINUTES – DIRECTOR’S/UNRATED
FADE IN:
EXT. OCEAN - CLOSE UP: WATER - MORNING LIGHT
We are at the delicate interface between ocean and air...liquid and gas...the event horizon where molecules evaporate. This interchange is ethereal.
That’s how the Miami Vice script opens. Who else but Mann could write an opening like this to a film with SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER aspirations? Who?! NOBODY!
But from the script it is clear that Mann intended to start the movie with this boat race around Miami and then in the editing room decided to go the route he did with the theatrical. Think of the balls, the sheer iron will it took to make a move like that. When you watch this original 1ST 5, it’s clear this was a massive sequence to shoot with multiple speedboats, underwater cameras, helicopter mounted cameras, along with many extras and exterior locations. And Mann said, nah, this entire week-long shoot will end up on the cutting room floor and we’ll just start at the club.
Vicious. Ruthless. Genius.
While I love the way the theatrical starts, I will admit I absolutely LOVE this other opening as well, cause it’s such a great mood and place setter. The bright blue skies, the deep blue ocean, stark white cumulonimbus clouds, sleek speedboats cutting through the waves, going past shipyards with giant cranes, the Miami skyline hovering in the background. This is great shit. All expertly scored by John Murphy (no Jan Hammer, but who is?). I’m in Mann electric guitar heaven.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the whole alternate opening online, and this clip above cuts off the last minute where we actually see Switek set up the meet with Neptune for later at the club.
Again, it’s a great mood setter, and I appreciate it for that, but it’s not necessary for the film. Sure, it sets up the fact that Sonny Crockett (Sonny Burnett when undercover) and Ricardo Tubbs (Rico Cooper when undercover) pose as boat racing afficionados by day and Go Fast boat drug runners by night, which is pretty genius, but we don’t need it laid out for us like it is here.
On a sidenote, I always wondered how undercover cops get paid. Are they working 24/7? When do they get time off? It’s not like you can just take the weekends to do whatever with your family, what if someone is watching you? Do you leave the Ferrari at work and then drive your Honda CR-V home? Unfortunately, they don’t address this in the film, and why would they? Do you really want to see a scene of Sonny or Rico arguing with an HR lady about their overtime pay? Or struggling to find receipts from some undercover mission so they can get paid back? Actually, that’d be kind of funny, especially with the gruff, low voice Farrell uses throughout the film (“I can’t find that hotel receipt, darlin’”).
Either way, both these 1ST 5s are dope and there’s no way in hell I’m taking this movie off, don’t care which version is playing. Way too much good shit to think the rest will stink.
As for the rest of the unrated cut, I won’t really be getting into the differences here as I look at the rest of the flick. There’s some interesting additions, most of which don’t really work, and tend to make the movie drag, like the extended Trudy and Rico stuff. One truly awful change is near the end, during the build-up to the final shootout, Mann decided to replace John Murphy’s nice, understated score with a truly fucking terrible cover by no name band, Nonpoint, of Phil Collins’ classic, In The Air Tonight. Bad enough this cover was in the end credits of the theatrical, but moving it into the movie proper is sacrilege. Both for the franchise and Phil Collins. Mann’s stated intent was that the song really encapsulates what the undercover life is all about. I have no beef with that reasoning, but why use a cover, and a shitty cover at that, by some shit band no one has heard of?! It’s so weird. And incredibly hard to fathom that Mann thinks this cover is any good. Why not just use the Phil Collins original? It still holds up today and is hot as fuck! Listen to this!
But Mann makes odd decisions like this from time to time, like constantly tinkering with his films to the point there are multiple cuts, each differing by only a few minutes usually, spread out across various VHSs, DVDs and Blu-rays. And it won’t even be labelled as different. Some VHS you wore out of Last of the Mohicans comes out on DVD and all of a sudden a line is missing, or a shot, even though it doesn’t say it’s a different version. And then the Blu comes out and it’s different from the DVD. It’s fucking maddening that he does this. I had to keep an old version of Heat just to preserve Diane Venora’s classic “sift through the detritus” line. Another weird Mann foible is casting. He very much goes with whoever is hot at the moment for his leads. Sometimes it works, sometimes it decidedly does not. Even in this film, which I truly adore, he makes some odd choices.
