Miami Vice

[MacGuffin]

Exclusive Profile: MICHAEL MANN PAYS HOMAGE TO THE ORIGINAL BUT CREATES HIS OWN MIAMI VICE
The writer-director talks about music, the series, and the DVD cut  

It's rare for a film director to return to his TV roots, but Michael Mann has done that with MIAMI VICE. An executive producer on the original 1980's TV series, he's now returned to the world of Crockett and Tubbs on the big screen, but he wasn't interested until the idea was broached to him by Jamie Foxx at a birthday party for a mutual friend.

"First of all, it's all Jamie's [Foxx] fault, because he talked me into this starting in 2002 at [Muhammad] Ali's birthday party," recalls Mann. "But the proposition that really became really exciting for myself and then for all of us, was the idea of really getting into undercover work, and what it does to you, what you do to it, and the whole idea of living a fabricated identity that's actually just an extension of yourself, and doing it in 2006, doing it for real, and doing it right now."

While the title and character names remain, Mann wanted to avoid any direct references to the original series -- preferring to keep the setting and situations as real as possible.

"You're not gonna have crocodiles or alligators, you're not gonna have sailboats, you're not gonna have nostalgia," says Mann. "And you're gonna do it for real as a big picture, and it's gonna be R rated, because you do dangerous work in difficult places, where bad things happen. You have relations with women, there's sexuality, there's language, and that became an exciting proposition.  But it started with the real function, for actors and directors, myself as well; of what is undercover work for real, what is that stuff.  And then all these folks, went and did a lot of that work themselves."

Of course there were questions as to what to keep from the original series.  Music is always a key part of any Michael Mann movie, and he was extremely adamant about the kinds of music used in the film.

"The music's always key to me, whether it's MIAMI VICE or not MIAMI VICE, and it's kind of dictated by the story about what Crockett and Tubbs and Isabella and Trudy are doing," says the director. "Since the movie tries to get into the lives and locate audiences into the lives of these folks, as intensely as possible, I wanted music that had the power to do that."

Most importantly, Mann didn't want the movie to be a direct remake of the series, though many of the essential elements remain.

"We never conceived of it as a derivative," he admits. "It's 2006, it's MIAMI VICE for real, right now, and it has in its core, kind of an emotional, overt way of telling its story, and it takes place in the alluring kind of perfumed reality of Miami, in which you've got this layer of things which are very sensuous and beautiful, and underneath it there's stuff that's very, very dangerous. So in that sense, it has an independent kind of origin.  I don't think people are sitting there and comparing it. The two are co-equal.  The series occupies its place and kind of cultural history for better and for worse, you know."

Conjointly with his belief that the new movie would not be a derivative of the old series, Mann did feel that the essence of the characters and places would remain the same, but just be updated.

"That's exactly right, it's the spirit of it, it's the core of it, it's the way the characters in MIAMI VICE the way those stories worked, it's who these people are," he says. "So at the core of Crockett is Crockett, at the core of Tubbs is Tubbs, but they're re-imagined in 2006 in a different world and a different place and a different Miami."

Mann is also a very selective director when it comes to what material should stay in the final cut of the film, and what ends up on the cutting room floor and he admits that the opening sequence had a 10-minute sequence that was cut to shorten up the beginning. 

"I always felt the story should be tight," he says. "You should be dropped into their lives, and just taken away from it.  And I think audiences are really smart, and they're really intelligent, and I think that you can place an audience kind of almost like they're right on Jamie and Colin's shoulder, and you don't have to explain, 'well now we're going to go into this club, and maybe this pimp Neptune is gonna show up.' You don't have to go through all that, and you can bring all that hopefully into a much more immediate experience, of what these guys do and how they do it, you don't have to be inside the joke, you can be kind of a participant in the joke, and so the movie tells its story that way, and I wanted it to have an intensity, and a drive, where bang, you're in it, and when that movie ends, it goes to black, and that's as much of this story as we're telling right now."

