Remake of the Popular 1980’s Hit TV Show

Rating: I’d rate this 8/10, because I was planning on seeing it anyways, even if I hadn’t been granted a free pass! And now that I know what happens, I think I’d see it again!

Written and directed by Michael Mann, "Miami Vice" is a remake of the popular 1980’s hit TV show. It’s labeled as action/drama and the plotline follows the journey of two Miami vice detectives, James ‘Sonny’ Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo ‘Rico’ Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) as they get assigned to work undercover to bust a drug-trafficking network.

Crockett and Tubbs use the aliases of Sonny Burnett and Rico Cooper and pretend to be outlaw drug smugglers to try and catch the wrongdoings of Archangel Jesus Montoya-Londono (Luis Toscar) and his banker, Isabella (Li Gong).

“There’s undercover, and there’s ‘which way is up?’”, said Tubbs, at one point, when the plot takes a turn for the worse as the false identities that the detectives have fabricated become dangerously meshed with their real identities.

I thought it was a good touch that the personal lives of the detectives were incorporated into the action scenes, as this adds a human element and makes Miami Vice a lot more believable. By introducing Tubbs’ girlfriend Trudy (Naomi Harris) and by having Crockett fall in love with one of the 'bad guys', the viewer is given another reason to get excited about the action - because they want there to be a happy ending for all of the characters.

Although I have never seen the original TV shows, I was informed prior to the film starting that the TV episodes were constantly full of ‘on the edge of your seat’ action that always left the viewer wondering what was going to happen next. So I must say that although Miami Vice was entertaining, I was left feeling a little disappointed because the previews hyped it up to be chocked full of action and explosions, but the real action didn’t start until the film was in the last quarter, maybe less. This fact, combined with the fact that I was already pretty tired, made it hard to get interested from the very start.

As well, I was informed that the TV shows had a lot of men in nice suits driving fancy cars, so I was expecting to see a lot of vintage material in this film. However in this edition of Miami Vice, the featured technology was updated and the special effects were a lot more advanced. Special effects technician (William Dawson) and visual effects supervisor (Mat Beck) did a wonderful job at creating action scenes that were mind-blowing and really did keep the audience on the edge of their seat.

‘On the edge of your seat’ Action

Film Critic: Amanda Dupuis