The rest of the flick
Sonny steps out of the club (incredible shot that goes from interior darkness to bright hallway light to exterior night) on to the motherfuckin’ ROOF of the nightclub to take a phone call. This scene is so iconic. The digital photography, the grain storm it creates, cut together with super clear grain free shots, with that city skyline glistening behind, are you not sitting rapt? Do you not feel this scene? Not what’s going on in it, just the atmosphere, the feel of the city at night, the feel of the sweat and humidity, the feel of the glass and steel surrounding you, the feel of that night sky. It’s intoxicating.
And then going from one in media res to another, when Sonny gets a call from Alonzo Stevens (the great John Hawkes), a confidential informant they use from time to time. He’s desperate (nice touch having the zip ties still around his wrists from being tied up), not making any sense, and now, instead of the characters being ahead of the audience, as in the intro, we now know as much as our main duo, as they themselves are thrown into the very same in media res situation we the audience found ourselves in moments ago when the film began. It’s genius.
We’re introduced to Ciarán Hinds as ASAC John Fujima. Fantastic casting here. He’s perfect as a shithead bureaucrat from the Fed who needs Crockett and Tubbs to save his ass down at the “slug farm” in DC, as Crockett puts it later in the film. When Fujima questions how he’s supposed to talk about the Alonzo deal over an open phone line, Crockett is incredulous. HE got the call from Alonzo on an open line. Right away we see how in over his head Fujima is. And then we get one of my favorite lines (but not THE favorite), as Crockett puts it bluntly to Fujima, “That is the hand we have been dealt at 11:47 o’clock on Saturday night.” There’s just something about the way Farrell says that line, the “o’clock” after 11:47, the fact it’s a hot Saturday night in South Florida, people are out having fun, and these guys are grinding. There’s a propulsive energy to this film, the desperation of the characters is felt in the pacing and editing.
Right away we’re thrown into a helicopter, as Zito radios down to Crockett and Tubbs in their blue flame shooting Ferrari F-450 convertible as it races down I-95 (how great are the shots of this car? Does ANYONE shoot cars at night better than Mann? Obviously, that’s not a serious question because Mann taught the class on how to shoot cars driving around a city at night).
They’re tracking Alonzo‘s Bentley. Once they catch up to him and are clued in to the deal (Alonzo set the meet between some Feds and some Aryan Brotherhood drug dealers for a buy, but the Nazis found out he was a CI, so Alonzo gave up the Feds), we get not only my Favorite Shot in the whole movie (no small feat, there’s easily 20 other shots in this film that could vie for best shot. Michael Mann, along with cinematographer Dion Beebe, created some of the most beautiful cinematic images of the 21st century in this film), but quite possibly my favorite shot of the past 24 years. Alonzo is desperate to get home to his wife, but Miami PD is already at his house (amazing silent shots of the cops storming the house and relaying info to Tubbs), his wife is dead. Alonzo is beside himself, at wit’s end, and then…
Watch:
Mere words can’t convey the utter dopeness of that shot. It works on so many levels. Tubbs goes blurry as Alonzo’s distraught POV shifts to the background, the highway behind Tubbs, streamers blowing off the divider, what is he looking at? The emotion drives the shot. It’s not just a beautifully composed image and camera move/rack focus, it’s the emotion it delivers while being an incredible shot.
It was at this moment in the film that I knew this was not just a great movie, but would probably be a goddamned masterpiece, and I wasn’t wrong! The shot brings tears to my eyes with how good it is. It’s a rare power of cinema, but when felt, is something close to nirvana.
If I talked about everything I loved about this movie, this article would be a book (don’t give me any ideas!). But there are some things that are so good, that to not discuss them would be extreme negligence. A lot of this starts and stops with the one, the only, John Ortiz, as the villainous drug trafficker, José “Cochi Loco” Yero. Cochi Loco means crazy pig. He’s simultaneously scary, funny, tragic, probing, restless.
