Movie Review Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris (2011) 

Directed by Woody Allen 

Written by Woody Allen 

Starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Allison Pill, Tom Hiddleston, Michael Sheen

Release Date May 20th, 2011 

Published May 19th, 2011 

Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" is even more magical and romantic than the title implies. The romance however, is not between Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams or Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard but between Woody Allen and Paris. "Midnight in Paris" is a sappy love letter to the City of Lights and its glorious history as a home to hipsters, bohemians and intellectuals.

Owen Wilson is the stand in for Woody in "Midnight in Paris" essaying the role of miserable hack screenwriter Gil Pender. Gil is in Paris ahead of his wedding to Inez (Rachel McAdams) as a sort of pre-wedding gift from her obnoxious parents, John (Kurt Fuller) and Helen (Mimi Kennedy). Joining them, by chance, are a pair of Inez's friends, Paul (Michael Sheen) and Carol (Nina Arianda).

Gil is despised equally by Inez's parents and friends but this only enhances his character. While his days are spent being dictated to and insulted in equal comic measure, Gil's nights turn unexpectedly magical when a turn down just the right street leads to a chance encounter with Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Allison Pill and Tom Hiddleston).

When the clock strikes midnight in Paris Gil finds that he is transported back to the period that he has long glorified as the finest period of time and place anywhere in the world, Paris in the 1920's. Not only does Gil spend time with the Fitzgerald's and their pal Cole Porter (Yves Heck), he gets writing tips for his attempt at a novel from none other than Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll).

Hemingway introduces Gil to Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) who in turn introduces him to a dreamer much like himself, Adriana (Marion Cotillard.) While Gil glorifies her time period in the 20's she longs for the Paris of La Belle Epoque and the Moulin Rouge. The two have chemistry but is it romantic chemistry or merely a shared affinity for the safe confines of nostalgia? FYI, if you need to be told what La Belle Epoque means or how to identify the Moulin Rouge on screen, this is not the movie for you.

"Midnight in Paris" is a love letter to Paris but it is also Woody Allen at his absolute Woody-est. Owen Wilson is not the most likely of Woody Allen stand ins but he finds the perfect rhythm in "Midnight in Paris," a mixture of nervousness, excitement and an ebullient curiosity that is infectious and lively.

Woody Allen's canvas has always been the recesses of the psyche and "Midnight in Paris" is yet another trip deep into the caverns of the subconscious. Each of the legendary people that Gil encounters in "Midnight in Paris" is an extension of his sub-conscious from the Fitzgerald's who provide his ideal romance to Hemingway who is Gil's dashing alter-ego and finally Adriana who is essentially a mirror of his fears. I won't go any further than that as there is so much life and depth to be discovered in "Midnight in Paris."

"Midnight in Paris" stands in Woody Allen's canon among his greatest films; lively, funny, thoughtful and romantic with an acid wit for the philistine American blowhards and a romantic, unblemished memory of all things Paris in the 20's. It certainly won't appeal to everyone but to those who don't need a scorecard to tick off Allen's many references, it's just wonderful.

Movie Review Mid 90s

Mid-90s (2018) 

Directed by Jonah Hill 

Written by Jonah Hill 

Starring Sonny Suljic, Lucas Hedges, 

Release Date October 18th, 2018

Published October 17th, 2018 

No one would have predicted that the foul-mouthed teenager from Superbad and Knocked Up would grow into a two time Academy Award nominee and a genuine auteur. And yet, here we are with actor-writer-director Jonah Hill whose roles in Moneyball and The Wolf of Wall Street forced us to take notice of his acting talent and now Mid 90’s where we learn that he is a true and noble artist behind the scenes as well. 

Mid 90’s stars young Sonny Suljic as Stevie, a 13 year old boy making his first steps toward defining himself as a person. Stevie is shy and doesn’t have many friends. He idolizes his brother, Ian (Academy Award nominee Lucas Hedges), despite Ian’s more than brotherly bullying and violence. Early on, we see Stevie sneak into his brother’s bedroom so he can try on his brother’s life, looking through his clothes and hats and especially his collection of hip hop records. 

