An odd film, a strange episodic film that is like an episode exploded for the confines of a cinema. I saw it last night with a audience full frat boys/high school football players. It was not the ideal viewing audience. I saw it again later today and found myself not wincing as hard as before, and just getting soaked up in all the digital grainy look which is quite a stark contrast to
Collateral.
I really enjoy the film in the way it just starts and stops. You're literally thrown into the scene. Just in the way you're dropped into the film, you're pulled out as well. It just ends.
Obviously my affinity to Michael Mann's films and asethetic make it harder for me to discern sometimes the bad from the good. I wanted to like it more and I wanted it to be better. But already I find more to look at and enjoy in the film than say
Ali, which was a difficult film to like, despite it's many good and bad points.
Another point of discussion in the film:Sex and sex scenes. Sex feels very odd in
Miami Vice and at times uncomfortable. I can't find a better adjective at the moment, maybe wierd or strange as well. When we're introduced to Vincent Hanna in
Heat he's making love to his wife in the morning. The scene is shot with very tight shots and perspectives and cut together in such a way to create that sense of passion and the heat of the moment spontanaity. It works. In
Miami Vice Jamie Foxx has a humorous bit when he and his girlfriend begin to become intimate post showering. Colin Farrell has to follow Foxx's lead by being in the shower and then having Gong-Li join him. So you've got sex and showers going on.
The look of the film is really peculiar too as I mentioned above in being a stark contrast from
Collateral. The DV is not clean in some places and is down right
dirty and and
raw with splatters of blood on the lens and shaky shaky shaky handheld running around from person to person. I was expecting things to be cleaner as the film was being set in Miami and you think of the city as being slick and glossy. But this isn't a TV show, this is the film. They're different entities, hence the different approach.
If you've seen just two or three Michael Mann films, you know what to expect. Strong male lead characters with a dedication to work that superceeds the term workaholic by leaps and bounds. Everything else in the character's life takes a back seat to the first priority at hand, the job/the score/the truth/etc. Colin Farrell is that character this time around. He has his contemplative moment staring at the ocean, ruminating on God knows what. (It just looked better in
Heat with Deniro in that empty Malibu home staring at the sea and Russel Crowe looking out at the Gulf in
The Insider before going to give a court deposition in Mississippi.)
Now that I've seen it twice I'm gonna let it sit for a while. Think about it some more, read some essays(
one.
two.
three.
four.) that have been nagging at me for a review about Mann and his style. Maybe try and put some thoughts down on paper about Mann as an exercise. In school a couple years back a wrote a lengthy piece for a professor on Mann and his films. Perhaps it's time to return, if only to keep the mind limber and able.
I'll leave it on this note. A quote I came across in
this AP wire piece from yahoo Mann in regards to making a film out of the series.
"The whole idea was to do `Miami Vice' for real and to do it now, and it would take place now. And if you're going to do it for real, then the first question you have to ask yourself is: Do I have those points of connection to the show?" Mann told The Associated Press. "It's nostalgia, and I find that passive and not interesting. ... If you're going to do `Miami Vice' for real, you're not going to get into the cartoon stuff, and you're not going to try to trigger recall of the show."
Did you see it yet Jerry? Brian?