It’s probably one of the best performances of the 21st century so far, and he should have gotten an Oscar, not that I care about such bullshit, but if we’re handing out awards for great performances, how the fuck do you neglect this absolute star making turn? HOW?
Just look at the scene at his club (“I’m a disco guy”) in Miami, when he realizes just how close Crockett has gotten to Gong Li’s Isabella, as he watches them dance. Tears slowly fill his eyes as he watches them (love that shot of Yero’s bodyguard watching him as he cries). It’s an amazing unstated desire of his to be with Isabella, and a nice little character arc he has in the film, even though it is never verbalized by anybody. He just nails every scene he is in, whether it’s the first time he meets Crockett and Tubbs in Haiti (fantastic location work here), or when they reveal to him that someone tried to jack his load and they meet with him at a safe house.
Ok, need to go on a bit of a tangent here. If I ever meet Mann and am able to ask him questions, the second one (first question would be why did Michael never meet Waingro before the armored car heist in Heat?) would be about how Crockett and Tubbs go about infiltrating Yero’s and by extension, Archangel de Jesus Montoya’s, transnational crime syndicate. To me, they play their hand too quickly and give Yero more than enough evidence that they are not who they say they are.
Forgetting for a moment that Crockett and Tubbs are “too good at what they do,” what exactly was the play here? First off, Yero knows his operation has been compromised by Alonzo and that the Feds are onto his operation. Almost immediately after Yero finds out about this Fed infiltration, which at this point he has no idea how deep they’re embedded, Crockett and Tubbs take out his transpo line AND rob the load from Yero’s now former transpo team, then, after securing the job to be Yero’s new transpo, they reveal they found the stash that was jacked, and then they inexplicably say they’ll return the load for nothing.
WAY TOO CONVENIENT.
Crockett and Tubbs think it will ingratiate them into the operation, but all it does is raise massive alarm bells, and rightly so, for Yero. Isabella is too busy being dickmatized by Crockett to think straight. Montoya leaves it to them to manage, so he has no idea really (how amazing is that scene when Montoya and Isabella are in bed, discussing business, and it’s only after a dissolve denoting the passage of some time, that they discuss Sonny and Rico? Any other movie and it’d be the first thing they discuss. Here we get that fantastic Mann realism, where the Sonny and Rico shit is like 18th on their list of important business. Small but important details like that operate on the pre-conscious mind of the audience, alerting them to the fact they’re watching greatness).
This is what’s so tragic about Yero. Had ANYONE in the organization listened to him, they’d all be fine, still doing their thing, making money and living life, but because they don’t, it all goes to shit.
In a nice touch, despite all this, Montoya gets away at the end. That’s some nifty realism. A lesser film would have him killed or arrested along with the rest (and an even lesser film would have had Neptune involved somehow with Yero). But no. And while we’re talking about Montoya, how great is Luis Tosar? Man, does he hit that shit out of the ballpark. Never raises his voice, never shows any emotion, but he is certifiably terrifying in this role.
Back to Crockett and Tubbs’ strategy here, I know it’s a movie and all, but I have to believe in the real world it would not go down like this, at all. If Crockett never revealed they found the drugs and would return it for free, I think they may have been fine and Yero would have never escalated his suspicions further. Remember, in this world you have to be suspicious of everyone, but for them to do what they did is insane, in my view. And then Crockett doubles down by trying to fuck Montoya’s woman! Seems reckless, even for guys that need a bit of an outlaw attitude, as Fujima states later on. But again, it’s a movie.
Back to Ortiz and his perfect turn as Yero. He gets some of the best lines in the film. He’s magnetic, you can’t take your eyes off of him, and he seems to be the only one with his head on straight throughout the whole movie. Easily my favorite character in the film, and in a lesser actor’s hands, it wouldn’t be nearly as powerful or provocative as played by Ortiz. Yeah, he’s a villain, but he’s human too. Like when he takes a stiff drink after the first meeting with Crockett and Tubbs in Haiti. Such a good little character moment. He’s not a cartoon, he’s a real person, and it illustrates the toll this line of work takes, on good guys and bad.
