‘Miami’s’ chief vice: the script

No matter what Michael Mann does, he’ll always be identified with “Miami Vice” — especially now that he has turned his 22-year-old television series into a $135 million R-rated movie starring Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell.

Unfortunately, it’s one of Mann’s weakest films: a self-important big-screen rehash that misses the quirky fun of the original. It’s as if Mann had set out to deny fans of the show what they loved: the Miami seascapes, the pink flamingos, the pastel clothes, the art deco, the alligator named Elvis. This is no nostalgia trip.

It’s also not much of a buddy movie. We barely know the undercover cops at the center of the story. Perhaps Mann assumes that we knew them from the television franchise, but for audiences who weren’t born at the time, that’s not much help. For those who became fans of the show because it was so successful on the cop-buddy level, there’s no reinforcement of that feeling.

Quick facts Starring: Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris, Ciaràn Hinds Director: Michael Mann Run time: 2 hours, 15 minutes MPAA rating: R

Only Dione Beebe’s wide-screen cinematography, which makes use of a high-definition video camera with a remarkable depth of field, suggests the style Mann can bring to this kind of material. The images, especially in the nighttime scenes, have extraordinary clarity. As always, Mann does a terrific job of shooting the action sequences, which are graphic and surprising. But when the climactic shootout arrives, do we really care?

The flashy, trend-setting original, which made celebrities of Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas for most of the 1980s, had such a distinctive visual style that it immediately established Mann as a filmmaker to watch. The idea behind the concept and pilot (written by Anthony Yerkovich) was “MTV Cops.”

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Mann claims he wanted Yerkovich’s script to be a theatrical movie in 1984. The new script, which is credited solely to Mann, is based on his research with “deep undercover” police, whose shady deals take Beebe's camera to Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Brazil and Paraguay. More than the locations have changed.

Gone are Johnson’s stubble and Thomas’ clean-shaven face. Foxx sports a goatee, Farrell a mustache that seems to complete his Groucho Marx eyebrows for unintentionally comic effect. It was Foxx’s idea to create “Miami Vice — The Movie,” and he gets top billing, but he has essentially a supporting role.

NBC VIDEO Jamie Foxx July 24: David Gregory talks to Jamie Foxx about his role as Ricardo Tubbs in the new movie, "Miami Vice." Today Show Entertainment

As longtime partners, they barely exist. The script emphasizes their involvements with women: Trudy (Naomie Harris), an intelligence analyst who works with Foxx’s character and sleeps with him, and Isabella (Gong Li), a Chinese-Cuban drug dealer who succumbs to Farrell’s persistence. Each couple gets an erotic shower scene, though Farrell and Li get one more sex scene than Foxx and Harris — and the latter couple’s shower scene is largely played for laughs.

“I know what I’m doing,” Farrell tells Foxx, trying to explain his dangerous choice of mistress, but it’s obvious he doesn’t. The more he pursues this woman, the more trouble he courts.

Ciaran Hinds, who was a memorable Julius Caesar in HBO’s “Rome,” has a few juicy scenes as an agitated FBI agent. John Hawkes, the sad-sack hero of “You and Me and Everyone We Know,” is briefly riveting as a desperate family man who is sadly correct to fear the worst. But the other supporting players are mostly stuck with stereotypes.

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