About that...

I guess I'll start with what everyone else is talking about - the look of the film. It's directed by Michael Mann who is one of our more gifted filmmakers visually, so you should know straight away that it's going to have great compositions and movement, and it does. What you may be surprised by due to Mann's new found love for the digital format is just how fucking great everything looks. This film looks better than Collateral, which for me was the previous benchmark for digital filmmaking. Every little light is picked up to perfection (the Miami skyline at night is stunning here), and Mann is able to push his camera into places that give the film an original look and a great sense of geography and movement (esepcially in the action scenes). Yes, there are several instances of grain, but to me that just enhanced the general tone of the film, which I guess brings me to what I liked most about Miami Vice...

The tone, mood, and feel of the film is magnificent. It's very dark and gritty, yes. But what caught me off gaurd was how damn lethal the film felt. The first hour and fourty five minutes or so is mostly exposition, with large groups of people talking about things we barely understand and constantly plotting out their next moves. In the hands of a less competent filmmaker, these moments would feel tedious, boring, and incomprehensible. With Mann, though, the film constantly feels like it's on the verge of a frenzy. Like it could erupt into a bloodbath at any moment. And this is where the true beauty of the film lies. Every single scene feels potentially explosive, whether it's with sexual energy or violence. And because of this, scenes that would normally drag fly by in a blur. Mann is a master at pulling the strings.

The story has been labeled incomprehensible by some. I think it's brilliant. Mann drops us right in the middle of the story, so it takes awhile for us to get our feet and follow right along. The thing is though, we never get to the point as an audience where we feel truly comfortable with what is happening. The entire scope of it all is just outside our reach. And that's the brilliance of it, and that's what Mann wants. He wants us to feel like the vice detectives the film is about. We have a fairly good handle on the proceedings, but everything feels dangerous because the corners aren't quite shaded in.

That, and the events are interesting and enthralling. I was deeply invested in what was occuring in the film at every moment. Whether it was the budding love story between Sonny and Isabella (Gong Li, who is brilliant here), or the unravelling of the drug syndicate that goes much deeper than the detectives originally thought, my eyes were glued to the screen.

The action sequences are brilliant. Yes, there are only two or three true scenes of action (and they're mostly confined to the final thirty minutes), but I actually think that benefits the film. Mann lets the tension build and build until it finally explodes in a huge blaze of brilliantly bloody gun play. As I touched on earlier, Mann's camera movements give the action sequences a feeling of geography and movement that most action films can't touch. A great example of this is the climactic shootout.

So, yeah... I love this film. It's definitely not what most people will be expecting (advertising it as an action film was a mistake), but it's easily one of the best films of the year.

Technically it was great, the camerawork was wodnerful, the fight scenes and death scenes were well done, the actors did well with a piss poor script were nothing happen sin 2 and half hours.

This film is saved by Mann and the good actors, but who thought this scrpt was good? I can;t even remeber the names of any of the characters they ahve so little personality and development as people.

C

What a HUGE disappointment this was. Horribly edited, hated the camera work; in some scene it kind of felt like a was watching Cops, awful pacing, uninteresting and confusing plot and boring as hell!.

This movie didnt have ANY action scenes, im just confused because im not sure if even watched the same movie as you guys.

D

I refuse to believe this is a Michael Mann film