I saw Miami Vice a few days ago. What a disappointment. While ostensibly a big screen version of the hit 80s TV series, the only real similarities are with the title, its main location, the fast and slick vehicles and the names of the main characters. While this isn’t a problem in itself - Miami is a different place compared to then and what is the point of an exact remake anyway - I think it was a lazy and mainly commercial decision by Michael Mann to trade on the name.
Stripped down to the basics - it starts without theme music or titles - it is long on style and devoid of any real drama and characterisation. When one of your main characters has to tell the other in gruff tones why he does the job despite all the risks I think you’re in trouble. The two leads, Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, weren’t given much to go on and it shows. There wasn’t enough of Barry Shabaka Henley as their handler and Domenick Lombardozzi as their colleague. I don’t know what was going on with Gong Li as the love interest. The plot - Detective James ‘Sonny’ Crockett and Detective Ricardo Tubbs infiltrate, rather quickly and easily, a Colombian drug smuggling operation - was confusing and vague on the details. I’d go on but…. A yawn.