Point Blank Review: Miami (Bust) Vice
Why? Why? Why does Hollywood think that 80’s television shows will make good movies? I held out as long as I could watching the 2006 remake of the hit television show, Miami Vice. I knew better than to watch it, but the wife bought it and it has been sitting in the collection for a year or so and I was running out of new titles to watch.
Sorry, but Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell were no Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas who starred as detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. The overall storyline was okay and not surprisingly involved drugs coming into the states from South America. The movie as a whole, did not have that Miami Vice feel to it like the television show did. How can you do a remake and not include the Jan Hammer, Miami Vice theme song in it? I think that is what pissed me off the most!
Outside of the drugs involved, there was a love story, with both Farrell and Foxx and women from different sides of the tracks. But this was to be expected. The characters did have that screen presence that Johnson and Thomas did in the television show. The action was there, from the offshore boats to the gun fights and the defiance of the sometimes renegade detectives. But the overall feel was just not there.
Too much clubbing, picking up chicks and drinking mojitos by Crockett and Tubbs. This movie gets two thumbs down. While I won’t give up on the television show, the movie, even though it was action packed, which is a Michael Mann trademark, failed to hit the mark. Not sure why he could not stick to what made his TV show such a hit. This is a bust, much like the drugs Sonny and Tubbs get.
