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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."

Though usually mad about Mann, mainstream critics are offering mixed reviews for his latest.

Brett McCracken (Relevant) writes, "It shows the alluring parts of sin and darkness (like many, many films easily do), but also the two-facedness of it. Crime might pay, but not forever and not enough to recoup your soul. … At the end of the day, some dirty deeds have to be done to keep the even dirtier deeds from occurring—this seems to be the framework of [director Michael] Mann's moral world. But even this 'lesser of two evils' worldview is not perfect, for there are consequences for every vice one engages in, even if the vice is collateral in the quest for some greater virtue."

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