Miami Vice was probably the summer movie I was most looking forward to, because it combines three things I like:
1. Miami Vice.
The original series premiered when I was 13 years old, with no car and no cable TV, and for about two years, it was a staple of my Friday nights, along with NBC's Friday Night Videos, which aired a half-hour later. (I probably watched a WKRP In Cincinatti or Barney Miller re-run in between. I know I wasn't watching the local news.) Everyone seems to be talking about Miami Vice lately like it was some fun, kitschy '80s nostalgia show, but outside of the pastel wardrobe, I recall it being much more intense. Several episodes from those first two seasons were strong, dramatic stuff, like the one where Crockett and Tubbs stake out a pre-Moonlighting Bruce Willis, and have to watch helplessly while he beats his wife, because they're waiting for him to commit a bigger crime; and the two-parter where they travel to Columbia to take down the elusive kingpin Calderon. (Anyone remember the remix of Glen Frey's sng "Smuggler's Blues" that used the dialogue from his appearance on the show … "I ain't John Wayne, I ain't got no 'S' on my chest," etc.?)
I may have been a painfully uncool teenager–actually, strike the "may"–but when I watched Miami Vice, I felt like I was in the know.
2. Michael Mann.
I wasn't necessarily a Mann believer early on, though I liked Manhunter the first time I saw it (when I was 16), and I thought Last Of The Mohicans was pretty solid. I've never been on-board with the cult of Heat, which struck me as over-long and pretentious when I saw it in theaters. (Though I haven't seen it again since, and probably should.) I was knocked out by The Insider though, less for its self-righteous tone than its mature, mesmerizing style; and I think the first hour of Ali rivals the best films of the '00s so far. Then Collateral, for all its narrative slightness, showed a sense of space and place and performance that made it Mann's best film yet. So whenever friends of mine cocked an eyebrow at me when I said I was looking forward to seeing a big-screen remake of a dated old TV show, I thought of Mann, and felt confident that my trust was well-placed.
3. Late summer movies.
I don't know if it started with The Fugitive or what, but for most of my adult moviegoing life, it seems like late July and August have been the time when the summer action movies stop being pitched to kids and start being a little smarter and a little rougher–for grown-ups, in other words.
So with all that going for it, why didn't the big-screen Miami Vice quite work for me? Time for another list:
1. The technology.
I can't entirely blame Mann for the fact that I had a hard time actually seeing this movie. At my crappy small-town multiplex, the picture got knocked out of focus ten minutes in, and the projectionist never got it fixed all the way. Close-ups were clear enough, but crowd shots or action scenes were pretty much a rush of dim colored blobs. In a way it is Mann's fault though, for shooting on digital video. Granted, DV allows him to record nighttime scenes with low light, but it also makes the whole movie a little fuzzy and flat.
I also couldn't really hear the damn thing. The dialogue seemed cool, and I don't know whether the problem was the soundtrack, the audio system in my crappy small-town multiplex, or a cast full of mumblers and thick accents. But I do know that as much as I love Gong Li, every time she opened her mouth, I wished I was watching her in a Chinese movie, with subtitles.
2. The plot.
Some people have complained that the tangle of drug-runners and kingpins and CIs and undercover dudes in Miami Vice is hard to follow, but I caught on fairly quickly, even when the white supremacists popped up, seemingly out of nowhere. And since I like policiers, I enjoyed following all the tactical strategizing and unexpected double-crosses. I just didn't really care about them. I never got the sense that there was any richer meaning to any of these shenanigans–any sense that it was about the thin line between good guys and bad guys, or what it takes to be a man. There's a little bit about trust among thieves, but only a little bit.
The movie also bears some traces of its turbulent production, which reportedly saw the script being re-written on the fly to accommodate location changes and Mann's whims, and reportedly forced an extended tour in the editing room, with Mann changing his mind about how the pieces should fit together. (Not an uncommon Mann scenario … see the re-cut DVD of Ali for evidence of what he can do when he gets time to think a movie through.) Some of this cutting and reshuffling makes for weird groupings, like three scenes in close proximity that have Gong Li acting kind of slutty, and about a three-minute stretch of film where the word "Mojitos" is spoken at least a half-dozen times.
3. The competition.
To some extent, it's nice to see a feature film as savvy and mature as TV's best cop drama, The Shield. But Miami Vice isn't better than The Shield, or really even as good. Granted, The Shield has had something like 60 episodes to develop characters and a situation, but from episode one, it had a perspective on the usual cops-and-robbers hoop-de-doo. So did the TV version of Miami Vice, for that matter. But this movie is more straight-ahead about its action and what it means. At its core, it's really just another tough-guy movie, packed with jargon.
Last year, when industry pundits were wringing their hands over the declining box office, people pointed to the fact that the internet, DVDs and TV were stealing away a lot of the movie audience. This year, movies like Cars, X3 and Pirates Of The Caribbean–whatever your opinion of their relative quality–have given audiences something that they can't really get on a small screen, and audiences have responded by giving those movies their money.
I'm not really as down on Miami Vice as I seem to be above; but from the shoddy presentation to the no-big-dealness of the movie itself, my night at the movies with Miami Vice represents everything that keeps people at home during blockbuster season.
But maybe I'll like the movie more when I see it on TV.
****
Three major new trailers this week:
The Departed! Hard to tell much about Martin Scorsese's remake of the Hong Kong crime thriller Infernal Affairs from the trailer, though the '70s rock soundtrack and the parade of big shot actors (DiCaprio! Damon! Wahlberg (Mark)! Sheen (Martin)! Baldwin (Alec)! Nicholson!) certainly makes it look like it's going to be exciting. But the HK original, as cool as it was, lacked a certain gravitas that I'm not sure Scorsese will provide. I doubt we're looking at an Oscar contender here, but maybe a solid fall action hit.
The Black Dahlia! A lot to like in the trailer for Brian DePalma's adaptation of James Ellroy's historical noir novel, starting with the opening bit, which has an actress trying to emote properly while DePalma's voice coaches her offscreen. Very meta. The rest looks suitably stylish, though it's unclear whether DePalma is going to be in his "I'll tone it down and go for a hit" mode, or his "Fuck the audience, I'm going to have some fun" mode. Call me perverse, but I hope it's the latter–like the underrated Femme Fatale–especially since noirs are so specialized anyway that this is unlikely to draw much of a crowd.
Babel! The latest from director Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu and co-screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga–co-auteurs of Amores Perros and 21 Grams–wowed the middlebrow critics at Cannes, though the hardcore cineastes were less impressed. I'm cautiously optimistic. I liked Amores Perros a lot, and thought the first hour of 21 Grams was fantastic, until the timeline un-kinked and the story went bland. This trailer seems to suggest something potentially heavy-handed, having to do with how we're all connected, but the style is exciting and the multiple locales look promising. I don't mind being preached to, if the underpinnings are solid.
Bring on the fall.
Next: A summary!