But of course, Mann does admit that fans wanting to see the cut footage have to look no further than the DVD release of MIAMI VICE to see all that was missed in the theater.

"I have to make a lot of really difficult, hard, heart breaking decisions sometimes, about material that is really great, that I really love, and people do fabulous work in, and unfortunately, you have to serve the greater good of that experience, of the picture, so this stuff will absolutely be on DVD's, is the answer," he concludes.

[Garam]

I fell asleep in this one too. I think it might have cured my insomnia, so I have that to thank it for.

Crocket and Tubbs only ever spoke to each other for about 3 minutes in the entire film. What a double act. Anyway, unbelievably boring film. Just absolutely awful.

"Probability is like gravity. You cannot negotiate with gravity."

Ahahah

michael mann was trying to depict all these aspects of an action movie with more realism

Like Crocket shooting the bald guy in the head with that ridiculously large gun and it only leaving two little red marks?

[pete]

you mean "bullet holes"?

[Garam]

I mean the little tentacle suckers that represented bullet holes. A gun that size from that distance would've annihilated his face.

[Ultrahip]

it's true. most of that guys head would be gone. maybe the lower jaw would be in tact, but all the teeth would likely have propelled themselves out of their sockets as soon as the bullets hit.

[tpfkabi]

thumbs down for me. at least i didn't have to pay for it. i had two free passes for a horrible screening of 3 Burials.

anywho, it did feel extremely long. i was kinda confused at what exactly was going on at times.

am i dreaming or did i hear some more Chris Cornell/Audioslave songs?

jamie foxx's joke during the sex scene did get some laughs though.



*spoiler*



when i saw that black booty i told myself, "something's going to happen to her."

[cron]

i guess this time me and alexandro are gonna be the only ones really loving this movie.

[pete]

ahem me too.

[Sunrise]

ahem me too.

After rereading my last post, I did seem a little lukewarm. Should have emphasized the positives to a greater extent, which far outweigh any drawbacks.

[Alexandro]

i guess this time me and alexandro are gonna be the only ones really loving this movie.

Totally, my friend...

I gotta start anyway by mentioning the things that did bothered me about Miami Vice:

I felt Farrell and Foxx (and I don't know if this is completely Mann's or their's fault) failed to put on the screen two actual characters. I understand they are dealing with a very limited exposition, like just showing you "the mission" and not their personal lives, somewhat the same thing that Mann did with Collateral and the opposite of what he did in Heat. Last week I rened The Last of the Mohicans and noticed this too. He likes to play around with the idea of not really knowing these characters, of not exposing them too much. They are who they are with not a lot of explanations. The thing is, and I'm saying this only on basis of a first viewing of Miami Vice, that for a long period of time during the film, Farrell and Foxx felt like they were the same fucking guy!!! Even if they weren't showing their personal lifes in detail, when you saw Cruise and Foxx in Collateral, almost from scene one, you kinda knew what kind of guys these were. For some reason I didn't felt that here, but maybe on second viewing I'll get another perspective.

And I noticed the emotional current is not as high on this one, I mean the ending is not Pacino holding De Niro's hand, or Tom Cruise wondering if anyone's gonna notice his presence on the train...but hey...I gotta rewatch this.

On the other hand, Mann does A LOT of great things here and I'm kind of bummed by the hatred this is getting around here.

For once, after all the truly crappy action films around this summer, whata  relief to see something with some substance. It's pure Mann.

I love it that in Mann's movies, every character is a person of honor, everyone is smart, everyone is a perfectionist. You never see a traitor in one of these, and when you do, every other character just treats that person as some sort of nothing...Mann don't even give these characters som tragic touch to redeem them.

I love the attention to detail, the "fetish for methods" wich someone else pointed out. I have no clue if what Mann portraits here has any resemblance to reality, but he shows everything with such detail that at least he convinced me that this is the way it is. This is th way druglords behave, this is the stuff vice agents do, this is the kind of dangerously glamorous lifes they live.