One of his best scenes is after he has gone behind Montoya’s back to get rid of Crockett and Tubbs, and is confronted by Montoya and his goons, ready to be killed for his insolence, when he pleads with Montoya to just watch a video he brought along. Montoya entertains Yero and watches the video, which is of Sonny and Isabella dancing very intimately. Then, Yero delivers my Favorite Line in the film, “This… is not casual.”
Amazingly compact line that sums up the dynamic between Montoya and Isabella. For while she is a trusted advisor in all matters, she is a still a woman, and in this world, a woman is property. Montoya doesn’t care when Isabella tells him she slept with Crockett, in fact, his cold indifference is one of the reasons she is so turned on by Crockett, who’s a wild man, prone to emotional outbursts, who dances with her when she asks, and who actually seems to care for her well-being. But just because Montoya is indifferent to dalliances, doesn’t mean she can do whatever she wants. And once it is established by Yero that this is much more than a fling, all bets are off.
Yero is such a complex character and is written in a way that villains are rarely portrayed. The moral ambiguity running throughout the film is one of its strong suits. There are no easy answers in a world dominated by intimidation, violence, and brutal life or death power plays. Ortiz is such a great actor, I really and truly hope he is given another role as meaty as Jose Yero. He deserves it.
One of my favorite shots is when Crockett takes Isabella on his speedboat after a meeting they all had with Yero. Yero hears the roar of the motor and turns to see Crockett and Isabella speeding away from Miami. Love how it racks focus from the back of his head to them in the boat in the distance, and he holds this gaze as the first notes of Moby and Patti LaBelle’s song, One of These Mornings (a real all-timer, both the music and lyrics, which really play into the themes of the film. I fucking LOVE Moby, one of the best musicians of his era, hands down), plays on the soundtrack.
Our first hint of Yero’s “unrequited love for Isbaella” arc.
Which leads into my Favorite Scene in the film, Crockett and Isabella’s boat ride to Cuba. The setup is brilliant, with Crockett asking if he can buy her a drink. She looks at his boat and asks how fast it can go, and what he likes to drink (yes, he’s a fiend for mojitos). The way she steps close to him and says “I know a place” and then turns her back and walks to the boat. YES!!! Amazing acting choice/direction there, powerful, and her delivery of that line is perfection. People say Gong Li and Colin Farrell have no chemistry, I think those people are fucking insane. Sparks fly off the screen with these two.
Wild considering Gong Li speaks no English and had to have her role written phonetically so she could say the dialogue, and the fact that Farrell himself claims not to remember one bit of making this movie he was so coked out of his gourd (and almost OD’d in Colombia, apparently). Their relationship shouldn’t work, but it does, like gangbusters (that look they give each other when she’s driving off in Montoya’s car after their first encounter is fucking electric).
I want to live inside this boat scene for the rest of my life. It’s lush, romantic, thrilling, the roiling waves mixed with the roiling emotions of the boat occupants creates an incredibly hot synergy. Their dialogue is great, revealing bits here and there, but clearly both are holding back as well. Isabella reveals Montoya is not her husband (bad enough Sonny is asking out Montoya’s girlfriend, but now we know Sonny thought he was actually asking out the drug kingpin’s WIFE!?! Utter madness), and that she hails from Cuba, but never does business there (who knew Cuba had such a sizeable number of Chinese citizens? This flick is entertaining and educational).
And she has a great line (and look) when she reveals Montoya is not her husband, “I do not need a husband to have a house to live in.” Crockett’s response to this line is so fucking subtle, but amazing, as he wordlessly reaches over and buckles her seatbelt for her. He recognizes what a strong woman she is, but that it also masks a vulnerability. She has to project power in this brutish world she finds herself in. By buckling her seatbelt, he signals that he is a protector and a caregiver, something she sorely lacks with the men in her life, who only value her insofar as she is useful to them, either in business or as a consort. Her reaction to him doing this is evidence of such (Gong Li is great in all her scenes really, but especially so on this boat ride. Later in the film she also gives the most genuine reaction to being startled I have ever seen an actor give, when Yero’s bodyguard kills Isabella’s behind her back. The way she hesitates, then kind of ducks is amazing. Strikes me every time I watch the film).
