by Anonymous Logician, Copyright August 16, 2006, all rights reserved. 638 views
It seems even when I'm actually able to see a current movie, a couple of weeks have to go by before I get around to reviewing it. And reviewing Miami Vice is hard enough by itself; watching it's bound to produce mixed feelings.
On the one hand, there's much to like in this movie. Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx were great and worked well together. Foxx especially shone as the suave Tubbs: "Smooth, that's how we do it." Add to this a passable story and some exceptional action sequences. Foxx and Farrell get into some brutally realistic gun battles, including a tense hostage rescue aimed at saving Foxx's girlfriend Trudy. There was the moral dilemma of keeping perspective while being undercover ("There's undercover, and then there's 'Which way is up?'"), as well as the theme of men protecting women. Farrell's arms-dealing girlfriend laughs at this idea, but Farrell says later of her other lover something to the effect of, "If he loved you, he would never put you at risk."
On the other hand, the film tended to get lost in lenthy boring stretches in which Foxx mostly spouted impressive but unenlightening sting jargon and Farrell enjoyed a fling with one of their suspects. On this note, we should ask whether Vice is able to follow Foxx's line about knowing which way is up. Granted, undercover work requires getting your hands dirty. But this can't mean a carte blance for any vice; otherwise law enforcement would lose its very existence, as the movie Training Day (Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke) pointed out. Miami Vice nailed the "gritty" realism; now we need the moral clarity.
Another objectionable element is the amount of nudity in the film. Sadly, we've come to expect a scene or two that makes good use of our fast-forward buttons. But Vice was simply over the top, which leaves viewers like me frustrated. While as a whole the movie was entertaining, you'll definitely have reservations.
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