Miami Vice (film)
Miami Vice is a 2006 film adaptation of the television series Miami Vice starring Colin Farrell as James "Sonny" Crockett and Jamie Foxx as Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs. In the film, Sonny and Rico are enlisted by the FBI to infiltrate a Colombian drug cartel after a botched undercover drug operation gets three Agents and a former Police informant killed. They decide to run transportation of cocaine into Miami for the cartel in order to get to the man running the Miami operation, Jose Yero (John Ortiz), and, later on, his boss, drug lord Arcangel de Jesus Montoya (Luis Tosar). Complications arise as they get deeper into their undercover identities and Sonny falls in love with Isabella (Gong Li), the accountant wife of Montoya.
Shot on location in the Carribbean, Uruguay, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic and South Florida, the film had a Troubled Production from early on including lost filming to hurricanes and security issues that ultimately forced a complete rewrite of the ending. The film was released to mixed critical reviews but was relatively successful at the box office and was Michael Mann's third most financially successful film, behind Heat and Collateral.
- Batman Gambit: In order to find out who's behind the neo-Nazis, Crockett and Tubbs rob from drug runners that had to be working with those Neo-Nazis to force the bad guys to contact them for work. Later on, they plant the stolen goods back with those drug runners to make an excuse that the cartel's got security issues and allow Crockett and Tubbs better access. All this so they can find out where the Mole is among the various agencies that were compromised at the start of the film.
- Bittersweet Ending: Most of the major bad guys are killed but the real drug lord escapes before the overseas DEA can arrest him. Crockett also has to let Isabella go into hiding, where he'll never see her again. But Rico's wife Trudy appears to be coming out of her coma (much to Rico's relief) just as Crockett arrives at the hospital to check up on them.
- Also a No Ending, as the suddenness of it feels like the camera ran out of film.
- Damsel in Distress
- Darker and Edgier: The movie trades the bright pastel shades that defined the TV series for dark, gritty and modern digital video.
- Still, it follows the same pattern of focusing on cold colors, ignoring the earth tones.
- This is more a result of the director's own preferences than anything else. Michael Mann tends to shoot his films in those tones, and he also worked on the series.
- Driven to Suicide: In the movie, when the informant finds out about his wife's death, he walks in front of an oncoming semitrailer.
- In Medias Res: The theatrical cut has no opening credits and begins with Sonny and Rico in the middle of their sting on Neptune. The Unrated Director's Cut adds in an opening credits sequence that sets up the Neptune operation, among many other changes.
- Karma Houdini: Neptune, the target of the sting at the beginning of the movie, gets away. The squad doesn't have anything on him and they can't pursue him immediately because of the informant leak.
Trudy: But what about Neptune?
Rico: It's Neptune's lucky night.
- Also, Arcangel de Jesus Montoya.
- The Man Behind the Man: Yero is initially suspected to be the head of the Columbian cartel that's behind the Miami-based neo-Nazis. Later on, we learn that man is actually drug lord Arcangel de Jesus Montoya.
- More Dakka
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: When the unit has to rescue Trudy from the neo-Nazis that kidnapped her, Gina corners one neo-Nazi using Trudy as a human shield. Gina proceeds to explain to the neo-Nazi how she can get one good shot that can sever the guy's spine in such a way to make sure he won't get his shot off in time... and nails him with that one shot.
- Porn Stache: What Colin Farrell wears for facial recognition instead of Don Johnson's Perma-Stubble. Unless there's a Trope for Fu Manchu mustaches...
- Product Placement: Very prominent in the movie. The actors drink Bacardi Mojitos, use Motorola phones and laptops and drive Donzi boats and a Ferrari F430.
- Shout-Out: The plot of the film shares some similarities with the TV episode "Smugger's Blues":
- Rico's line "We can close each others' eyes real fast, but then nobody's gonna make no money." is similar to the line he says in the TV series ("You and I are businessmen. We have business to look forward to which we will never see if we close each other's eyes.").
- Sonny's line "Why is he donating to the good and the welfare?".
- Both feature a subplot where Trudy is held hostage in a trailer rigged with explosives.
- Title Card: Similarly to Collateral, there's one only at the very end before the credits in the theatrical cut.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: When the neo-Nazis target the undercover FBI agents at the beginning of the film they leave little bodily evidence behind...
- What Could Have Been: After a shooting incident on the Dominican Republic set, Jamie Foxx packed up and left, refusing to work outside the US. This forced a complete rewrite of the film's ending. While one crew member publicly stated that the revised ending was "much less dramatic", Mann, who had written endings for both Miami and Paraguay considered it to be better because it "brought all the conflicting characters together in one arena".
- What Happened to the Mouse?: We never learn who The Mole is.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Crockett gets called on by Tubbs for focusing more on Isabella than on catching the bad guys.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Later on in the movie, Montoya tells Isabella that Sonny and Rico will be killed at the end of their next job.
- You Said You Would Let Them Go: In the movie, neo-Nazi gangbangers kidnap the wife of an informant and force him to compromise an undercover FBI operation. When the police arrive at the informant's house, they find the wife already dead.