Miami Vice

Twenty years on Crockett and Tubbs finally make it to the big screen, with Colin Farrell replacing Don Johnson and Jamie Foxx in place of Philip Michael Thomas and a budget commensurate with their star power. Since Michael Mann created the TV show and wrote and directed this movie, we get a lot more continuity than in similar migrations (e.g., Lost in Space, SWAT). Castillo, Zito, Switek, Gina and Trudy are all back too, though things are far too serious to make time for the series’ parade of goofy informants like Noogie and Izzie.

Miami Vice the movie felt like a really well-made two hour episode and I mean that as a compliment. The plot, the characters, the atmosphere, the visuals are all in tune with the best of the series; overall I was most reminded of the second season opener Prodigal Son that spent much of its time in New York, with Crockett falling for a bad woman and walking the streets at night to Glenn Frey’s song “You Belong to the City” all over the soundtrack.

No Manhattan here, though we do get to see a bit of Havana, Port au Prince (Haiti’s capital) and Columbian jungles. Crockett and Tubbs get brought in by an FBI ASAC after they help him discover a leak in his drug task force and, not knowing where the bad apple sits, leave them to run things as they see fit. Finding a weak link in the cartel’s use of outside contractors to transport their drugs, the squad busts the current jobholders and get hired in their place.

One of the top lieutenants is a hot Asian woman (Gong Li) and she and Sonny fall for each other immediately. This doesn’t sit well with Jose Yero (John Ortiz), the cartel’s security and counterintelligence manager, and in the end he tries to use it against them. Tries. There are gun battles, a few explosions.

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