Barmy wrote:The Colin/Gong "relationship" was not "meaningful" and was not going anywhere. She was an exotic chick who he banged a few times and had a fab mojito with. It is the sort of "relationship" that only exists in the movies. And has been done a gazillion times.
You're right, Barmy. But your accuracy in this assessment does not necessarily demand that the film be read in only one particular way. For instance, one of the very best pieces I've seen on
Vice was a negative review courtesy Nick's Flick Picks, available
here.
It's an extraordinary review because even though it's not favorable it
is thoroughly thought through in a way we all too rarely see. And, what's more, just about everything Nick says can be seen as a positive--he simply
chooses to see it as negative. Here's a few examples:
Suddenly, we exit the club so that Crockett and Tubbs can take a phone call on the roof. The summer lightning behind them is almost redundant given the heavy charge that Mann has generated downstairs, but literally within the moment, you can tell that Miami Vice has blown a fuse. Farrell and Foxx hang all the way at the right edge of the frame while Me and You and Everyone We Know's John Hawkes spouts a jittery and cryptic farewell over the phone line: it's the kind of cinematography that asks you to notice the shot, maybe even to praise it, but its formalism feels forced and hollow, and the staticky, gristly texture of the violet sky in Dion Beebe's DV photography throws a cold damper on our mounting interest. It's a frankly unappealing image, soon to expand into a frankly unappealing scene, and given the slinky pop enticements that have preceded it, the precipitous change in attitude can only be taken as intentional. This isn't a subtle switch in atmosphere, cued to a discrete narrative turn. This is a total change in game-plan. Two certainties emerge, and both are borne out by the ensuing two hours: the plot will fractalize itself into a complex, inscrutable web of factions, technospeak, and double-crosses, and the movie will both keep and set the pace with a jittery, unpredictable calico of tones, textures, lenses, palettes, and exposure levels. As the screenplay chases and finally gobbles its own tail, the mise-en-scène will expose that script as merely a necessary platform for the film's heady, multimediated take on 21st-century crime, portrayed here as part and parcel of 21st-century life.
and this:
Crockett and Tubbs don't look nearly as helpless and overwhelmed by the proceedings as Farrell and Foxx do. They keep trying to act the scenes, paralyzed into blank male-model visages by how little the script is furnishing them, while the surrounding movie makes clear that it isn't any more interested in them than Barry Lyndon was in Ryan O'Neal.
and, finally, this:
Miami Vice too often feels like it's been made by a culture-jammer or a media theorist, or else by some haughty and arcane deconstructionist like Peter Greenaway, instead of by a natural filmmaker.
Forgive me if I find this the highest of possible back handed praise. This is what Mann has in actuality advanced to (with studio money) and left a lot of people behind. It's sort of the reverse arc of Atom Egoyan's rather unfortunate career--go from strict genre work to rarified theory. In all honesty, I agree with Nick when he says that Mann's film is deeply alienating, but I see it as intentional and a very daring gambit indeed.
