Friday, July 28, 2006

Miami Vice

But the Blackberry still connect
by Ryland Walker Knight

My admiration for Michael Mann has nothing to do with his TV history and the show that spawned his often brilliant (but uneven) career and this new often breathtaking (but muddled) film version: it's all about his movie making. And from what I hear, the show was so great because it was so cinematic. No wonder he broadened his canvass. Mann's got out of bounds visual skills, lofty aims and he knows how to show off. Often those lofty aims get in the way of compelling subject matter (ALI) but more often than not you'll hear people complain about his Mamet-lite approach to dialogue or a prediliction for style over substance. Or that he keeps retelling the same story. At least it's a compelling story. A story full of guns and sex and adrenaline, even existentialism.

MIAMI VICE, the movie, has the weakest, skeletal (though still convoluted and tangential) screenplay of his crime pictures but by and large the strongest, boldest visuals. Employing a high definition digital camera that gives each shot unbelievable depth of field, every composition is a pleasure to behold. With nothing to rival the pristine comic book beauty of SUPERMAN RETURNS' mythic allusions, Mann's world is rather the flip side, all grain and rain, an insane tactile experience. There's a lot of distant thunder and lightning just visible off the edges of the frames you can't ignore. You feel the cloud cover, you dodge the bullets, too.

Without any credits we're not invited into the movie but thrown, head first, into what I'm assuming is a typical Miami club pounding the new theme song, that hideously catchy ditty by Jay-Z and Linkin Park. Dancing, drinking, flirting and staking out a Caribean pimp--typical Vice activity for our new Crockett & Tubbs. Only, now they go by their first names, Sonny & Rico, and Sonny actually wears shirts with buttons, and a handlebar mustache. Why? It's fresh, it's oddly hip, it's badass. Mann's movies are usually badass, all alpha males with issues and guns. (Even Hawkeye, the indiginous hero from LAST OF THE MOHICANS has a gun.) And this movie has some brutal guns, if not subtle issues; in fact, nothing is subtle and that's just fine. As Rico warns middleman heavy José Yero (a smarmy John Ortiz), there's a lot of Jackson Pollock blood on the walls. Except there isn't really that much bloody action: rather, the action we're given(?) is brief and infrequent, yet visceral, punctuated by the deafening sound design and those splatter sites.

Is that the vice a summer movie is supposed to supply? To some degree, yes, and those set pieces certainly deliver. But Mann's lofty aims are bullseyed on that recurring theme of duality across the line of the law. These guys spend most of their time acting as crooks working crooked jobs importing drugs and occasionally killing people. But its dramatic asperations are not followed through on, so, its sobreity fails the vice side of a popcorn flick: the violence is realisticly horrific in its severity and, as such, not quite entertainment. Yet I still find it more engaging (worthwhile?) than that critic's darling PIRATES 2. Mann knows exactly what he's doing when it comes to staging a battle or mapping out a tense raid on a hideout, however, he forgot to write a compelling plot to go along with the action. And there's this romance subplot I haven't mentioned yet.

Sexy disco gunrunners

Gong Li is a fine actress and she does her best with our unruly language but most of her dialogue is lost to her limiting accent. Not that she's unappealing because of it, nor does it really matter given her slight, plot-element characterization--instead, it renders the exchanges between her Isabella and Colin Farrell's Sonny naive and phony. The actors use their eyes and pauses (aided by the editing team, no doubt) to sell their obvious physical chemistry as emotional compatibility for the most part despite their forgettable dialogue. The sex scenes help, too. What's most unfortunate about the romance subplot is its predictability--involving Isabella's ties (business and pleasure) to the drug czar our Vice boys are targetting--and diversion from the already complicated plot.

More convincing, if tenuously so, are Jaime Foxx & Naomie Harris as Rico and Trudy. Their equally sexy love scene is the only time Foxx uses his comedic gifts to flesh out his wooden, constricted role--and performance--while Harris exudes charm throughout, leavening the mood when allowed. Mann is clearly fascinated by how these uber macho men balance home and work but these relationships are routine movie romance in their slight approximations of the soul. But, as I said before, here it's more about the men and their dirty work than their failed loves. This premise simply cannot support what Mann himself so deftly balanced in HEAT & THIEF: its purpose is the gritty action.

Which is why the movie is ultimately a let down. There's a lot of smart filmmaking and beautiful images yet with its flimsy script and isolated action scenes it cannot hope to hold up 20 years later. But, as marketing has proven, that doesn't really matter when there's money to be made. It just helps to have Michael Mann directing traffic and bullets. When the snipers tore that car to pieces you felt like your arm flew off, too, didn't you?

02006: 146 minutes: dir. by Michael Mann: written by Mann, based on characters created by Anthony Yerkovich

8 comments:

  1. Their equally sexy love scene is the only time Foxx uses his comedic gifts to flesh out his wooden, constricted role

    Apparently, Michael Mann must have seen Foxx's earlier movie, Booty Call.

    Or that he keeps retelling the same story.

    I don't think he's telling the same story so much as having a recurring theme in his work: Professional men suffer personally, especially if they're good at their jobs. Vice's ineptness is just a signal that Mann has finally drank his own macho bullshit Kool-Aid.

    For my money, Collateral is Mann's boldest visual feature. Vice's haphazard cin-tog gives the illusion it was shot by three different people and then chopped together.

