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Posted: **Tue Sep 26, 2006 7:35 pm**

MV has made about $150 million worldwide, so I'm not sure it's a massive failure anyway.

I would respectfully suggest that effects-driven movies are not a good budget comparison. CGI of course costs a fortune and Superman, XMen and, to a slightly lesser extent, Pirates, are basically CGI cartoons with live action layered on.

Posted: **Tue Sep 26, 2006 7:39 pm**

Barmy wrote:CGI of course costs a fortune and Superman, XMen and, to a slightly lesser extent, Pirates, are basically CGI cartoons with live action layered on.

It doesn't really cost that much. You can make an entire computer generated feature for well under $50 million these days. Plus, though it didn't flaunt them, Miami Vice had its share of CGI visual effects.

Posted: **Tue Sep 26, 2006 7:44 pm**

I just wish they had sprung for English lessons for Ms. Li.

Posted: **Tue Sep 26, 2006 7:49 pm**

Barmy wrote:I just wish they had sprung for English lessons for Ms. Li.

Gong's English wasn't a problem for these old ears and would certainly have been excusable if it were simply because she's lovely to look at.

Posted: **Tue Sep 26, 2006 7:53 pm**

kinjitsu wrote:Gong's English wasn't a problem for these old ears and would certainly have been excusable if it were simply because she's lovely to look at.

Agreed.

Posted: **Wed Sep 27, 2006 5:44 am**

Some Americans have trouble with non-US English accents because they are only exposed to that one. Not saying it applies to anyone here, but I have encountered Americans who had more trouble understanding an English-English movie than I did.

I had no problems understanding Gong Li. I'm 100% sure she said "long you long time" in every scene.

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 6:06 pm**

The movie cost about $167 million (the 135 number is for the press). I have no idea how much they spent to open it, but it wasn't a little. It's fair to say that Universal will lose a good deal of money when it's all said and done. I don't really care about box office, though. My chief complaint is that the movie is no good. I think Michael Mann is really at a point where he's just talking to himself. There is no attempt made at letting an audience into the story. Miami Vice is hollow, mostly uninteresting, miscast, and sloppily written. Mann had total and complete control on the movie, a virtually unlimited pile of money to spend, so he is completely at fault. I'd write more in depth, but the idea of mentally re-visiting this movie bores me. I just wanted to drop a counter-post to all the love letters Mann has been receiving in this thread. I've always liked his movies, since I saw Thief as a kid, but he is clearly in decline. I suspect The Insider will ultimately prove to be his high-water mark.

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 6:18 pm**

The Invunche wrote:I had no problems understanding Gong Li. I'm 100% sure she said "long you long time" in every scene.

I thought she said "love you long time."

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 6:34 pm**

I agree Ted, the love letters in this thread are flabbergasting. It's part of a syndrome common on this board where people think that great directors ALWAYS make great or interesting films. The very idea of analyzing character motivation, performance or whatever in MV is almost laughable.

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 7:04 pm**

Oh so the plot was too complicated for you and Ted?

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 7:21 pm**

Barmy wrote:I agree Ted, the love letters in this thread are flabbergasting. It's part of a syndrome common on this board where people think that great directors ALWAYS make great or interesting films. The very idea of analyzing character motivation, performance or whatever in MV is almost laughable.

Last of the Mohicans is decent, but a bit of a boring watch. I have yet to see The Keep, nor do I really want to.

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 7:29 pm**

Well, the fact that Gong Li was simultaneously having an affair with Jamie Foxx blew right by me.

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 8:19 pm**

flyonthewall2983 wrote:
Barmy wrote:I agree Ted, the love letters in this thread are flabbergasting. It's part of a syndrome common on this board where people think that great directors ALWAYS make great or interesting films. The very idea of analyzing character motivation, performance or whatever in MV is almost laughable.
Last of the Mohicans is decent, but a bit of a boring watch. I have yet to see The Keep, nor do I really want to.

Agreed. Both of those films I watch very rarely and definitely my least favorite Mann films.

That being said, MV was hardly the cinematic disaster that many critics lazily labelled it. I think that it will be a film that will only improve upon subsequent viewings.

I also agree with the comment that The Insider is Mann's masterpiece, even more so than Heat.

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 10:40 pm**

Barmy wrote:The very idea of analyzing character motivation, performance or whatever in MV is almost laughable.

+1

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 10:41 pm**

The Invunche wrote:Oh so the plot was too complicated for you and Ted?

I'm not sure where you got the idea I couldn't follow the movie. I followed it all right, and it leads nowhere.

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 10:42 pm**

Where does it need to lead?

