Miami Vice - 6/10
The trailer is so completely misleading it's not funny. It portrays Miami Vice as Bad Boys 3 but in reality it has little if anything in common with either Bad Boys films.
It's actually much closer in tone and style to Collateral. I was surprised that there is actually only 1 gunfight in the whole film.
Both Foxx and Farrell are perfectly fine their roles, they're decent actors and pull it off fine. As is Gong Li (man she's smoking hot, especially for her age), sure it's utter ridiculousness we're supposed to believe a Chinese woman is somehow mixed up in Colombian drug trafficking but like I said she's such a decent actress she pulls it off.
But like many have said the real star of the film is it's gritty, realistic edge. Yes the Colombians are cliché's to say the least but unlike Bad Boys this actually felt like Colombia and equally felt like real undercover cop work.
Like I said earlier there is only one gunfight and this is a shame as the film was crying out for another one. There was a surprising amount of dialogue, you need to be paying attention.
I had no problem with the look of the film. I thought it fitted rather well with the gritty tone. So that's the good and I really want to give this film a higher mark but in it's current form I really can't simply because Mark was right when he said:
Markgway wrote:I've no love for digital films and have also heard that the dialogue in MV can barely be heard (only the gunshots are loud) so I get what Romero is saying.
What on earth was Michael Mann thinking? I missed so much of the dialogue by the half way point I was getting really annoyed at what I was missing. It had the knock on effect of me missing big parts of the plot so hence I was unnecessarily confused and I'm sure like me people were strugging (a little) to follow what was going on.
It was shot in such a ridiculously low volume. I honestly thought the cinema equipment was broken but I guess not when I see others had to suffer this, you literally miss big parts of dialogue.
As Mark says the gunshots however are terrific and sound thunderingly good. It's not often you hear gunshots that actually sound like gunshots, it was especially effective when you hear bullets fly through windows. It's a shame there wasn't more gunfights.
This was exasperated by a couple behind us not whispering but actually talking through most of the first half of the film. I was all set to yell at them (not the first time I've had to) when thankfully they left. I suspect they were expecting Bad Boys 3!
It reminds me of Mann's weird artistic choice to reframe the Insider DVD so the 2.35:1 black bars are mostly at the bottom of the frame. Why???
I'll definitely be picking the DVD up as the film had oodles of potentional but next time
I'll control the volume.
I reckon with the volume fixed I'd bump it to 8 out of 10.
Lastly DO NOT WATCH THE TRAILER, oh and MICHAEL MANN TURN THE FUCKING VOLUME UP NEXT TIME!