Ian doesn’t make it easy on his little brother, their 5 year age gap may as well be 10 or 20 years given how distant Ian is toward his little brother. Unable to connect at home, Stevie heads to the streets of Los Angeles where he falls in with a group of skateboarders. First, there is Ruben (Gio Galicia) who invites Stevie into the sphere of this tight clique as he seeks a small sidekick. Then there is Ray (Na-Kel Smith), a budding professional skateboarder, F---S--- (Olan Prenatt), a rich kid who rebels through skateboarding, drugs and alcohol and Fourth Grade (Ryder McLaughlin) a wannabe filmmaker. 

Stevie’s first experience with deep friendship becomes a little dangerous as he begins smoking, drinking and other experimental behaviors. It’s nothing that a lot of us didn’t get into at 13 but as presented here, with writer-director Jonah Hill’s raw honesty, it has the power of a cautionary tale without coming off as a scolding buzzkill. Hill’s work is wonderfully non-judgmental and observant and if you’re uncomfortable, you’re supposed to be. 

Many assume that a movie called Mid 90’s is intended as a nostalgia piece but what Jonah Hill has actually created is a thoughtful and quite funny observation of youth and identity. Stevie is on the search for his own identity for the first time. He is making the first tentative steps toward defining himself outside of his family, his mother (Katherine Waterston), and his older brother. His choices aren’t the best but they are his and they give him the opportunity to find himself. 

This search for identity is all in subtext but it is nevertheless the crux of this story being told in the Mid 90’s. There is a wonderfully small scene in the film between Katherine Waterston and Sonny Suljic that captures the separation of parent and child, in terms of identity, not physical location, that I found remarkably powerful. It’s a simple exchange where mom says to Stevie “It’s Blockbuster night, what should we watch?” Stevie rejects his mother and their tradition so he can go out on his skateboard and for a moment you can see hurt ripple across Katherine Waterston’s face. 

The hurt in this scene does not come from Stevie being insensitive, he’s not, but he’s unaware of how his mother sees this moment, how she’s just witnessed the first step in her son defining himself apart from her and her expectations and plans for him. She likely doesn’t realize the significance of the moment completely but that moment of minor rejection is palpable and Katherine Waterston plays the moment beautifully. 

The other standout scene, in a movie that brims with top notch moments, comes late in the movie and I will leave you to discover it. It’s a moment between Stevie and his older brother that is charged with emotion. As someone who grew up with a much older brother who was out of High School before I got to High School, I felt this moment so deeply and so personally that I was completely overwhelmed. You may have to have an older sibling to understand why this moment is so powerful but if you remain aware of the signifiers, you may just feel the effect as much as I did. 

If you idolized an older sibling the moments between Ian and Sonny will hit you like a ton of bricks. I had forgotten about my longing as a child to be friends with my older brother. Like Stevie, I used to sneak into my brother’s room and would pay the price in brotherly violence. I wanted to hold his guitar and feel for a moment what it was like to be him. He didn’t know it, but he was my idol but part of growing up was coming to see him as human and Mid 90’s nails that similar moment for Stevie, a moment where his brother becomes human and not the embodiment of youthful ideals. 

In his very first directorial effort, Jonah Hill has delivered a genuine masterpiece of style and character. Mid 90’s is funny, heartrending, thoughtful and observant. The characters are vital and lively and the story flows from scene to scene beautifully. The sun-baked cinematography and the laid back tone come together brilliantly to underline the ongoing tension of the story of Stevie coming of age and finding out who he is. 

I adore Mid 90’s. This is one of the best movies of 2018

Movie Review: Alone in the Dark

Alone in the Dark (2005) 

Directed by Uwe Boll

Written by Elan Mastel, Michael Roesch, Peter Scheerer 

Starring Christian Slater, Matthew Walker, Tara Reid, Stephen Dorff

Release Date January 28th, 2005 

Published January 27th, 2005 

German born Director Uwe Boll did not exactly set the world on fire with his first atrocious major motion picture, the horror video game adaptation House Of The Dead. Yet, because of the films low budget, success can be judged by lowered standards. Thus it's not entirely surprising to see Mr. Boll directing another low budget horror film based on a video game. What is a little surprising is that he was unable to improve on one of the worst films from any director in history.

Christian Slater, a long way from Heathers, stars as paranormal detective Edward Carnby, a former member of a secret government agency that fights the forces of evil. Now working freelance, Edward has just intercepted a rare Indian artifact and someone wants to kill him to get it. Turns out the artifact is part of a key that could unlock the gate to hell.

