Miami Vice (2006)
Michael Mann's adaptation of the buddy cop series by the same name he used to produce all the way back in the 80's, starring Coling Farell and Jamie Foxx. You know, I really like Michael Mann. He is one of those directors who has not only a very specific style but keeps exploring very specific subject matters, which makes it interesting to follow his filmography. He treads a very thin line between grit and romanticism in his movies. In many ways I consider him the successor of the great pioneers of American Westerns, replacing the American badlands with with the equally lawless streets of the modern metropolis, finding the same majestic beauty in highways and skycrapers that the likes of John Ford found in the jagged rocks of Monument Valley and the same type of adventure, drama and romance in the lifes of its modern lawmen and bandits. Throughout his career he has found countless angles to explore those. Miami Vice (2006) is considered to be one of his more openly formalists takes on that subject matter, which is one of the main reasons it's one of his most divisive works (disregarding his most recent outing "Blackhat", which is still ony my watchlist)
Miami Vice is about undercover cops Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs busting a drug cartel. It's somewhat amusing to think of it as a non comedic version of Bad Boys 2, but not exactly a very descriptive one. On face value, it's a fairly regular cop story, there are tense negotiations with higher up gang members, a taboo romance between Crockett and a woman working for the cartel, it follows what are mostly predictable plot points for this kind of story. Miami Vice is, though, before anything else, a mood piece. Collateral saw Mann experimenting with digital photography, Miami Vice puts its photography front an center. Dialogue takes a backseat to lighting and colour when it comes to conveying the mood of a scene. Closeups are as close as they can be to provide a clear view of all the little cracks in the main characters professional stoicism. Mann wants you to feel the heat of a south american night and the cool breeze of a speedboat cruise. Lynch's Inland Empire utilized a digital hand camera to depict the incomprehensible and otherwordly tribulations of Laura Dern's character with the matter of fact naturalism of a mid 00's YouTube upload, Mann's higher resolution camera work in Miami Vice uses the format's increased naturalism to immerse the viewer in the atmosphere and emotion of a scene. The color of the sky, the waves of the sea, the wind in the palm trees and, of course, the expression of the actors, all those little signs of anxiety or elations, do the talking to the point that the dialogue itself, consisting to about 80% of criminologic jargon, feels frequently like a mere obligation.
Miami Vice is less concerned than most of Mann's work with the ethics and morals of crime and law enforcement. Aside from the romantic subplot between Crockett and gangster moll Isabelle, no one is really conflicted about their own or anyone elses position in all this. Many a Mann movie puts the crisis of reconciling professional life and private life to the forefront, the characters of inherent Vice have long surrendered themselves to the knowledge that for them, the only way to have a private life, is to make it a part of their professional life. Crockett tries to rebel against this universal constant and gets beaten back into line. People drift apart like speedboats on a sea and all that's left is to watch them wistfully.
Miami Vice is not Mann's masterpiece but it is probably his most interesting experiment in visual storytelling. And attempt to distill the tender poetry of the neonlit city, the blue sea and the overcast sky while filtering out all the artificialty and all the distance put between viewer by the conventional filming techniques. The camera movements are unstable, the nights are dark and grainy, illuminated by polluted light or accentuated with inky blues and blacks. Transcendent beauty is found mainly out at sea or among the clouds, while Miami Vice's characters find themselves incapable to escape grime, the heat and the humidity of the slums of South America or the streets of Miami, their near dissociative anxiety reflected in shaky camera work and blurred backgrounds, their moral ambivalence in the blurry constrasts of digital chiaroscuro. There's a feverish beauty to Miami Vice, wholly seperate from the surgical sobriety of a Heat or Insider that sidesteps the conventions of regular drama and provides a deeply immersive portrait not of the life, but the mindscape of Mann's men who live on the edge.
