Miami Vice

Michael Mann has a way of taking a genre we are familiar with and making it work in such a way that we don't care that it has been done before. He made a bank robber story into something amazing to watch, if for no other reason than it brought Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino into the same frame of a movie and had them interact. People more fondly remember Jonathon Demme's Silence of the Lambs (1991) but for effect I am quite fond of Manhunter (1981). To this day I feel that Brian Cox is a better Hannibal Lector than Anthony Hopkins.

But I digress. Mann also impressed me with Collateral (2004). Miami Vice works. It isn't anything like the 80s TV show that truly defines what I think of when I think of that decade. But then again, it is. No, Crocket and Tubbs aren't wearing white jackets over pastel shirts. No Don Johnson is nowhere to be found. But the film does exist in its own fantasy world. The dialogue isn't the most effective I have ever heard. Half the theater laughed when one character said 'let's take it to the limit one more time' and in any other movie I probably would have laughed as well.

Except this film exists in its own world. The key is that the world is established and it almost never violates that world. The romance is still the shallow romance you might expect from an action flick. It didn't impress me and it didn't make sense and it set up a silly sideplot but it didn't detract so much that I got annoyed.

The plot revolves around Sonny and Rico as they go deep undercover. They penetrate a drug operation at the behest of a generic and very underused Ciaran Hinds. Hinds was masterful in Munich (2005) and in HBO's "Rome". Here he is nothing but a generic authority figure. As they get deep into the operation they raise the suspicion of one key figure who is apparently prescient with his ability to uncover undercover ops.

He's also borderline crazy which made me wonder why a crime kingpin would keep him around. Crazy people are the cracks in the foundation. Still he works as a more immediate villain. At one point the movie actually forgets its very premise which I thought funny but let pass because in the end it is just so damn entertaining. The film is gritty and dark. The main characters are well developed. Ancillary characters suffer in that attention to detail but I got over it.

Is Michael Mann untouchable? No, but I trust him to get me a good film. He has earned that trust. This film easily holds the top spot for films released for the summer but not the top spot for a film I saw this summer. I only saw Brick (2005) in June and it still stands out as the best film. But Mann has shown again that smart action films are possible.