The bad guy chasing the artifact is Professor Hudgens (Matthew Walker) who, thanks to his assistant and Edward's ex-girlfriend, Aline (Tara Reid), has assembled all but one part of the key. The Professor has more links to Edward's past as well.  He was involved in some strange way with the disappearance of Edward and the entire population of his childhood orphanage.

The orphans, except Edward who escaped, were turned into zombie assassins who could be called only by Professor Hudgens. He calls when he is ready to open the gate to hell and it's up to Edward, his ex-girlfriend, and his former colleagues at that secret government group led by Stephen Dorff to kill the zombies and stop the Professor from opening the gate. There are also some demons from hell that are unleashed to provide some CGI carnage but God help me if I can remember why the hell they were in the movie.

Poor Christian Slater. He used to be so cool. Pump Up The Volume, Heathers even Broken Arrow, Slater had the calm sardonic cool that you can't teach. Even in a bad picture like 1992's cop comedy Kuffs Slater had the ability to bring charm to a charmless and idiotic plot. In Alone In The Dark, you sit and you wait for him to crack wise, to show how much smarter he is than the movie he's trapped in, but it never comes. Slater just looks tired, as if he has just given up and resigned himself to fate as a straight to video actor. That's a real shame.

The rest of the cast actually seems right at home in this awful material, especially Stephen Dorff who chews the scenery like a B-movie legend. Listening to Dorff bark his every line as if belting every word to the back of the theater is almost camp enough to be entertaining. Alas he can't resist taking himself and this ridiculous movie seriously as something that might actually scare someone. Like with his stolid performance in Fear Dot Com, Dorff earnestly believes he's making a good movie and that makes his performance more sad than laughable.

Director Uwe Boll is a hack, plain and simple. He is a directorial machine, built to transcribe bad scripts to filmed images. Whether those images coalesce into anything resembling a movie seems to be none of his concern.

Missing from the plot is any kind of motivation for Professor Hudgens to open the gate to hell. The professor has very little backstory for explanation, aside from turning orphans into future zombies, so the only explanation is that the professor has a case of the "movie evils". "Movie evils" occur when a movie character does something horribly evil only because the plot requires it. The professor does not benefit from opening the gate, and seems perfectly aware of what will happen if he does open it. If he has any demonstrable motivation it was left on the cutting room floor.

But hey, who needs character motivation or a coherent plot when you've got oodles of fake blood, dummie bullets and CGI demons. In a so-bad-it's-good movie that might be all that you need in order to provide some giddy cheap thrills. Unfortunately Alone In The Dark is much too dour and takes itself way too seriously for any real good camp, aside from casting Tara Reid as a scientist, HA! That's pretty funny, but they did not mean it to be a joke amazingly enough.

Watching Alone in the Dark makes me wonder-- with its imbecilic plot, bad special effects and dull witted characters, was it even a very good video game? A gamer friend of mine told me that there has not been a new Alone video game since Playstation 1 sometime in the late nineties. So why did this game get the big screen treatment?

Asking that question is as futile as asking why Uwe Boll continues to get directing assignments when clearly his real talent is inhumane torture. Or maybe it's Svengali-ism, how else to explain how he has convinced real life professional actors that he is a filmmaker.

I hate to ruin your appetite, movie fans, but indeed Mr. Boll will have another horror video game adaptation very soon. Bloodrayne stars Sir Ben Kingsley and will be in theaters early 2006. Just what we have done to deserve this I do not know but repenting our sinful ways might be a good idea before some other obscure video game receives a script commitment and comes knocking on ol' Uwe's door.

Movie Review: After the Sunset

After the Sunset (2004) 

Directed by Brett Ratner 

Written by Paul Zbyszewski, Craig Rosenberg 

Starring Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek, Woody Harrelson, Don Cheadle, Naomie Harris

Release Date November 12th, 2004 

Published November 11th, 2004 

Director Brett Ratner has a flair for escapist action junk.  He is the man behind the Rush Hour series. His latest escapist mainstream popcorn fare is After The Sunset, a heist comedy that is lacking a good heist and some comedy but does feature a supremely hot Salma Hayek in various stages of undress. Sometimes even bad movies have a bright side.

