Tubbs of cheese in Miami

Miami Vice

Directed by Michael Mann

Certificate 15

IT must have been a challenge to make a film of Miami Vice as silly yet enthralling as the hit TV series, but director Michael Mann has managed just that.

It was a casting agents dream to pair Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell as Crockett and Tubbs, but they are not quite up to the same levels of supreme cheesy buddy cop partnerships created by Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas in the original.
But who cares? This is a gun-toting romp that borrows from the sheriff versus the bandits storylines.
Mann has a great track record in the bang-bang-you’re-dead genre of cops and robbers, and creates a gloriously sleek world of white suited gangsters driving extremely long cars under the clear blue skies of south-eastern USA.
He manages to throw in some nods to the kitsch crime fighters of the TV series from 20 years ago, but overall this is much more serious.
The plot revolves around guns and drugs. A sting to hit a major Latin American drug runner who is corrupting the good ol’ USA.
Crockett and Tubbs do what you’d expect. Not so much going – rather diving – undercover, to sort them out.
But of course it is not a question of diligently gathering evidence, carefully concocting a case and then feeling a collar or two.
Crockett, never able to resist a young lady, falls for an accountant to the man they are after, which leaves him with a slight dilemma. Nick, the top dog and his entourage, including his sassy maths whizz of a lady friend, will go down too.
Tubbs is also facing a problem caused by his feelings for one of the fairer sex.
His police officer girlfriend gets kidnapped by a gang of racist drug dealers selling copious amounts of crystal meth. His job is to find her, free her and seemingly hurt as many of the baddies in the process. Guns blaze and fireworks illuminate, the backgrounds are rich and nothing in any shot is left to chance.
Of course, every one lives happily ever after: the Miami Vice duo clean the streets for the foreseeable future, while no doubt the Latin Mafia will be back in time for a sequel.
Florida does not come out of the show too well. It seems to be a world where incredible wealth breeds exceptionally poor taste. All this is created on the back of terrible poverty – and to Mann’s credit, he makes this link obvious.
It is a quality production for a clichéd crime flick – but that is, of course, what Miami Vice was all about.