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In Terrence Malick's The New World, Colin Farrell played a brave, burdened man who infiltrated a dangerous foreign culture, and fell in love with someone on the other side of the cultural divide. His feelings for her complicated his responsibilities, causing his heart to be caught in a tug-of-war when the British went to war with the Native Americans.

Now, in Michael Mann's Miami Vice, Farrell plays the same kind of character: brave, burdened, and loyal to his superiors as he infiltrates an international drug operation and falls for the girlfriend of the malevolent kingpin. Will he do his job and bring down the drug lord? Or will he abandon his duties and run away with the woman of his dreams?

Wait a minute … this is Miami Vice? Wasn't that television series about the partnership of undercover cops Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs? Isn't it supposed to feature fast cars, fast boats, and fast airplanes?

Well, yes, and Mann has brought back the speed, intensity, and action of the original. But this is not so much a remake as a complete reinvention. The 2006 Miami Vice doesn't stay in Miami for long—our heroes are quickly hurrying off to Paraguay and Haiti, where things get much darker and more violent than the television adventures ever did.

Oh sure, Crockett and Tubbs are still serious crime-fighters in serious suits. They still talk their way into a world of glamorous wickedness. Even the end credits song, a cover of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight," contributes to this blast from the past. But where Don Johnson played Crockett as a high-spirited wisecracker, and Philip Michael Thomas played Tubbs as a sidekick too cool for stress, Farrell's Crockett and Jamie Foxx's Tubbs look like equal competitors in a sport of glaring and glowering.

The resulting film glamorizes law-enforcement officers who have very little discipline when it comes to their personal lives and relationships. It celebrates indulgent sexual affairs even as it concludes that such appealing adventures are costly. It's an exciting motion picture, stylishly captured in the groundbreaking digitial cinematography of Dion Beebe, but it's also profoundly confused.

You can read my full review of Miami Vice at Christianity Today Movies.

Harry Forbes (Catholic News Service) says, "Mann's stated intent of showing 'the first postmillennial examination of what globalized crime looks and feels like' is well and good, and perhaps undercover agents do sometimes blur the lines, but the film still feels like an empty exercise. … [The] humorless script is dull, while the plot beyond the general story arc is annoyingly dense, and at 133 minutes exceedingly long."

Adam R. Holz (Plugged In) says, "[T]his is definitely a darker, seedier, nastier version of the iconic show that once made pink shirts and pink flamingos all the rage. Even if these serious content concerns weren't enough to dissuade old TV fans from engaging (and they certainly are), the movie's straight-faced grimness probably would get the job done anyway. The subtly campy spirit of the original is simply nowhere to be found."

Stephen McGarvey (Crosswalk) says the movie is "too relentlessly dark, and almost completely boiler plate. Considering that Mann has given us unique police/crime movies like Heat with its clever 'cat and mouse' mind games between cops and robbers, or Collateral with its unusually terrifying premise, Miami Vice is pretty disappointing. There isn't anything there that fans of cop movies haven't seen a hundred times before. And there won't be much to which fans of the original will relate."

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August (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50