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Miami Vice
Aug. 1st, 2006 12:34 pmCheese conference entries coming soon I promise. But let’s talk about Miami Vice.
Yes, I actually did go see it the other day. The only movie I’ve seen this summer has been the disappointing "Strangers With Candy" movie, so really seeing Miami Vice was more about the time slot than anything else. And I thought it would be pretty on the big screen.
The original Miami Vice TV wasn’t very good, but it had a few things going for it. 1. The unusual for TV camera work 2. Being one of the first popular TV dramas with an interracial cast and 3. Cocaine on TV was kinda fresh and new and 4. the trainwreck fascination of seeing how bad can Don Johnson’s fashion get.
Plot was never really the point, and true to form the plot of the movie has exactly zero twists and turns. It’s really not even worth discussing except in relation to the above. Though I would like to just mention that the inclusion of evil white supremacists in so many action films regardless of whether it makes any sense is just so transparent. It’s like shouting "SEE WE AREN’T RACIST! WE SHOW BAD WHITE PEOPLE TOO! Yeah, yeah...
The movie is beautiful in a number of scenes. The sound of thunderstorms and wind is more interesting than the stilted dialogue anyway, so the moments of pink skies, crashing waterfalls and lightning strikes were the best part of the movie. I’m not even saying that as a criticism, it’s mostly why I wanted to go.
In my memory, I haven’t seen it since it originally aired, the series in many ways was about the melting pot myth of America. Multi-racial Miami was the backdrop for a cop drama that was profoundly uninteresting. Thus the background became a large part of the action. Certainly cop dramas were among the first TV shows to incorporate Black actors. Sometimes they even gave them badges in addition to guns like in the "Mod Squad" if they were really trying to be hip. But Miami Vice had Blacks, whites, and Latinos all over both sides of the drug war.
It certainly didn’t escape the notice of the viewers. In one of my social groups, that it goes without saying was mostly white, Miami Vice spawned a drinking game. Basically, in order to get as fucked up as possible, you drank whenever a new "minority" came on the screen.* Fucked up, and racist no doubt, but even us suburban high school white kids could tell something different was going on. I’m not putting out Miami Vice as a model of anti-racism, mind you. Certainly a multi-racial cast allows a lot more leeway in portraying the bad POCs as even more evil and depraved. But it did treat as a given that in the US, at least in urban areas, white folks weren’t the only people who mattered.
The movie actually stays pretty true to that, having characters with dense accents and no subtitles. The message seems to clearly be if you can’t handle accented English, you’re not modern enough to watch this movie. For a show that marketed itself as a glimpse into urban modernity (obviously a stilted, shallow one with certain political agendas, but that’s not the point) the message seems to be now that not only are white people not the sole arbiters of what is important, but that, indeed unless they make certain adjustments, they won’t understand "their" country anymore.
The movie loses the claim to modernity though with the plot. It’s basically a simple undercover bust-the-international-cocaine-dealer plot. Now in 1984, Reagan’s in and all that, cocaine (on TV) was fresh and new. Horrible novels were seen as cutting edge just because they had characters who did lots of coke. Now it’s just trite. If they had set this in 1984 or so, they could have made it work, but really it just undercuts one of the few things Miami Vice had going for it. The illusion of cutting edge.**
As for the fashion, it seemed downplayed. Don Johnson never would have worn the faded, sleeveless t-shirt that Colin Farrell sports in one scene. And what is with his mullett anyways? Between this and the Da Vinci Code, Hollywood seems determined to bring it back.
I must say that I was mighty disappointed in the casting too. Until I got to the theater, I thought that they had cast Will Ferrell instead of Colin Farrell . I didn’t think it was going to be a comedy, but I was fascinated by how Crockett would be portrayed. In retrospect, I think it would have been an awesome choice. Especially since the "moody" we-are-men-unable-to-talk-to-each-other dialogue didn’t really call for much effort.
So, what did I think of the movie? I thought it was pretty when it wasn’t being overly violent. I couldn’t help thinking about all the money wasted by shooting in so many different countries and kept thinking, "Michael Mann must really have some pull". I thought rarely have I been less engaged by characters and plot in a movie. Basically, I thought it was style over substance, just like the original but without the original’s ability to be a cultural force (for good or ill). The sell-by date passed a long time ago for this one.
*To be complete about this, I think one also had to drink whenever Don Johnson changed outfits which was almost as often.
**And I can’t believe I’m typing this, but I actually preferred the Phil Collins version of "Something in the Air" to the horrible modernized one that played over the credits. If nothing else, I will never forgive Michael Mann for making me type that.