Pierce Brosnan stars as Max, a master thief with a particular affinity for the very rare Napoleon diamonds. What he seems to enjoy even more than the diamonds however is humiliating FBI agent Stan Lloyd, (Woody Harrelson) who is guarding the diamonds and who was held responsible when Max lifted the first one. As the story requires, Max once again humiliates Stan in a convoluted little plot with remote control cars, cat and mouse antics at a basketball game, and finally a gunshot wound for Max, though nothing serious enough to keep him from the diamond. 

The heist would not be possible without Max's better half Lola (Hayek) who runs important interference on the heist and even gets to wear a neat costume. It is Lola who decides that they are now retired and she who chooses their retirement home on a gorgeous unnamed Caribbean tourist trap island. She's happy but Max is miserable with no loot to steal and no agent Lloyd to mess with.  He is bored stiff.

Then out of the blue pops agent Lloyd and a cruise ship that just happens to be carrying the third Napoleon diamond, the only one Max hasn't stolen....allegedly. Can Max resist the temptation of the complicated and once again convoluted and over-wrought pilfering opportunity and another chance to show up Stan or will he follow Lola's admonition that they are retired and it's not worth the risk. Whether he steals the diamond or not he is guaranteed to be involved because of a local gangster (Don Cheadle) who threatens to kill him if he won't help lift the diamond.

Pierce Brosnan is trying hard to settle into post-Bond  life, though he still has one more Bond yet to come. Sadly Brosnan once again misfires on his image makeover. Brosnan is a stiff and casting him as a colorful thief in colorful surroundings only serves to show off his weakest qualities. He's charming and handsome and so very, very boring when compared to his co-stars and even the sunrise of the title is far more interesting than anything Brosnan brings to this film.

If they really wanted to have some fun with After The Sunset they should have switched a few of the roles around. Have Cheadle play the thief, Harrelson the American gangster running the island and Brosnan the straight-laced FBI guy. That at least would give Don Cheadle something more to do than just show up when the plot needs him to look mean. For some reason I can really imagine him sparking with Salma Hayek as well, something Brosnan fails at miserably.

For his part Director Brett Ratner is his calculated mainstream self. Always well aware of what test audiences are looking for, Ratner ratchets up the formula story, the recognizable faces and the entirely "lowest common denominator" plot that only few will find complicated or surprising. I will say this for Ratner, his camera loves Salma Hayek and finds new and wonderful ways of capturing her magnificent form.

As the plot clicks away through poorly executed buddy humor and lazy action setups with little if any payoff the one thing that is clear about the making of After The Sunset is that everyone on the crew must have gotten a nice tan and plenty of umbrella drinks. Otherwise there isn't much reason for this film to exist at all. This is a vacation for all involved, a chance to go to paradise on a studio dime. Can't say I blame them for living it up but would it have killed them to make a halfway decent film while they were sunning themselves?

Movie Review: A Very Long Engagement

A Very Long Engagement (2004)

Directed by Jean Pierre Jeunet 

Written by Jean Pierre Jeunet 

Starring Audrey Tautou, Gaspard Ulliel, Ticky Holgado, Jodie Foster

Release Date October 27th, 2004 

Published December 25th, 2004 

French Director Jean Pierre Jeunet can pack more artistry into one scene than most American directors conjure up in an entire career. For his latest effort, A Very Long Engagement, Mr. Jeunet has topped himself with a strikingly beautiful work that evokes an early twentieth century postcard and a grim Private Ryan-esque war picture. The mixture works because Jeunet is more imaginative and daring than many more well known or better compensated directors in the world.

Audrey Tautou, whom Jeunet made a star of in his last picture Amelie, stars here as Mathilde, a starry eyed romantic twenty year-old who lives every day awaiting the return of her fiancé Manech (Gaspard Ulliel). Even after receiving word from the war office that Manech has been killed, she refuses to accept it. Thus begins a journey, a mystery that will take her from the French countryside to Paris to the frontlines of WW1.

Through Mathilde's numerous inquiries into Manech's fate we see several different versions of what happened from soldiers and those with second hand recounting. With the help of an oddball private eye named Pire (Ticky Holgado), we learn that Manech was one of five French soldiers sentenced to death for self-infliction of wounds. The death sentence was carried out by sending the soldiers into what was called no man's land, the area between the French and German encampments on the frontlines.