In other words, he creates a parallel reality with acting, cinematography and specific framing, pop music and pure style. It looks gritty and real, even though it isn't.

Mann is a smart guy (anyone who's seen the Collateral commetary can verify that he has a pretty extense and organized database flowing through his brain) and trusts audiences to follow this convoluted plot, to be able to just get in the lives of these guys and get out withouth much explanation...this is so anti-hollywood, specially right now, where EVERY LITTLE THING is fleshed out and explained three times so audience can understand.

The big pleasure to me, actually, is that boldness of making a summer action flick for adults, in which the plot can get complicated to follow, and situations evolve without constant explanation. The notion of no real villains, or at least not moreally reprehensible villains (everyone has their own code and they all respect it and follow it)...I dont know...It seems to me this is a very rich MOVIE compared to everything else out right now. It's avery personal, modern type of film noir if you may...

I think around here people have been too quick to dismiss it...In fact, Xixax has become kind of boring in that sense. No movie is good enough except for one a year, and then we give every award we can to that one. I think we should celebrate movies more, it's more interesting.

And of course, the dv cinematography was beautiful.

[rustinglass]

I liked the movie too. I didn't think it was boring at all, and the story wasn't too confusing, I knew what was going on all the time.
I loved the mood of the whole thing, and that they didn't make too many jokes and didn't talk too much when it was not necessary.
the video look and the action scenes were great

[ElPandaRoyal]

Liked, but didn't love it. Being a huge Michael Mann fan, I was actually kind of shocked at how lame the use of music was in a couple of scenes (not only badly used, but simply bad music used) and how it felt extremely long and at the same time not long enough (some uninteresting things take a lot of time and some character development takes very few, unlike the best films from the mann). Hi-def video looks damn cool, especially in achieving the almost documentary-like style keeping us really close to the action, although did he really need to keep on moving the camera like crazy (even when characters are standing still talking) and changing focus all the time? Sometimes it felt perfect, others simply forced. Anyway, nobody does action like him, and nobody makes bullets sound like they sound on his movies, where to me, violence is never pretty but simply... violent.

SPOILERS!
By the way, who cares how big those holes in the head of the guy are? In most movies you don't even see the effects of the damn bullet fests. It'a all shooting and the bad guys falling and absolutely no blood at all. How about the scene in the house when they're rescuing Jamie Foxx's girl? Bada-bing, they blew his barins all over that nice little white wall.

[nix]

Is it one of Mann's best? Most certainly not.

Is it better than most summer actioners? Of course, it's a Mann film.

Most everything has been touched on here at some point, but I'll offer my concise two cents anyway:

The cinematography was really uneven to me. I understand that he was attempting to show the grit vs. glamor but it made the visuals seem strikingly inconsistent (one minute it's handheld with lots of HD grain, which isn't as nice as film grain, the next it's all dolly and chopper shots. Clearly it was intentional (because as we know, nothing in a Mann film is unintentional) but it still took me out of the film.

The violence was perfect. No complaints there. But the dialog could have been better. Sex scenes were silly at best (although that girl did have a heavenly ass).

Loved the stark opening and closing. Hated the excessive use of audioslave (yeah, the ONE song in Collateral was great but the 4 or 5 here were all pretty stupid).

Colin Farrel's Batman voice made me want to puke. The undercover jargon was cool and appropriate.

The trailer park scene was the best in the film. Perfection.

[Derek]

This movie is the equivalent of a magazine ad from GQ.

The plot, character arcs, etc...don't matter. This is just an exercise in cool and attitude, which is fine by me.

It's pretty interesting how Mann, who is in his sixties, is setting the standard on what is cool.

[gob]

A very disappointing film. Fairly decent action sequences are the only thing of interest.
It's pap, don't waste your money.