Yes, I actually did go see it the other day. The only movie I’ve seen this summer has been the disappointing "Strangers With Candy" movie, so really seeing Miami Vice was more about the time slot than anything else. And I thought it would be pretty on the big screen.
The original Miami Vice TV wasn’t very good, but it had a few things going for it. 1. The unusual for TV camera work 2. Being one of the first popular TV dramas with an interracial cast and 3. Cocaine on TV was kinda fresh and new and 4. the trainwreck fascination of seeing how bad can Don Johnson’s fashion get.
Plot was never really the point, and true to form the plot of the movie has exactly zero twists and turns. It’s really not even worth discussing except in relation to the above. Though I would like to just mention that the inclusion of evil white supremacists in so many action films regardless of whether it makes any sense is just so transparent. It’s like shouting "SEE WE AREN’T RACIST! WE SHOW BAD WHITE PEOPLE TOO! Yeah, yeah...
The movie is beautiful in a number of scenes. The sound of thunderstorms and wind is more interesting than the stilted dialogue anyway, so the moments of pink skies, crashing waterfalls and lightning strikes were the best part of the movie. I’m not even saying that as a criticism, it’s mostly why I wanted to go.
In my memory, I haven’t seen it since it originally aired, the series in many ways was about the melting pot myth of America. Multi-racial Miami was the backdrop for a cop drama that was profoundly uninteresting. Thus the background became a large part of the action. Certainly cop dramas were among the first TV shows to incorporate Black actors. Sometimes they even gave them badges in addition to guns like in the "Mod Squad" if they were really trying to be hip. But Miami Vice had Blacks, whites, and Latinos all over both sides of the drug war.
It certainly didn’t escape the notice of the viewers. In one of my social groups, that it goes without saying was mostly white, Miami Vice spawned a drinking game. Basically, in order to get as fucked up as possible, you drank whenever a new "minority" came on the screen.* Fucked up, and racist no doubt, but even us suburban high school white kids could tell something different was going on. I’m not putting out Miami Vice as a model of anti-racism, mind you. Certainly a multi-racial cast allows a lot more leeway in portraying the bad POCs as even more evil and depraved. But it did treat as a given that in the US, at least in urban areas, white folks weren’t the only people who mattered.
The movie actually stays pretty true to that, having characters with dense accents and no subtitles. The message seems to clearly be if you can’t handle accented English, you’re not modern enough to watch this movie. For a show that marketed itself as a glimpse into urban modernity (obviously a stilted, shallow one with certain political agendas, but that’s not the point) the message seems to be now that not only are white people not the sole arbiters of what is important, but that, indeed unless they make certain adjustments, they won’t understand "their" country anymore.
The movie loses the claim to modernity though with the plot. It’s basically a simple undercover bust-the-international-cocaine-dealer plot. Now in 1984, Reagan’s in and all that, cocaine (on TV) was fresh and new. Horrible novels were seen as cutting edge just because they had characters who did lots of coke. Now it’s just trite. If they had set this in 1984 or so, they could have made it work, but really it just undercuts one of the few things Miami Vice had going for it. The illusion of cutting edge.**
As for the fashion, it seemed downplayed. Don Johnson never would have worn the faded, sleeveless t-shirt that Colin Farrell sports in one scene. And what is with his mullett anyways? Between this and the Da Vinci Code, Hollywood seems determined to bring it back.
I must say that I was mighty disappointed in the casting too. Until I got to the theater, I thought that they had cast Will Ferrell instead of Colin Farrell . I didn’t think it was going to be a comedy, but I was fascinated by how Crockett would be portrayed. In retrospect, I think it would have been an awesome choice. Especially since the "moody" we-are-men-unable-to-talk-to-each-other dialogue didn’t really call for much effort.
So, what did I think of the movie? I thought it was pretty when it wasn’t being overly violent. I couldn’t help thinking about all the money wasted by shooting in so many different countries and kept thinking, "Michael Mann must really have some pull". I thought rarely have I been less engaged by characters and plot in a movie. Basically, I thought it was style over substance, just like the original but without the original’s ability to be a cultural force (for good or ill). The sell-by date passed a long time ago for this one.
*To be complete about this, I think one also had to drink whenever Don Johnson changed outfits which was almost as often.
**And I can’t believe I’m typing this, but I actually preferred the Phil Collins version of "Something in the Air" to the horrible modernized one that played over the credits. If nothing else, I will never forgive Michael Mann for making me type that.