Five dead men, five different explanations that range from the expected to the surprising to the miraculous. With the help of family, friends, and fellow soldiers, Mathilde pieces together a mystery that relies a little too much on chance and coincidence, but is too well directed and populated with too many great characters to not work.

Director Jean Pierre Jeunet puts more artistic imagination into one scene in A Very Long Engagement than we have seen in every mainstream feature in 2005, not that that is a very high standard. With Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel and some stunning CGI, Mr. Jeunet casts an amber glow over all of A Very Long Engagement that gives the film an aged look that fits the World War I time period. This is a remarkably beautiful looking movie and it is no surprise it was nominated for the Oscar in Cinematography.

For her part Audrey Tautou delivers another star defining performance. At once dramatic and precocious, Ms. Tautou awesomely conveys Mathilde's naivete and determination. She is aided by a terrific supporting cast of oddballs, tough guys and simply great actors, including Jodie Foster as the wife of one of the five soldiers, and Marion Cotillard as the girlfriend of one of the five soldiers who murders her way through the same mystery as Mathilde.

Director Jean Pierre Jeunet is a gift to true film fans. A director who cares about all aspects of his films, the visual and the scripted page. Unlike some of the assembly line hacks working in mainstream Hollywood who simply transcribe the scripted page to the screen with no imagination or thought, Mr. Jeunet carefully crafts every scene for maximum effect. A Very Long Engagement is yet another example of his genius.

Documentary Review Michael Jackson This is It

Michael Jackson's This is It (2009) 

Directed by Kenny Ortega 

Written by Michael Jackson 

Starring Michael Jackson 

Release Date October 26th, 2009 

Published October 25th, 2009 

The morbid truth of Michael Jackson's This is It is that many in the audience will spend much of the film's 2 hour run time searching for clues to how Michael Jackson died. Shot just weeks before his death on June 30th 2009, This Is It shockingly shows a Michael Jackson who is lithe, agile, adroit and in control. A musical auteur crafting his music like a pro and creating a whole new musical experience that could have changed his legacy.

The Michael Jackson of This Is It does not look like a drug addict or a man in desperate pain. Granted, these two hours were cut from likely hundreds of hours of footage where Jackson's troubles may have been readily apparent. Nevertheless, based on what we see, Jackson is healthy and mentally he's not merely aware he is adept and fully in control, in fact he is the vision of a visionary artist.

The footage compiled for This Is It was meant for Michael's private collection. After he died Michael's family and business partners convinced Jackson's friend and This Is It director Joe Ortega to cut the footage and give fans one last glimpse of The King Of Pop. Ortega has done that and more giving us the musical legacy of Michael as well as glimpses of a star who never whined or cried, never acted like a diva, but a perfectionist and a creator.

It is the vision of Michael Jackson that fans, I'm sure, wish were the dominant image of Jackson rather than the alien figure of tabloid headlines. It is a sad irony that Jackson's death would deliver this change in Jackson's fortune, warping his image back to icon from oddball.

It's sadder still that the potential of This Is It, the actual London performances, could have done what his death seems to have done, restored Michael's legend. From the footage in This Is It, you can see such a spectacle and so much raw, visionary talent, that you can't help but speculate that Michael, barring any more odd behavior, might have clawed his way back to icon status.

The mystery of Michael Jackson's death provides an eerie and morbid fascination but the lasting impact of This Is It may be as the final word on Michael Jackson's legacy, beyond the oddity, the talent wins out and Michael goes into history as a remarkable singer and visionary showman. Oh, what might have been,

Movie Review Miami Vice

Miami Vice (2006) 

Directed by Michael Mann 

Written by Michael Mann 

Starring Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Gong Li, Naomi Harris, Ciaran Hinds, Justin Theroux

Release Date July 28th, 2006 

Published July 27th, 2006 

Miami Vice the movie bares little resemblance to Miami Vice the TV show. Gone are the warm pastel colors, the linen suits and the alligators kept as pets. The trivial elements of the TV show are gone, replaced by a gritty sense of reality. Director Michael Mann, who created the TV show back in 1984, has eliminated the cheese factor of the TV show but in doing so also jettisoned the shows sense of humor and fun in favor of a grim belabored police procedural that is so consumed with presenting a realistic portrayal of the inner workings of being an undercover cop that it forgets to be entertaining.

Not that Miami Vice is a bad movie, hardly. In typically Michael Mann fashion, Miami Vice is sexy and violent with an air of undeniable cool.