    I agree with you that Mann got in the way of Ali, undermining fantastic performances by Will Smith and Jamie Foxx. Whenever either of these two would be on a roll, Mann would show up in the bottom of the frame screaming "hey, don't watch them! Watch me! I'm the DIRECTOR!!!"

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't think he's telling the same story so much as having a recurring theme in his work

    I agree. I was just trying to set up things I saw as miscues. If he wanted to explore that theme better he could have written better female characters.

    Vice's haphazard cin-tog gives the illusion it was shot by three different people and then chopped together.

    Honestly, during the first club scene, that's what I thought, but once they got outside and John Hawkes was flying on that sepia freeway I bought into its look big time. Sometimes the cutting was too manic for my tastes but overall it was effective. I think the problem is Mann didn't have a set script and relied on his gift for cinematix instead of his usual knack for believable characters and believable character arcs. (You read this?) Still, I had enough fun. That's probably part of my recent leniancy: I'm relatively broke most of the time and I just want my admission price warranted now that I don't work in a movie theatre and can't see everything for free.

    I liked COLLATERAL a lot, actually, despite its unbelievable last act heroics but I think THE INSIDER has a better look. COLLATERAL just looks like a warm up for the technique he perfected in VICE. And the color palatte, and clouds were better. But none of the performances in VICE can top Toothpaste Tom's sinister Vincent, a bold against-type performance whose chilly anger freaked me out by a few times.

    One thing I forgot to mention in my review was this: how can a cover of a Phil Collins song make me yearn for the original so bad? I don't even like the song. I got home and downloaded it and laughed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. how can a cover of a Phil Collins song make me yearn for the original so bad? I don't even like the song. I got home and downloaded it and laughed.

    That cover is awful, and should never have been considered. I like Collins' original. It's his best song and the one song of his most people are not ashamed to admit they like. In a way, Collins' song is a mood microcosm of the Vice TV show. It's icy, stripped down, very 80's, and with lyrics that don't make a lick of sense.

    Thanks for the link. I sat next to the Slate critics at the screening of Miami Vice. During the technical problems that plagued the theater's sound system, I leaned over and said to them "we need closed captioning." At least I got to see Vice for free.

    But none of the performances in VICE can top Toothpaste Tom's sinister Vincent, a bold against-type performance whose chilly anger freaked me out by a few times.

    I liked Cruise's Collateral performance, as well as his work in Magnolia, a movie a lot of people come after me for hating. The mini-movie that opens Collateral, between Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith, is excellent. The movie could have gone in an entirely different direction from that jump off.

    I'm relatively broke most of the time and I just want my admission price warranted now that I don't work in a movie theatre and can't see everything for free.

    That was a perk of working in the theater. I only did it briefly, but I saw a lot of movies I was glad I didn't pay to see. I spent more time working in a video store than the theater.

    Nowadays the movies cost so much (up to $12 for one ticket out here) that I feel hesitant to see anything I don't think I'll like. I saw Scoop yesterday, and my hesitancy was warranted. I had a better time at Little Miss Sunshine today.

    I'm sure Vice will make big bucks, and I'll be the only person who panned it. The next time I play a Ray Charles record, Ray might cuss me out on my radio.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The drum breakdown is actually killer.

    After a day of ironic insertion to my rotation, I think I love the song and it makes me hate the cover that much more. I'm giggling but it's actually really sweet how it just fades out after Phil's given you a taste of the release he's craving, kind of like a great Prince cut out.

    And it's that perfect synth sound I associate with Mann's best movies. All that histrionic set up and pay off that applies to all his alpha males. Shit gets so big you can't ignore it anymore (the juice, the bust, the crumbling marriage) and then, even if there is a high point, the dread sets in where you know shit can't be great forever--for fifteen minutes?--much less the last two of Collins' song where you want another drum solo but all you get is pain and unfulfilled desire. Mann was going for that with the Sonny/Isabella romance but, really, it just didn't work. Like the cover.

    That subplot aside, I still think it's got a lot of good parts and mostly I'm just sad none of them added up to their potential.

    blah blah blah

    ReplyDelete
  5. The drum breakdown is actually killer.

    I have yet to meet a guy who doesn't do an air drum when that part kicks in.

    I haven't seen the weekend grosses yet, but I'm sure Vice did quite nicely. All the guys came out to see a movie that was unapologetically R-rated, something we rarely get in this PG-13 era. Every time I see a commercial where the announcer says "This film is not yet rated," I automatically know what that rating will be: PG-13. I hate that some snot-nosed 12 year old kid is determining what I can and cannot see, thanks to Hollywood greed. As a result, movies that have R-rated content and subject matter get crammed into PG-13 (see Great Balls of Fire for the most ludicrous example).

    When I was 13, there was no PG-13. The PG rating was harder than it is now, and the R rating usually meant it when they said R. In All the President's Men, which is rated PG (at least until Warners resubmits it to the MPAA) Jason Robards says "fuck" seven times. With the PG-13, you can't even say it once in a PG rated movie (Nothing in Common and Big buck that trend; I guess Tom Hanks + fuck = PG).

    So, if there's one plus, Mann never tries for PG-13. He likes his R's!

    Sorry for the MPAA rant. I've kicked up the original In The Air Tonight in your honor.

    ReplyDelete
  6. godheadSilo recorded the definitive version of "In the Air Tonight" on their "Share the Fantasy" LP.

    All other versions pale in comparison.

    ReplyDelete
  7. How many versions of "In The Air Tonight" have you surveyed, insano?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi, well be sensible, well-all described

    ReplyDelete