‘Miami Vice’ returns, but doesn't look back

updated 9:27 p.m. ET July 27, 2006

LOS ANGELES - What’s “Miami Vice” without its percussive theme music? Without its pastel fashion sense, with no belts or socks? Without the slick patter of undercover cop Tubbs? Without the pet alligator aboard partner Crockett’s sailboat? Without even the sailboat?

It’s “Miami Vice,” 2006-style, as envisioned by writer-director Michael Mann, the executive producer who shepherded the TV show as it became a 1980s pop-culture sensation for its clothes, music, MTV glitz and ambitious storytelling that brought big-screen flair to the small tube.

When it came time to upgrade “Miami Vice” to movie theaters, Mann was not interested in revisiting the past. Where movie adaptations such as “Starsky & Hutch” and “Charlie’s Angels” wove in familiar trappings from the old shows, Mann presents a darker, gutsier story with none of the old TV trademarks of “Miami Vice.”

“The whole idea was to do ‘Miami Vice’ for real and to do it now, and it would take place now. And if you’re going to do it for real, then the first question you have to ask yourself is: Do I have those points of connection to the show?” Mann told The Associated Press. “It’s nostalgia, and I find that passive and not interesting. ... If you’re going to do ‘Miami Vice’ for real, you’re not going to get into the cartoon stuff, and you’re not going to try to trigger recall of the show.”

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As narcotics detectives going after a Latin American drug ring, Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx are more subdued and somber than their TV counterparts, Don Johnson as good old boy Crockett and Philip Michael Thomas as smooth ex-New York cop Tubbs.

Mann sticks to a more nocturnal Miami, cutting a daylight speedboat race that originally was to open the film and instead plunging Crockett and Tubbs right into a nighttime undercover job.

And this is a far bloodier and sexier Miami, Mann trotting out colossal firepower in the R-rated film’s gunplay and showcasing some steamy love scenes.

Universal Pictures had considered holding the movie to a PG-13 rating to maximize audience appeal, but Mann convinced studio executives that a big-screen “Miami Vice” needed to take the gloves off.

AP Don Johnson, right, as "Sonny" Crocket, and Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo Tubbs. Mann made an effort not to copy the original's 1980s sensibilities.

“Who wants to go see another remake of a television show that has limited itself” to the same standards that applied to the series? Mann said. “Small screen, no overt sexuality, no language, no violence. Had all these kind of censorship rules attached to it. So who’d want to go see that? I wouldn’t want to make it.”

Foxx — who co-starred in Mann’s two most recent films, “Ali” and “Collateral” — planted the seed for the movie four years ago during a birthday party for Muhammad Ali. The actor told Mann that audiences were ripe for a new take on “Miami Vice.”

Though he had envisioned links to the TV show such as a hip new version of the theme music, Foxx said Mann made the right call in leaving the TV associations behind.

“High risk, hopefully big return,” Foxx said. “High risk in absolutely departing from everything that ‘Miami Vice’ is about, because people will go in expecting it. But hopefully, you’ll catch them with a breath of fresh air in the summer time with a real film that sits down on you and challenges you.”

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