Miami Vice
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Good film directors tend to take upon themselves projects that risk being misunderstood sometimes. An artist can't just draw the same drawing over and over. He wants to experiment. Director Michael Mann is famous with his films about crime. And the realistic depiction of what crime and police work actually looks like. But if you are doing this over and over, you tend to become interested in something else. Which is terrible for a director who has fans with certain expectations.
His previous film, Collateral was already an experiment. A much smaller and simpler story where he had enough balls to cast Tom Cruise as the main bad guy. But it perhaps didn't tickle his senses enough, so he had to do Miami Vice.
On the paper Miami Vice is a cinematic adaptation of the Miami Vice TV series. It's a cop buddy film about crime. It has all of the things that you would expect. Undercover operations. Shootings. Explosions. Fast cars. Fast boats. Fast planes. Drugs. Guns. Scary dudes. Clubs. And so on and so forth. But re-watching it just now made me realize that it's not necessarily a cop buddy film at all.
A lot of critics point out that the movie is supposedly all about the vibes. About the cool feeling of driving a Ferrari. About the thrills of going fast in boat. But I think it's not that simple.
Yes, the movie is weirdly focused on the sensory images. You would have shots of necks, or knees of pretty women. Or shots of the sea. Seemingly with no apparent reason. I don't know if Michael Mann is a fan of Lars Von Trier, but this movie feels like an action film directed by Lars Von Trier. And Lars Von Trier has explained his editing style as focused on emotion. Where they would erase everything that is not emotionally charged. And therefor keep the audience always emotionally engaged. And combined with the free camera style of directing that he employs, this looks rather interesting.
Michael Mann directed this movie with a very free camera. Mostly handheld. And with a lot of emotionality to the editing. It felt very much like watching a Lars Von Trier movie. Though with action and with a lot less depression.
Speaking about the camera, a great portion of this film was shot digitally, and in 2006, when this movie was shot, digital cameras weren't great. The dynamic range of the movie is so poor, they could barely light anything. And at times, when it's the night scenes especially, the movie looks like cheap video. Thought to be frank, when it wants to it does look great. Perhaps those were the shots shot on film.
Anyway, for a cop movie about an undercover mission this movie is surprisingly emotional. Which is something I was thinking about today and I have a theory that the movie is not about cops. But rather about love. Yes. The movie is about love. We have two different couples. And both are motivated mostly by emotions. They try to look cool and be cool. But they are warm inside. And that's what the movie is about.
It takes a backdrop of a police story action film to explore emotional things. This is why it's so sensory. This is why Colin Farrell's character looks at the sea while they are talking to a criminal. It's not because the director is stupid. But because emotionally this makes sense. Especially if you know the ending.
This movie is one of those films that has too many people that are way too hot. And for most movies this is distracting. Though in the case of this movie, it actually, surprisingly works. The sensory benefit of having everybody be so bloody hot is just insane. It increases tension since you don't want those people to get hurt, both because, by the end, you are invested in them, and because they are hot and your monkey brain doesn't want pretty people to feel bad.
Sound-wise there are a lot of problems. The movie has a lot of bad ADR. Sometimes the scene will be half ADR and half original recording, which makes the voice of the actor change significantly between takes. A lot of scenes seem to have not enough sound effects. And the music at times can feel a little forced. But it doesn't diminish the emotionality of the film.
The performances in the film are slightly unrealistic at times. Especially Collin Farrell's performance. He is trying way too hard to be cool. But for some reason it all just works. Especially I like the part where Elizabeth Rodriguez's character talks to a guy with a thumb on a bomb's activator. It's just the right amount of over the top coolness for the moment. It was so good, I think it's got to be my favorite moment in the entire movie.
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