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A REVIEW BY BOB SINCLAR 08/26/2006
I am here today, not to bury the new Michael Mann movie (sorry for the bomb dude…) but to try to set the record straight about it.
Many of you have heard about Sonny Crocket & Rico Tubbs the 2 wealthiest gayest dressed cops in the universe and especially that of Miami Vice, the cult TV show which made Michael Mann back in the 80’s. But it seems to me that a lot of people have only heard about the show and never actually watched it, otherwise they would have been more receptive to the movie’s subtle references with the original work and which makes this new movie a true homage to the show and a pretty cool nostalgic trip with its own modern artistic qualities.
I must admit that I have been disappointed too by Miami Vice on several points. First of all, they decided to set this thing in a contemporary and very dark world as opposed to the 80’s to avoid the obvious production design nightmare of creating a colourful 80’s Miami and the associated gigantic budget of doing such a thing. Plus they probably don’t make fake Ferrari Daytonas anymore. Not only that but you can all forget about … the fun bimbos, the god damn pink flamingos, the excellent score, and Crocket’s alligator which is less important.
This whole movie when you don’t look carefully would look like your regular, artificially dense drug story, full of trendy cops mumbling cop slang and nonsense with for only objective to try and sound cool.
How could that be entitled Miami Vice then? But… then I realized that Michael Mann was still getting this very right but on a whole different level. At the end of the day (I saw it late at night), the fact is that this flick couldn’t be branded anything else than Miami Vice
Well I’ll tell you the connection to the Miami Vice universe is omnipresent, only that connection is very subtle and Michael Mann may have shot himself in the foot approaching it that way as it will only appeal to hardcore fans of the show who remain familiar with the directing style and the overall emotion you’d get watching the show. If you remember the specific artistic choice used back then in the 80’s, like the continuous and loud background music throughout complete sequences, the intense love stories that actually seem to mean something, the smell of dirty money, the total disabilities of Crocket & Tubbs to work on something else than narc, then you will feel right at home watching their new adventures. Nothing is missing on that so important level.
Even the two wankers extraordinaires couldn’t have been better impersonated than by two of the most arrogant stars of the moment. One who needs to approach acting beyond relying mainly on his good looks and the other one who seem to have totally forgotten the good old days of In living color and Booty Call after getting an oscar. Man those oscar things can mess your head!
Regardless Michael Mann takes you with brio on a “full ambiance” trip that’s totally on par with the show only the mood, being still as hypnotizing, is quite darker. Mann also adds to it the cool techniques and cinematography he acquired shooting the best Tom Cruise flick to date, Collateral, with a digital cam… even if Miami Vice doesn’t quite achieve the super cool atmosphere level of LA’s Collateral. The cinematography & camera angles remains quite beautiful and you will be surprisingly pleased by the quantity of great shots of fast boats, cars, planes, dogs, women… fast everything, except a fast story. Collateral is one of my very favourite depictions of LA in a movie so far right next to Training Day’s.
Gong Li, deserves a paragraph in my review as she will hypnotize you big time. Her overwhelming class and beauty are as impressing as her messed up Jackie Chan’s English speaking. Her highly mysterious feminine sexiness glows in every scene… now that’s what class is all about. I mean I was picturing myself as Colin Farrell during 2 hours. On the other hand, no need to picture yourself as Jamie Foxx… nothing really cool comes his way, but I guess that’s what you get when you walk around with a stupid ass gotee on your face.
I was a little turned off by the big gunfight finale which despites its good realistic style fails to reach the coolness of Heat’s legendary bank attack in downtown LA. The reason being that the darkness of the location and the quantity of never seen before secondary roles involved makes it too messy and difficult to identify the location of protagonists in the fighting space. This is however balanced by the way cool and graphic slaying with a crazy ass Barrett .50 sniper rifle of 2 undercover cops in their regular undercover Bentley cop car at the beginning of the story. When you watch this you can’t say that Michael Mann has lost his touch.
On a side note one has to wonder if Tom Cruise didn’t “lose it” after shooting Collateral and breaking his 20+ years old ultimate winner character mould… Jumping around on the stupid sofa of a worthless show good for people who watch way too much tv is not a reasonable enough reason for me to fire someone. Jewish studios are getting tough these days! Take it easy my jewish little friends.
Well, now that Tom is finally a free man he’s got to go work with Mel Gibson and make some crazy ass Christian/scientologist flicks before the end of the world (December 2012 according to the Mayan Calendar). Poor Tom… it’s not like Scientology is any more dangerous than a billion-people-murdering-religion. Well at least now he can go crazy and make cool flicks. And he needs to play another killer in a John Woo or Tsui Hark flick… and maybe I would advise a true comedy for Cruise. See dudes??!!.. I care!
Back to Miami Vice the harm is done already and I really do not understand how piles of stinking cinema stock like superman or dupree could top Miami Vice at the box office. I guess movie goers behave like flies sometimes. No offense flies but you missed a pretty decent flick this summer. Not perfect but a cool trip for people who just want to mellow out watching beautiful images and creative filmmaking.
© 2006 Tom H
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