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April 02, 2009

Miami Vice

'Vice' is neither touted masterpiece nor camp classic

By Tram

This was posted as part of the Third Annual White Elephant Film Blogathon.

When I first received news of my assignment for the White Elephant Blog-a-thon, I thought, “Oh shit!” To the unassuming, movie-going masses, Miami Vice (2006) was just another one of those adrenaline-packed summer blockbusters with a built-in TV audience in mind. To cinephiles, however, it was “a Michael Mann film” – four words that underscore just how polarizing Mann’s films are. To his admirers, Mann is an impressionistic visionary who subverts genre expectations. To his detractors, Mann is the exact opposite: Hollywood’s Emperor without clothing, if you will.

Oddly enough, as a self-proclaimed bleeding heart cinephile, I belong to neither camp - and this viewing of Miami Vice (my second exposure to the Mann oeuvre; the first one was Heat), only reaffirmed my status as a detached non-partisan. Miami Vice was a frustrating film experience, one muddled with as much complaints as compliments. I guess this may explain why prior attempts to articulate my contradictory feelings into coherent paragraphs have since been aborted. And so without further ado, here are some of the fragmented notes taken, during the viewing of the film:

1) One common criticism often leveled against Mann is that he favors “style over substance.” While I am not exactly a Mann apologist, I am more inclined to disagree with this sentiment. One of the things Mann does really well, as a filmmaker, is create mood. I love the first two minutes of the film, wherein the camera opens with the dark blue sea and then, bubbles upwards towards the surface and latches onto the velocity of Sonny and Rico’s speedboats. A few moments later, he catches sight of Sonny and Rico mingling in a neon-lit nightclub – you know – the sleazy, go-to-place where sweaty, anonymous torsos gyrate against one another until dawn. Call me a sucker, but I love it whenever a filmmaker takes the time to establish a strong sense of place as well as dynamic.

2) For a film aware and heightened by the gritty nuances of everyday life – particularly, missed and/or fleeting connections (Sonny’s short-lived romance with drug czar ally Isabella, blocked cell phone signals Sonny and Ricardo experience during pivotal undercover operations, etc.) – Miami Vice sure is glamorous! Colin Farrell’s scruffy Sonny is brooding, sleazy… and inexplicably sexy. What can I say? The truck driver moustache, greasy hair, and five o’clock shadow works wonders for Colin. Ah, the magic of the movies!

3) The bookends of Miami Vice – the beginning as well as the end – are great. The middle parts, unfortunately, lag. Watching the cat-and-mouse game between Sonny and Rico and the evil drug cartels unfold for god knows how many hours, I wondered if a drinking game would have sufficed. We drink every time we see a foreboding Bald Neo Nazi in the car. We chug again whenever we see that bug-eyed drug lord with the receding hairline, whisper and nod quietly to his bespectacled Right Hand Man in a sleek state-of-the-art meeting room. And just because we want to drink ourselves silly and get sloshed for the night, we chug two shots every time we see a shower sex scene - interchangeably between Sonny or Rico and their significant others - that dashes our fragile expectations (“Hold on. Is there going to be a kinky Golden Shower on the way?!?! ... [sighs] Aw, dammit.”)

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