Ricardo Tubbs is urbane and dead smart. He lives with Bronx-born intel analyst Trudy, as they work undercover transporting drug loads into South Florida to identify a group responsible for three murders. Sonny Crockett is charismatic and flirtatious until-while undercover working with the supplier of the South Florida group-he gets romantically entangled with Isabella, the Chinese-Cuban wife of an arms and drugs trafficker. The intensity of this case pushes Crockett and Tubbs out onto the edge where identity and fabrication become blurred, where cop and player become one-especially for Crockett in his romance with Isabella and for Tubbs in the provocation of an assault on those he loves.

They talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and then when they were done with that they talked some more. I have to admit I am not that entirely familiar with the TV show as it was past my bedtime as a kid and I have only seen bits and pieces of it over the years but this was not what I was expecting from Miami Vice. I am pretty sure that the TV series had more action in a single episode than the entire movie did. I could have accepted all the drama and talk if there had been just a little action to the movie but except for the final gun fight that lasted five minutes this movie was pretty much devoid of any action at all. The movie didn’t have to be wall to wall action but when that is what your audience is expecting maybe you should give them a few chases, some gun play and a few fight sequences to break up all the talk and drama.

I thought with Michael Mann on board the movie had a pretty good chance of being good as he was the one who directed and produced the TV show but I was wrong. Not only did the movie have no action but the drama was all wrong as well. The movie at times felt like a rip off of Traffic showing us the underbelly of drug dealing instead of being its own unique look at Miami Vice. The characters just felt wrong like they were out of place and we saw little or no actual involvement with law enforcement tell the very end. Plus all the sex scenes were beyond idiotic like they threw them in there because they could and thought it would sex up the movie. They are trying to sell to you that Ricardo and Sonny are these cool, sexy police officers doing what they do best, but I just wasn’t buying.

Casting for the movie was all wrong as neither Jamie Foxx or Colin Farrell felt like their TV counterparts. Colin Farrell the entire movie slipped in an out of this husky like voice that I think was supposed to be kind of a montage to Don Johnson. But he never holds it and if Alexander taught us something it is that Farrell should never attempt to do accents. Jamie Foxx is suppose to be second fiddle, the sidekick but he plays it too cool like he is about to roll a joint and then go shoot someone that you find him completely unrealistic. To say the movie was a disappointment would be an understatement, it did have its moments but for the most part was flat and uninspired.

Grade: C-