 Michael Mann's film version of the cult 1980s television show, on which he was an executive producer, bears little resemblance to the sun-kissed cop drama that made global stars of Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas in their pastel-coloured suits and shades. The title and character names may be the same, but this Miami Vice is gritty, grim and resolutely downbeat, shot in a South Florida cowering under the threat of an imminent lightning storm. Mann and cinematographer Dion Beebe, who collaborated on Collateral, plunge headlong into the less scenic underbelly of a region riddled with drug lords and their gun-toting minions. Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx's suits are anything but sharp - you're unlikely to see more ill-fitting threads in a $100m-plus blockbuster - and their dialogue often consists of philosophical mumbo jumbo. "Probability is like gravity ... You can't negotiate with gravity ... You just cash out!" Hard-boiled detectives James "Sonny" Crockett (Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Foxx) go deep undercover to solve the murders of two federal agents and an informant's family. The evidence leads them to a drugs trafficking ring fronted by the sadistic Montoya and his beautiful Chinese-Cuban wife Isabella. The two cops successfully infiltrate the cartel, posing as drugs transporters, but Crockett finds his objectivity seriously compromised when he embarks on a passionate secret affair with Isabella. Inevitably, the detectives' personal lives become entangled with their work and the safety of loved ones is threatened, including Tubbs's intelligence analyst girlfriend. Forced to bend the rules to breaking point to get results, Crockett and Tubbs align themselves dangerously with the men they want to put behind bars. Miami Vice is a triumph of style over comprehension; fraught conversations unfold and we have little clue what is going on. Mann's dynamic direction, especially during the set pieces, carries the film through many of the longueurs and explosions of sickening, realistic violence are all the more shocking for their scarcity. However, the excessive 132-minute running time eventually wears us down and like the two detectives at the centre of the case, we can't wait for the big showdown and an end to the subterfuge. | 
Movie double-acts come in all shapes and sizes ...and with varying degrees of success.
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