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Pay attention—this movie moves. Mann doesn't even pause for opening credits. And nobody stops along the way to explain this web of double-crosses and intrigue. Cops and robbers alike throw around acronyms and crime-speak the way computer geeks use techno-jargon. After fifteen minutes, we're dizzy with information. But even if the dialogue is at times unintelligible, these well-dressed fellows are so focused, so good at what they do, we'll follow them almost anywhere.

Ricardo and Sonny, lookin' like they got some vices

As always, Mann gets engaging performances from his actors. Farrell convinces us that Crockett's mind is as swift and sure as his shooting. His laser-beam intensity is arresting. As Tubbs, Foxx conveys cold-as-steel determination on the job and surprising tenderness in love scenes with Harris. Ortiz and Tosar make Freyo and Montoya into crafty, fearsome villains, and there is strong supporting work from Munich's Ciaran Hinds and Collateral's Barry Shabaka Henley as stressed-out lawmen.

And yet, it's Gong Li who steals the movie. Having delivered unforgettable performances in Zhang Yimou's Farewell My Concubine and To Live, she's proven herself as a formidable actress. Here, she allows us to catch glimpses of vulnerability, self-doubt, and fear through the slight cracks in Isabella's sophisticated mask. Mann might have cast a younger actress, a bigger box office draw, but he was smart to choose Gong, who is masterfully subtle and provocative at 40.

Unfortunately, the screenplay barely scratches these characters' sweaty surfaces. It's disappointing that Crockett and Tubbs spend most of the film apart. The movie seems much more interested in Crockett's erotic endeavors than it does in the dynamics of his professional partnership. The vice squad's story about trust and teamwork becomes secondary to the flashier story of a man and a woman who confuse lust, loneliness, and longing with love.

Viewers, be warned that the film is rightly R-rated. Hasty sexual affairs, dangerous drugs, bloody violence, and one mojito after another—it's full of reckless indulgence. Is Mann condoning these behaviors? Or are they portrayed as messy realities with serious consequences?

Like the television series, Miami Vice focuses far too much on the officers' sex lives, and not enough on real relationship. And yet, to some extent, this makes sense. These are not religious or deeply principled people when it comes to love. In such demanding, dangerous work, fleeting affairs are all they know and all that they think they can afford. They're lost, troubled, needy, and desperately lonely. It is easy to understand why they would stumble into such risky rendezvous and to feel some sympathy as they reach for less-than-ideal comfort.

It wouldn't be 'Miami Vice' without fast cars

Fortunately for audiences, the drugs are never glamorized. They hardly come into it at all. And the violence—it's not celebrated either. It's ugly, bloody, and chaotic, a harsh reality devastating to both sides of the conflict.

No director today beats Michael Mann at portraying the menace of criminal minds and the pressure good crime-fighters must endure to stop the bad guys. In Manhunter, an FBI officer teetered on the brink of insanity as he hunted a serial killer. In The Last of the Mohicans, a desperate man fought to keep his love alive in a war zone. In The Insider, Mann's masterpiece, a whistleblower risked the security of himself and his family in order to tell the truth about corporate evil. And in Collateral, a cab driver's conscience was tested by a heartless assassin.

But the film that most resembles Miami Vice is 1995's Heat, in which Al Pacino's workaholic cop committed himself to catch a career criminal, played by Robert DeNiro. As the cop did what it took to bring down a king of thieves, he learned that luxuries like love, parenthood, and family life are almost incompatible with the pressure of such intense heroism. It's a dirty, lonely job—but somebody's got to do it.

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