Reviewed by Jordan Brown
Stars Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Gong Li,
Ciarán Hinds, Justin Theroux
Written by Michael Mann, based on the
TV series created by Anthony Yerkovich
Certification US R | UK 15 | Australia MA
Runtime 134 minutes
Directed by Michael Mann
When an informant’s family ends up being relieved of their lives, the FBI sends Miami poilice officers Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs undercover in an attempt to root out the mole in the department. Problems arise as their lives get further entwined with the seedy Florida underworld and the line blurs between what is right and what is necessary...
Title card, universal logo aaaaaaaaaaaand we’re in. No opening credits, no introduction and no wasting time for Florida’s finest, as we’re slung right into the action Crockett and Tubbs style! Tracking a woman through a club they’re stopped by a few goons (who quite frankly should bloody well know better after umpteen seasons of the original series). Sonny forces through while Rico puts one guy on the business end of a wrist breaking. It’s jaw-dropping stuff, and you should savour such moments... because it doesn’t get that good again for a long, long, long time.
Michael Mann, executive producer of the original series, director of the likes of Heat, Manhunter and Collateral. How could this go wrong? Well for a start, it’s just too long, and while Jamie Foxx nails the Tubbs role, Colin Farrell isn’t quite cool enough to pull off the character of Crockett. Unfortunately the worst letdown is that what is fundamentally a straight-forward plot is, I assume to add a bit of depth, over-complicated to the point that to try and keep up make you feel like a pisshead trying to solve a Rubick’s cube.
It’s not all bad though as with Mann you can always guarantee stunning visuals, which we get here by the lorryload. Every frame could easily end up on Miami Beach as a postcard as Mann does what he’s best at. It’s safe to say his eye for what look s good on screen does manage to come up trumps again. See this as bad or good, it really does just look like Collateral shifted from West coast to East, but hey, if it ain’t broke...
The finale is as good as you’d expect from the director of Heat, but by then you’ll be so emotionally drained that you’ll be more chuffed that the end is in sight than at the realism of the scene. Even so, as true to life as the film is, you know full well that there’s a reason Jack Bauer never has a kip or a slash in the span of a day — it’s boring, and films (blockbusters at least) are meant to be about escapism aren’t they? You know that bloke everyone knows who claims to love a film while everyone else hated it just to make it look like he understood something they didn’t? Well, he’ll love this one. The sleazy underbelly of Miami narcotics is more than a little flabby — cutting trance-like visuals with a sleeping pill inspired plot does not make for an interesting product.