Snore. If filling the page wasn't a requirement for reviewing a film, that is probably where this review of "Miami Vice" would end. That single word sums up all 146 minutes, except for three gun shots and the giggles Colin Farrell's terrible hair cut elicits.
The plain and simple truth is that this is not the "Miami Vice" we as a nation knew and loved for five years on television. It's just another drug ring buddy cop movie that would be as dumb as "Bad Boys II" if it wasn't so sharply directed by Michael Mann.
"Bad Boys II" might even have a leg up, seeing as it had some action in the first hour instead of a bunch of names whizzing by too fast. The first hour of "Miami Vice" reintroduces Detective James 'Sonny' Crockett (Colin Farrell at his most unbearable) and Detective Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) as they perform an undercover sting. But very quickly it is clear that the focus of the film isn't on the two cops but only on Crockett and his infatuation with Isabella (Gong Li), the attractive Asian business women who helps run the drug cartel the cops are trying to take down. Instead of focusing on the two characters everyone showed up to see, Mann points his camera at the incredibly uncharismatic relationship between Isabella and Crockett. The Chinese-born Li doesn't have a strong enough mastery of the English language to maintain a role this big and Farrell, with his big sleepy eyes, seems to be miles away whenever he is with her. You can imagine the deep sleep the audience settled into by the end of their 15-minute jaunt to Cuba.
Foxx desperately tries to salvage a character out of Ricardo Tubbs but he isn't given enough screen time or snappy lines to develop anything but a cool action character. What happened to Crockett and Tubbs working together? Where is the quirky humor of the TV show? Why is this movie even called "Miami Vice"?
Michael Mann does know how to do action, and the two gun fights provoked cheers from the audience. The film is stylistically stunning, but it's just style over nothing. The undercover story has no depth even though Crockett is supposedly "in too far." The love has no feeling, and the partnership is nowhere to be found.
Mann remembered that "Miami Vice" was all about looking pretty, but he forgot that it wasn't half bad at telling a story.
Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas dressed way better too.