To Montoya, Isabella’s property, but to Sonny, she’s a woman. Yes, there’s a chauvinism to both men, but so fucking what, this scene is what we go to the movies for! Two people hopping in a speedboat to get a drink the way two people would hop in a car? Sign me the fuck up! (Imagine knowing how to just hop in a speedboat and know where the fuck you’re going with no map or other kind of guide? “Oh, you wanna go to Cuba? Sure, lemme just hang a right.”)
Farrell and Li’s scenes in Cuba are almost as good. How great is it that Sonny dances? I had an old boss who would always say, “dudes who dance, get laid.” If he’s right, Sonny has gotten laid, a lot! Such a good scene, which starts out with diagetic music from the band on stage, a real propulsive Spanish language tune, Manzanita – Arranca, that segues perfectly into the great Chris Cornell’s (RIP, brother) Audioslave song, Shape of Things to Come, as the scene cuts to Sonny and Isabella having sex back at her aunt’s house (the song also reappears at the end to great effect).
Check that shot of them in naked embrace, as they are out of focus and the background ocean at night is in focus. Only Mann does shit like this and in such an effective way. His use of focus is legendary. The characters are blurry as they lose themselves in each other, the ocean in sharp contrast, a symbol for their uneven emotional state. Genius filmmaking on display here.
And then the next morning, when Isabella surprises Sonny in the shower, and the camera lingers on her wet neck for a split second longer than it should. No one shoots necks like Mann. He LOVES shots of necks and I am here for it. Why shoot a neck? Why the fuck not? Again, it’s the feel of the shot, hard to put into words, but Mann runs on instinct and his instincts are usually pretty spot on.
Check the quick scene where Sonny is speeding back to Miami from Cuba, alone, and Tubbs calls to see where he is. Sonny answers the phone and just says, “I’m on my way back,” and hangs up, as Blue Foundation’s Sweep plays on the soundtrack and we cut to a shot of the boat as it races away into the Miami skyline at dusk. Incredibly romantic and dope with that music track. Mann is masterful with the use of music, both found and original, in his films. The thought of Mann driving around listening to different tracks and grooving to them gives me life.
One of the best sequences in the film is the raid on the trailer park to rescue Trudy from the “crazy whites,” as Yero refers to them. There’s many great sequences in the film that show off the advantages of the digital photography in this milieu, including this one. Just look at the sky behind the characters and the way you can see the clouds. On film, the sky would be pitch black. But with digital, you can see “through” the night which gives this film a feel that few others can match or even hope to emulate. Nothing else looks like this film, even Mann’s other digital ventures. Love the somewhat “green” look of these trailer park exteriors. And then the intense action once they get inside the trailer. Goddamn. Foxx really delivers here and showcases a physicality one didn’t think possible. Shit, even Gina gets in on the action and has a standout moment in a face off with a skinhead wielding a detonator for the explosive necklace around Trudy’s neck (“Only you get dead”). This sequence has it all.
As does the end shootout. While I would literally die to see Mann’s originally written ending in Ciudad del Este up on the big screen, this end shootout is pretty great all on its own. And Tubbs has that great line in the lead up to this ending, when him, Crockett and the others are getting ready to deal, and Tubbs asks Crockett, “Fabricated identity and what’s up are about to collapse into one frame. You ready for that?” To his credit, Crockett says he is not. It’s a nice moment.
