There’s
one thing Miami Vice does poorly, and that’s being a
halfway-decent cop thriller. The pace is too steady, the energy level too low
– or just controlled – to be very exciting, and the actual police-work is
threadbare. A twist towards the end finds Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Tubbs (Jamie
Foxx) searching for the latter’s girlfriend, who’s being held prisoner
Somewhere in Miami. A brief message from the girl mentions trailers, Tubbs
reckons the background noise must be coming from the airport, and the Chief
spots a house in a trailer park near the airport with electronic equipment on
the roof – so they go in, knowing they only have one chance to get it right,
not even bothering to check if they have the right house, and of course save the
day in a barrage of gunfire. Sorry, no.
It’s
strange that Vice should be unconvincing in its details, because director
Michael Mann cares so much for authenticity – literally in e.g. the period
detail of Last of the Mohicans (1992), but also figuratively in the vibe
he means to impart. This isn’t just a very stylish film – it’s also a
portentous one, imposing itself by sheer sense of purpose. “When someone fires
a gun in a Michael Mann movie … you do not question it,” wrote Scott Foundas
in the Village Voice, and you know what he means; the style is so weighty,
one simply assumes that no short-cuts have been taken. Mann’s stock-in-trade
– in all his films, but especially Heat (1995) – is a mix of machismo
and gravitas. What he does best are sculpted moments, when Time seems to stretch
like the surface of a bubble, the moment hanging suspended like a perfect
conundrum with no easy answer.
It’s
hard to describe the Mann style. Part of it is the look he brings (especially
when working on high-definition video rather than celluloid, as in this film and
Collateral (2004)), and part of it is his rhythm. Crime flicks are
everywhere these days, always seeking to dazzle, but most try and do it by
fragmenting the image and cutting as fast as possible; it’s exciting on a
surface level, but somehow unconvincing – you feel the middle-class filmmakers
are drawn to their scuzzy characters but don’t really know them, trying to
disguise their insecurity by making it all go by in a mad rush. Mann does it
differently. His people take their time; they eyeball each other. The opening
scene in a club has it all – bling-loaded thugs in the background, sinuous
club-babies dancing with their arms outstretched, dodgy deals going down in the
shadows – but it moves with deliberate care, as if looking around alertly.
Often,
deliberation shades into posturing. More than once, Crockett and Tubbs are
carefully posed gazing in the same direction, like designer statues. There’s
something iconic about them, and about the partnership; they exchange barely a
dozen sentences in the whole movie, yet their loyalty to each other is
unquestioned and unshakeable (“I will never doubt you,” says Tubbs, and the
scene cuts away as if nothing more needs to be said). Only once, when Crockett
goes after gangster’s moll Isabella (Gong Li), does Tubbs look doubtful; “I
know what I’m doing,” says C., and that’s all it takes – even though he
doesn’t really know what he’s doing, unexpectedly falling in love as they
speedboat off to Havana for sex and mojitos. (Incidentally, someone should tell
the Greek subtitles that “mojito” isn’t the same as “gin and tonic”,
just as a Latino man named Jesus doesn’t necessarily translate as “Jesus
Christ”.)
Miami
Vice has a hushed, pregnant quality. The film clocks in at 130 minutes, but
you could shave a good chunk off that running-time just by cutting out the shots
of planes landing, crates being unloaded and boats on the blue expanse of ocean.
It sounds like dead time, but it adds to the gravitas – and the deeper
excitement of emotions held in check, which is what the film is really about.
The villains are mask-like, giving nothing away; their chief, a Colombian drug-lord,
looks benign as a monk and blandly concludes a meeting with “I extend my best
wishes to your families”. Everyone’s too cool to show emotion, yet that’s
what really drives them. Almost all the film’s twists, especially in the
second hour, may be put down to love and jealousy, those yin-and-yang twin
motivators.
For a
while, Miami Vice feels stylish but hollow. Street-lamps tremble like
fireflies on the film’s fuzzy freeways; the lights of the city glow red,
reflected in massive looming clouds tinged rosy-pink. At one point, a night-time
conversation is illumined by a distant flash of lightning. The dialogue is
sparse, occasionally funny – “Why is this happening to me?” “Because you
lead a life of crime” – but seemingly irrelevant. The plot is a flimsy thing,
with Crockett and Tubbs going undercover to infiltrate a drug-gang and find an
FBI leak.
Some
will say it’s pretentious, style in the service of nothing – macho myth-making,
like the pompous speeches in Lord of the Rings. But there’s a hidden
poignancy in Mann’s work. Crockett and Tubbs are cool, but they’re also lost
– and the film (just like Heat) gets its surface pleasures from
overplaying the first trait, but its real hidden power from underplaying the
second.
“Who
are we?” asks Tubbs, meaning who are they this time, what’s their secret
identity – echoed in the end by Isabella, when she learns the truth and yells
“Who are you?” with betrayal in her eyes. The film strips its heroes of
identity, making them iconic, but it’s not just posturing; all the gravitas,
all the sculpted moments weigh the world down, pushing against their humanity.
One of Mann’s signature shots (here and in Heat) is a man in a fancy
apartment – the kind with stark, modernist furniture – sitting or standing
by a window with the city lights stretched out below him, a vast urban tapestry
dwarfing his life. The world doesn’t know, says that shot, and the world doesn’t
care. Vice has another such moment, when Crockett gazes out towards the
sea from a high balcony; at first I assumed it was plot-related – maybe a
speedboat was about to approach from the horizon – but it isn’t. In fact
it’s a moment of existential angst, a man gazing out at the unattainable from
the contours of his slick, hollow life. Moments like these show the film’s
true melancholy. Posed like male models, the heroes of Vice are in fact closer to
trapped insects, or the fuddled people in the films of Hong Kong director Wong
Kar-Wai. They lack any fixed identity, living at the mercy of the universe, with
Love as their only hope of rescue.