Posted: **Thu Sep 28, 2006 11:11 pm**

John Cope wrote:Where does it need to lead?

I don't understand the question. "Where does it need to lead?" Yeah, a movie should be muddled and pointless... is that what they teach in film school these days?

Posted: **Fri Sep 29, 2006 12:53 pm**

TedW wrote:
The Invunche wrote:Oh so the plot was too complicated for you and Ted?
I'm not sure where you got the idea I couldn't follow the movie. I followed it all right, and it leads nowhere.

In a way, I wonder if that was kinda the point of the film. These guys -- Crockett and Tubbs -- really have nothing in their lives but their work. Sure, Tubbs has his girlfriend Trudy, so I guess he does have something else to live for, but Crocket doesn't. He gives up a chance at an actual, meaningful relationship with someone because he knows that they live in different worlds and are on opposite sides of the law. So, I always felt that the movie was leading us to this realization -- that at the end of the day, Crockett is his work -- nothing more, nothing less. I always thought that was an interesting and a very bleak way to end a big budget action film like Miami Vice.

Posted: **Fri Sep 29, 2006 2:17 pm**

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.

Posted: **Fri Sep 29, 2006 4:35 pm**

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.

Posted: **Fri Sep 29, 2006 4:54 pm**

Thanks. I don't disagree with your entire position, except your argument that this is a pricey "art" film. The only aspect of the movie that was interesting to me was how offputting it was. I didn't understand the dialogue, or what was going on. I found the cinematography ugly, and not in an interesting way. I didn't care AT ALL about any of the characters. I liked the boating to Mojitoville scene but only because it was so silly (and allowed me to argue to my friends that mojitos have jumped the shark). Kudos to Mann for wasting $165 million on an alienating movie. It's still crap, not art.

Posted: **Fri Sep 29, 2006 6:54 pm**

The movie was bad. Bad acting all round. Plot holes after plot holes. Did they use the first script draft? The whole thing looks very very staged, and very badly staged.

Posted: **Fri Sep 29, 2006 7:56 pm**

The Invunche wrote:Some Americans have trouble with non-US English accents because they are only exposed to that one. Not saying it applies to anyone here, but I have encountered Americans who had more trouble understanding an English-English movie than I did.

I had no problems understanding Gong Li. I'm 100% sure she said "long you long time" in every scene.

I know this is off-topic, but there isn't just one American accent just as there isn't one British accent. There's Boston accents, New York, Minnesotan, several different southern accents, Texas has a few, Chicago, etc, etc...

And let me tell you, a deep south accent can oftentimes be just as baffling as a cockney accent. Most modern American films though usually have characters talking in a non-regional accent as does American news stations, which may be why you think there's only one accent.

And yes I had no problem understanding Gong Li as well.

Posted: **Fri Sep 29, 2006 8:11 pm**

Barmy wrote:Thanks. I don't disagree with your entire position, except your argument that this is a pricey "art" film. The only aspect of the movie that was interesting to me was how offputting it was. I didn't understand the dialogue, or what was going on. I found the cinematography ugly, and not in an interesting way. I didn't care AT ALL about any of the characters. I liked the boating to Mojitoville scene but only because it was so silly (and allowed me to argue to my friends that mojitos have jumped the shark). Kudos to Mann for wasting $165 million on an alienating movie. It's still crap, not art.

As for the dialogue, I suppose that is understandable as Mann really piled on the crime enforcement/drug lingo but did so on purpose to show this rarified world that these guys exist in. I don't think it is really all that important to understand *exactly* what these guys are saying but rather why. It is all part of their professionalism schtick of which Mann is obsessed with (see... well, pretty much every other film he's done). I didn't mind it so much because it has become so much the venacular of countless cop shows you see on TV now (CSI, Law & Order and its ilk) but Mann takes it and cranks it up and notch and pares away any kind of personal details about these characters. They really are empty shells and I think that Mann is saying that this kind of job/lifestyle makes them empty inside so that there is nothing but slick surface.

As for the cinematography and I really quite enjoyed it. There were some truly breathtaking shots, like when we see Crockett and Tubbs flying that private jet and there is this long shot of the tiny plane dwarfed by these huge, beautiful white clouds and blue skies... amazing! I also thought that he really captured the green lushness of the Central (?)/South American scenes as well. Oh well, to each their own, eh?

Posted: **Fri Sep 29, 2006 8:40 pm**

Roger, my point was that some American don't understand English accents that aren't American. Sorry for simplifying the argument by reducing American accents to "one". I'm well aware of the different accents.

Oh and the movie was beautiful as proved by my avatar.

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Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)