What’s not so nice is when Crockett says, “I’m not playin’.” Not sure even Laurence Olivier could deliver that line effectively. This film has a few lines that are absolute clunkers, but Mann gets an eternal pass from this fan, because the great lines (“Well, my Mommy and Daddy know me”) outweigh the shitty ones (“Can’t do the time, don’t do the crime”) by a very healthy margin. The actual shootout has Mann’s trademark intensity and realism, with a dash of cinematic excess, like when the camera gets splattered with blood as the cameraman gets up and repositions himself and the shot, and Mann leaves it in unedited. Fantastic shit.
I love the reveal of Yero and Isabella together, where he taunts Sonny, “We a couple now… After work, she and me go catch a movie and grab a bite. When I get tired I throw her away. Her leg in one place, her head someplace else. You guys ever see that?” It’s funny and terrifying in equal measure. Goddamn, does Ortiz own this movie!
Also love the headshot Sonny unleashes to take down the lead Nazi, Coleman, played by the late, great Tom Towles (Towles is always great. but he’s on another level here. His first scene where he runs down all the drugs they have for sale is epic).
And Yero gets a true “Jim Belushi in Thief” death scene when Tubbs shoots a giant hole in Yero’s chest with what looks like a grenade launcher, creating a huge blood and viscer splat on the wall behind him. A worthy death for one of cinema’s greatest villains.
And then, after Crockett absconds from the scene with Isabella and they say their forever farewells (love that shot of them embracing each other right before she leaves, nothing quite like doomed love in cinema), what does Crockett do? He goes right back to the hospital where Trudy is fighting for her life (how sick is that quick freeze frame on Trudy and Tubbs’ hands once she regains a bit of consciousness?), and the camera cuts to black just as Crockett enters the hospital, all set to Mogwai’s fantastic Auto Rock. The movie ends just as it began, in media res.
Fucking genius.
The One Sheet
Befitting of a remake of a hit show, Universal went all out in the marketing for this film, with mixed results.
This is the official one sheet, and I am unimpressed. Yes, I had this on my wall for a few years after the film, but only because someone gave it to me and I loved people’s reactions to seeing it. As you can imagine, it was mostly negative. Vice has been rehabilitated as of late, but in 2006, it was absolutely trashed. I fucking hate floating head posters, and while this one is not the most egregious example, it’s still pretty bad. Though I do like the way the title of the film is written.
This NO RULES preview poster is not much better. Makes it look like a standard action movie starring Jamie Foxx, which I guess the execs would fool people into seeing it opening weekend?
NO LAW is basically the same as the previous one, but featuring Farrell. BORING!
Gong Li’s NO ORDER character poster is slightly better, if only because we get a dope photo of her shrouded in shadow. At least there’s some intrigue here, and denotes a stylish film is being advertised. Also like the abstract ocean image behind her. Not bad, but not great.
Yero is the best character in the film, so naturally he gets the best character poster. But it too says NO ORDER, and the way Miami Vice is written, and the release date font, it’s clear this was an alternate to the Gong Li one that maybe never made it out of the starting gate? I’ve only ever seen this poster on movie poster websites. Maybe meant for the international market? Either way, nice image of Yero with that weird mural from his Haitian headquarters in the background.
Might be the first and last time John Ortiz is featured by himself on a poster, we should savor that!
This poster featuring a Cyrillic alphabet is easily, far and away, the best poster they officially designed for this film. How was this not the main one for America and everywhere else? HOW?! Absolute madness. Dope shot of our two heroes in the convertible Ferrari, with palm trees and the Miami skyline in the background.
Great fucking poster, and one I wish I could hang on my wall, but so far I have not been able to track down a legit 27x40 version of this. I refuse to buy pop posters, only full size in my household!
That does it for Miami Vice, a film unlike any that preceded or followed. And it was evident from the first frame, when we’re thrown into the middle of a story with no hand holding. Few filmmakers have the balls that Mann does, or the freedom. I, for one, love that we live in a world where people give artists like Mann 150 million dollars to make whatever the hell he wants. It doesn’t always work out, as Miami Vice was his last great film from where I stand, but when it does work, as it does here, it’s fucking glorious and elevates the soul.
And in your gut, you know all that in the 1ST 5 Minutes.
Te veo en dos semanas…