Margaret Says: "Miami Vice is the worst movie I have ever seen."

Last month readers were asked to submit the titles of the worst movies they had ever seen in THE MIDDLEBROW FILM SOCIETY’S FIRST ANNUAL “THE WORST MOVIE I EVER SAW CONTEST AND FILM FESTIVAL". As society chairperson, it is my duty to view and review these films and determine a winner(or is it loser?).
Here is the first in the series:

The transposing of aged television shows onto the big screen has kept Hollywood busy since Dan Akroyd and Tom Hanks starred in 1987’s Dragnet. Capitalizing on familiarity and nostalgia, these movies fail more often than they succeed (while The Fugitive provided quality entertainment, The Beverly Hillbillies, I Spy, and Lost in Space did not).
So when Michael Mann, who executive produced over 100 episodes of Miami Vice, announced he would write and direct its film adaptation, people took notice. Surely this project was in capable hands. Right?
Well, perhaps Michael Mann hates, or is embarrassed by, his creation. He has made a big screen version that murders all that was enjoyable about the source material. Gone are the girls in bikinis, the sock-less loafers, and the flamingos. There aren’t even any good scenes on South Beach. Mann shoots so much of this movie at night and on overcast days that he might as well have been making Newark Vice. Perhaps the thing that is most infuriating is that, for some reason, the Miami Vice demands to be taken seriously. The film portrays police work for what it really is: a tedious, difficult task with very few rewards. How can this be the aim of a movie that shares its title with a show featuring a pet alligator (or was it a crocodile?)

If the viewer detaches this film from the original show, it is still terrible. Mann forgot to establish a connection between the two most vital elements of a buddy cop piece, the cops who are buddies. Crockett and Tubbs (Colin Farrell and Jaime Foxx) have zero chemistry and largely move about the film independent of each other. Tubbs gets the shorter end of the stick spending most of the movie relegated to answering phone calls on a ridiculous looking walkie-talkie and fiddling with his laptop. His caucasian partner gets much more of the focus and activity. Too bad Colin Farrell looks so ridiculous with his flowing highlights and mustache (he could easily be the star of the Barry Gibb Story) that it is downright distracting. Just when the viewer stops giggling at his look, he shows up to a drug deal in a sporty half ponytail which gets the chuckle machine up and running again.

Mann has a penchant (which is verging on an addiction) for mixing the use of film and digital video in his movies. This works in The Insider (making the viewer feel like she is watching the corruption of the tobacco industry through a hidden camera) and Collateral (where the digital video shots of Los Angeles evoked the memory of the Rodney King tape). In Miami Vice the digital video makes the action look like boring outtakes from Cops. The love scenes look like they were shot by a hotel heiress and have about as much sensuality or appeal as accidentally seeing meerkats canoodle at the zoo.

The style employed by the entire cast (which also includes Gong Li and Ciaran Hinds) seems to come from the furrow-your-brow-and-mutter school of acting. Because this movie is chock full of hokey Hollywood banter, the results are ridiculous. Oscar winner Jaime Fox gets to deliver lines like, “Ships move, that’s why you call them ships” with absolute sincerity. When Crockett and Tubbs do banter it is in a stilted, stoic manner. Upon his return from a rendezvous with a drug lord’s mistress Crockett admits that they went to Havana. This gem of dialogue ensues:
Tubbs (brow furrowed in a low tone): Havana Cuba?
Crockett (brow equally furrowed in a low, gruff tone): No, Havana Louisiana.

Michael Mann’s work has always carried an air of machismo that borders on misogyny. With Miami Vice he has gone a step further. It is not just anti-woman, it is anti-human. The film takes an equally emotionless approach towards violence, sex, suicide, murder, comas, even dancing which shows a lack of respect for humankind. It is this distressing element that keeps the movie from being “funny-bad”. It is just bad.