Early on in “Thief,” Michael Mann’s 1981 feature debut, James Caan’s Frank stares out at a body of water enveloped by a sky that seems to go on forever. He’s just returned from another successful heist in Mann’s subterranean underworld, and he wants out. His life of crime is no life at all. He’s stuck in purgatory, confined to neon-drenched streets where the line between life and death is nonexistent. The man sitting next to Frank asks, “magic, isn’t it?” the neverending view of heaven, forever out of Frank’s reach. Twenty-five years later, in “Miami Vice,” Sonny Crockett will board a Go-Fast boat and do what Frank couldn’t. He escapes.
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In 2006 dusting off “Miami Vice” didn’t seem like such a bad idea. ’80s nostalgia was coming into itself, and another decades-old cop show, “Starsky & Hutch,” had just been successfully rebooted two years prior. Michael Mann, riding high after Oscar successes like “The Insider,” “Ali,” and “Collateral,” returning to the iconic property he created was a no-brainer. Top it off with Colin Farrell and Jaime Foxx, two of the biggest stars at the time, and the recipe’s there for an unmitigated success. Then the movie was released.
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A hit by any metric, the film was still labeled a bust of sorts, much of that rhetoric coming from the audience. What they expected was a breezy update on the coolest television show ever to grace our airwaves. A flashy action jaunt with Farrell’s Crockett and Foxx’s Tubbs slinging one-liners while wearing the hottest fashion. What they got was a two-and-a-half-hour digital nightmare where nothing seemed to make sense and happiness was just out of reach. Where clean resolutions were never an option, did they forget this was Michael Mann they were dealing with?
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Set in an almost ethereal Miami, “Miami Vice” follows the exploits of vice squad cops Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. After some feds are burned on an undercover op set to takedown the Colombian cartel, the FBI recruits the two because they’re the only faces the cartel doesn’t recognize. The men infiltrate the drug ring as professional smugglers, and almost immediately, Crockett’s sense of identity begins to blur.
Out of necessity, Farrell’s Crockett is the film’s lead despite Foxx being fresh off a Best Actor Oscar win and billed first. While bigger plans were in place for Tubbs, a shooting onset in the Dominican Republic caused Foxx to abandon the film, vowing only to work in the United States. Fleeing from genuine danger is understandable, so Foxx’s refusal to shoot any scenes on planes or boats was less so. A real conundrum in an adaptation of a show known for both. Fortunately, Foxx’s quirks allowed the film to become Mann’s magnum opus of exploration into everything he’s ever put on screen.
Mann’s protagonists are typically men who straddle the line between law and crime. Men of principal who adhere to a strict code of loyalty to the job or lifestyle. And it’s this adherence that often leaves them either dead or an emotional void. “Winning” always comes at a cost. In “Heat,” Neil ends up dead. Will Graham is a fundamentally broken person, his obsession costing him any sense of true happiness by the end of “Manhunter.” In “The Insider,” Lowell Bergman delivers one of the most consequential news stories of the 20th Century but goes through hell and loses his livelihood to do it. None of Mann’s men embody this better than Sonny Crockett. And nobody was better suited to play it than Colin Farrell at this exact moment in time.
Sweaty, squinting and spiraling, Farrell’s Crockett sways through “Miami Vice” like a living manifestation of cocaine. While struggling with alcoholism while filming, Farrell claims to remember nothing of the shoot and immediately entered rehab upon completion. A hollowed-out husk of a man very much at sea, he burns through the screen with a shocking mix of charisma and sadness. It transposes onto Crockett and develops him into a lost soul whose commitment to the job has stripped him of anything resembling an identity. So much so that the only time he comes alive is when he’s undercover as Sonny Burnett, leaving the viewer to question who the real Sonny actually is.
Crockett’s only companion before heading into the mission is Tubbs. But Tubbs has a life outside, a partner to keep him sane at night when the job seeps in under his skin. Sonny coasts along like a wraith loyal only to Tubbs, bereft of physical or emotional centering. He flirts with anyone who’ll look his way; he flies off the handle while on a job and fiendishly drowns himself in mojitos. That is until he falls in love.
Gong Li’s Isabella is a force of nature who changes the temperature of the entire film. Seen first sitting in the background of an intense introduction to their mark, Jose Yero (a terrifying Jon Ortiz), she slowly takes over the film and Crockett’s heart. Yero’s boss’s business (and romantic) partner enters as just another player in the mission. Like Crockett, the viewer can’t help but be drawn in by her. She’s dangerously sexy, confident and capable, just like Crockett. It’s a foregone conclusion that these two are going to collide the minute they lock eyes. As he sinks deeper into his relationship with her as Burnett, Crockett finally has his escape. His heaven is within reach.
Mann’s early experimentations with digital photography have aged into some of the most unnervingly ethereal imagery in cinematic history. “Collateral” paints Los Angeles at night as a sprawling town of ghosts, its buildings intermittently peppering light into the haze. In “Miami Vice,” he turns Miami into a sickly yellow, labyrinthine purgatory. Claustrophobic streets seem to twist and turn into one another; faces take on a frighteningly pale complexion, street lights loom menacingly over the damned as they stumble in and out of nightclubs. This is where Crockett is doomed to live out his days in a job that’s taken every inch of his soul. Meeting Isabella jolts him back to life, a beacon of salvation.
“What do you like to drink?” Isabella asks Crockett. “I’m a fiend for mojitos,” he responds. She knows a place in Cuba. Boarding that Go-Fast boat and speeding off across the ocean, Dion Beebe’s digital photography comes alive. The ocean, overwhelmingly expansive and blue, takes Crockett to a haven where he can finally set himself free. Mann’s Cuba is vibrant, wide-open and most importantly, alive. Crockett and Isabella sleep all day and dance the night away. They live free of their constraints, of their duty. But it’s built on a lie. Crockett’s cover is inevitably blown because how couldn’t it be? Violence finally rears its head because that’s how it was always going to happen.
“Miami Vice” is the quintessential Michael Mann film because Sonny Crockett is the quintessential Mann protagonist. He crossed the ocean. He lived a better life. He found his peace. But it couldn’t last. Time was going to run out as it always does in Mann’s world. Because underneath that desire to escape is an unshakable sense of duty. When it all comes to a head, Crockett helps Isabella escape capture or death but doesn’t or can’t follow her into her next chapter. His life is in that labyrinth. His duty is to his partner, his code. Winning doesn’t provide happiness—just another day on the job.
It’s easy to understand why “Miami Vice” didn’t connect fifteen years ago. It’s a summer blockbuster with a remarkably bleak ending. A decade and a half later, it’s the type of sprawling and deeply personal film that would never be made on this scale by a major studio. It’s the kind of film that one yearns for in a sea of mega-budget films that look, sound and move all the same. It’s audacious, gorgeous and the film Michael Mann always seemed destined to gift us. As the lights go out on “Miami Vice” and Crockett walks back to his team, he’s neither dead nor alive, just a shell. A shell containing every hope, heartbreak, dream and nightmare Michael Mann ever had.
Michael Mann’s “Miami Vice” turns 15 years old this week.