Sonny Crocket (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) are partners who, when we meet them, are about to take down a prostitution ring. Before the bust can go down however, Crockett gets a call from a frantic former informant, Alonzo (John Hawkes), who babbles about not having given up Crockett and Tubbs. Having given Alonzo to the feds, Crockett and Tubbs know that something bad is about to go down.

A group of white supremacists, cutting deals with Colombian drug lords, used Alonzo to ferret out FBI undercover agents and have killed them. Now only Crockett and Tubbs can go undercover and take down the supremacists and the Colombians headed up by Jose Yero (John Ortiz) and his partner Isabella (Gong Li). They work for another man, an untouchable named Arcangel (Luis Tosar). The game Crockett and Tubbs run involves inserting themselves into the transportation operations of the Colombians using high speed boats and planes.

The plot of Miami Vice is typical cops and criminals stuff that many other directors have presented before. Mann's only real twist on it is in indulging his love of the procedure of being an undercover cop. Mann loves the planning that goes into an undercover operation, he loves the execution and conclusion. Unfortunately his love only extends to a mere presentation of the facts of procedure. He fails to make these procedures come to life in an engaging and entertaining way.

Miami Vice is as slick and stylish as the TV series ever was. The difference comes in the general tone which is not merely serious but rather angry. Farrell and Foxx play Crockett and Tubbs as scowling, grim faced thugs with zero humor who only become human when they are bedding beautiful woman, Farrell bedding down the lovely Gong Li in a passion free subplot and Foxx in a simmering scene with a fellow undercover officer played by Naomie Harris.

Colin Farrell continues his war with stardom in Miami Vice by delivering yet another glum charisma free performance. Like his Alexander The Great, Farrell's Sonny Crockett is a mumble mouthed downer who barely sparks to life even when bedding a beautiful woman. His intensity does pick up near the end during a climactic gun battle but for most of the film Farrell is pissed off at some point in the distance that he keeps staring at.

Oscar winner Jamie Foxx deserves better than a role that has him playing second fiddle to Farrell. Where Farrell is mumbling and charisma free, Foxx gives a charge to his few featured scenes. There is simply no explanation why Michael Mann gives most of the movie away to Farrell while keeping the multiple Oscar nominee Foxx in the background. More Foxx, less Farrell, better movie.

One of the few things that Mann's Miami Vice movie excels in is hot transportation. The boat, the Donzi triple engine ZF -one of two different boats used in the film- is pure speed on water. The plane, the Adam A500 twin engine, is state of the art with props on the front and back for speed and maneuverability. And, of course the cars are hot and make you wonder just how police departments are spending your tax dollars. The Bentley that gets blown to smithereens certainly would set the average undercover unit back a pretty penny

Regardless of the many problems with Miami Vice there is still much to enjoy about the film. Michael Mann's direction is typically assured and his violence is first rate. Watch for a standoff scene between the Vice squad and some trailer dwelling white supremacists. Actress Elizabeth Rodriguez stars in this scene delivering a very quick, very powerful monologue before dispatching the scene with a violent flourish.

For Michael Mann violence is like a symphony building to grand awesome crescendos. From the street gun battle in Heat to Tom Cruise's charging nightclub chase in Collateral to the final gun battle in Miami Vice, Michael Mann proves himself a master conductor of screen violence. The action in Miami Vice is quick and visceral like a concerto at 33 rpm's. The blood that is spilled is spilled quickly and splatters with the explosive power of real bullets.

The look of Miami Vice, grainy, gritty digital video, bathes the picture in a documentary realism that is at odds with the mundane presentation of the plot. Michael Mann's obsession with the behind the scenes of an undercover cop plot never really gets any entertaining momentum. When Farrell, Foxx and their team are planning the next phase of their operation the film lapses into serious tedium that lasts even as they begin to get into the action where Mann excels.

Deeply flawed as an entertaining action movie, Miami Vice is undeniably artful and even at times very cool. With a more charismatic lead performance, a little more Jamie Foxx, and a little less of the inside baseball on being an undercover cop, Miami Vice could have been quite an awesome picture. As it is I recommend it for fans of Michael Mann, women who love to ogle Colin Farrell, and fans of screen violence.

For everyone else Miami Vice is just another TV spinoff.