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Reader Reviews: 'Miami Vice'
Friday, July 28, 2006

Readers are invited to submit their own short review of "Miami Vice" and also to talk about how the TV series influenced them, their fashion or their life.

Did you find Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx believable in the roles of Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs, previously played by Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas?

Guidelines: Keep your review to a reasonable length. Submit your review to postscript@post-gazette.com. Reviews are published in the order in which they are received. Please include your name and hometown in the e-mail.

(Read the Post-Gazette review)


Where was the chemistry?

There was no chemisty at all between Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, in fact, they were quite boring. Plot was all over the place. The movie was shot dark so at times it was hard to see what was going on. I didn't like most of the camera work, too jerky. I liked Gong Li, very beautiful & thank goodness very unHollywood. It was entertaining to a point but overall I don't think it's a good movie. And where on earth was that killer soundtrack I was expecting?

-- Gloria Goodman
Toronto, Canada


Saw it twice

Good movie!! Michael Mann is a superb producer -- Exciting but needed more Miami scenes -- Colin Farrell sexy bad boy and certainly heated up the screen -- Jamie Fox well built actor but no pretty boy like I expected Ricardo Tubbs to be cast -- A cameo appearance from Don and Philip would have been a treat for us Miami Vice fans somehow worked into the movie -- I liked it enough to see it for the 2nd time. I would love to see Johnson and Philips do a Miami Vice movie for television. It's not too late they are still both hunks.

-- Cheryl Norris
Orlando, Fla., fan


At least it had Colin and Jamie

This movie was terrible, period! 2 1/2 hours of boredom! You couldn't figure out the plot and it was too long & drawn out. The only good thing about this movie was we got to stare at Colin & Jamie for a couple of hours! My rating ... 2 on a 1-20 scale!

-- Anna


This is not your mama's 'Miami Vice'

I go to the movies to be entertained. I don't look for the key to life, and I don't enjoy being bored (which is how I would categorize most British films, starting with "Room With a View").

Like a Tom Clancy novel, the plot is a bit complex, although not extreme ... at least for me. I didn't have any difficulty following the movie, but my wife got lost pretty quickly.

I've read several reviews that said the movie was "dark," and it is. There's no witty give and take between Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. No "Elvis" the alligator or the boastful arrogance that made the TV series so good for that era.

In a recent TV segment, a reviewer said this film is important on a technical level because director Michael Mann shot it in high-definition video. The digital noise lends a grittiness to the film, which reflects the movie's tone.

Mann also uses hand-held cameras to deliver that first-person presence to numerous scenes. But on the big screen it sometimes became difficult to follow the action -- it felt like my eyeballs were trying to bounce up and down in tandem with the camera.

I couldn't help wondering how Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas would have done in these roles, and I think they would have succeeded quite well. Some of the better TV episodes were the serious ones that skipped the comedy.

That said, Jamie Foxx puts in a really fine performance, and Colin Farrell does almost as well, although I sometimes struggled to hear what he was saying. I liked both in their roles and found them believable.

The Gina character had very few lines and probably could have been played by a mime -- a mime who was also an expert with an assault rifle. I would have liked to have seen a bit more creativity for naming actress Gong Li's character -- Li Gong? That was the best they could do?

Trudy, Switek and Zito were there, although fans of the TV show will note that Zito bought the farm in a very memorable episode. The Lt. Castillo character? No, didn't work for me. He lacked the quiet presence and seriousness of Edward James Olmos.

One of the things I liked about this movie is its sense of danger -- at any moment, something bad was going to happen. Overall, I found the movie to be highly entertaining.

There were some unanswered questions, and like many of the TV episodes, the "Colombian" manages to slip away, although he doesn't rub it in Crockett's face like he had a number of times in the 1980s.

--Mike Elek, PG Web team

First published on July 28, 2006 at 12:00 am
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