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Miami Vice - Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Michael Mann

Threat advisory: Guarded - General risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

The cocaine cowboys of the 80s are gone, but Miami's Casablanca allure, the undercover cops and the attitudes of Michael Mann's culturally influential television series have been enhanced by time in the feature film version of Miami Vice.

Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) is urbane and dead smart. He lives with Bronx-born intelligence analyst Trudy (Naomie Harris), as they work undercover transporting drug loads into South Florida to identify a group responsible for three murders. Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) - to the untrained eye, his presentation seems unorthodox but procedurally he is sound - is charismatic and flirtatious until, while undercover working with the supplier of the South Florida group, he gets romantically entangled with Isabella (Gong Li), the Chinese-Cuban wife of an arms and drugs trafficker.

The best undercover identity is oneself with the volume turned up and restraint unplugged. The intensity of this case pushes Crockett and Tubbs out onto the edge where identity and fabrication become blurred, where cop and player become one-especially for Crockett in his romance with Isabella and for Tubbs in the provocation of an assault on those he loves.

Miami Vice, as a large-scale feature film, liberates what is adult, dangerous and alluring about working deeply undercover... especially when Crockett and Tubbs go to where their badges don't count.

Theatrical propaganda posters

Target demographic movie keyword propaganda

Film police crime action TV television remake Florida detective drugs traffic undercover

Persons of interest

Colin Farrell .... Detective James "Sonny" Crockett
Jamie Foxx .... Detective Ricardo Tubbs
Li Gong .... Isabella
Luis Tosar .... Arcángel de Jesús Montoya
Naomie Harris .... Trudy Joplin
John Ortiz .... Jose Yero
Juanita Billue .... Miss Jamaica
Everlayn Borges .... Miss Cuba
Isaach De Bankolé .... Neptune
John Hawkes .... Alonzo
Barry Shabaka Henley .... Lieutenant Martin Castillo
Ciarán Hinds .... FBI Agent Fujima
Domenick Lombardozzi .... Detective Stan Switek
Edward Marsan .... Nicholas
Elizabeth Rodriguez .... Detective Gina Calabrese
Mario Ernesto Sánchez .... El Tiburon
Michael Mann .... Screenwriter
Michael Mann .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

See also SWAT
Studios and distributors:

Universal Pictures * United International Pictures

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Miami Vice is an average big screen rendition of a small screen phenomenon. You can watch it on the big screen if you want to but the small screen will be just as good.

One thing that they did do well is the relationship between Ricardo Tubbs and Sonny Crockett: the solid/flighty, organised/spur-of-the-moment, steady/excitable, family-man/young-dumb-and-full-of-cum dynamic is good. The rest is an action movie.