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That modern communication in 2006 reads as so dated fifteen years later only speaks to a thesis regarding how swiftly progress can come to pass. Faxes, computer screens, and texts coming in on a Nokia flip phone put the film into a very specific moment.

Messages and connections do not happen in traditional ways. While this might not fit the typical look of film, it does fit the movie’s thematic interest in modes of communication. The digital noise hangs in the air like the electricity of a lightning storm. In conjunction with the handheld camerawork, the film has a fluidity that blurs and scatters. It glimmers and refracts with a unique aesthetic. The way light is captured is wholly different. Miami Vice doesn’t look like a film shot on celluloid because it wasn’t. And yet, the response to the emergence of digital has predominantly involved replicating the look of celluloid rather than embracing digital on its own. As technology changed, the films responded. As black and white films were by and large superseded by technicolor, ways of crafting cinematic images were completely overhauled. Instead, the advent of talkies or the rise of color film stock stand as the more well-known shifts in the last century or so of movie-making.Īs silent films fell to the wayside, so too did certain performance styles, the reliance on intertitles, and any number of prior conventions. The attitude so clearly displayed in Mann’s film is that digital is not film, so why should it look like film? Indeed, when thinking about the major transitions undergone by the film industry, the rise of digital is not what first springs to mind. And sure, this would have made the film classically beautiful and likely more of a crowd-pleaser. Alternatively, Mann could have, you know, just shot with film stock. There are films shot digitally that are indistinguishable from those shot on celluloid ( a recent example being Kelly Reichardt’s stupendous First Cow). Someone opposed to the aesthetic of Mann’s film may even suggest that part of their distaste lies in the fact that it didn’t have to look like this.

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For someone going into the movie expecting the warmth and grain of traditional film stock, the hi-def images are surely garish, dull, and alienating. The mid-aughts digital cinematography is rather distinct. Perhaps the most polarizing aspect of this unconventional film is the look of it.

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Indeed, part of the film’s initial middling reception lies in the fact that Mann’s adaptation of the seminal ’80s TV series does really appeal to typical or traditional notions of what a film should do. The film is exciting and suspenseful, but after the credits roll, the mood that lingers is one of sadness. It’s worth repeating that while having a handle on the plot helps, this is not what Miami Vice is really about.

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Though, perhaps inevitably in a melding of personal and professional interests, their tryst is as short-lived as it is tragic. Along the way, their undercover mission goes deeper than expected, and Sonny develops a romantic relationship with Isabella ( Gong Li), a businesswoman working with the cartel. Sonny and Rico are tasked with going undercover to infiltrate the cartel while keeping their operation more lowkey so they can’t be flushed out. With several law enforcement agencies involved, the leak could have come from anywhere. Alonzo was part of a joint task force investigating a drug cartel. FBI Agent John Fujima ( Ciarán Hinds) fills them in on the situation. With their informant dead by his own hand, Sonny and Rico are brought into a covert operation. This is what ignites the film’s narrative. What matters is that the FBI operation is a bust, Alonzo’s wife has been murdered despite him being assured she would be unharmed, and somewhere along the chain of command, things went terribly wrong. Alonzo is now working for the FBI, and the two vice detectives learn that he’s been compromised.Īs is the case with much of the film’s admittedly complex plot, the actual details of how it all went down are fuzzy but ultimately beside the point. Sonny gets a call from a former informant, Alonzo Stevens ( John Hawkes). And then, as fast as the film began, it shifts. In a packed Miami club with Jay-Z and Linkin Park blasting, detectives Sonny ( Colin Farrell) and Rico ( Jamie Foxx and their team scope out their ongoing undercover operation. In fitting with a film that has more than its fair share of water imagery - from cerulean waves stretching out before the horizon to the blackness of the sea at night ravenously chopping against boats - Michael Mann begins Miami Vice by absolutely tossing us into the deep end.

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