Miami Vice

[Rob1035]

Yup, I'm a diehard car junkie, always have been, which is what got me into Ronin. As I grew more interested in the intrigue side of films and books, the movie was still fun. And as a shooter, well, you know

A lot like the movie this thread is about....

 

[OrvilleYertleson]

Pseudo spoiler alert: skip this post if you want every single detail to be a surprise.

Personally I think the movie was absolutely horrible.

The characters were 2 dimensional and the plot was forced and discontinuous.

Also I was dissappointed in the gunplay. There were a few moments when I was impressed but for the most part I wish I had saved my 8 dollars.

The use of the .50 calibers at the beginning was good, it was a seemingly professional job. But then they turn around and protray those guys as a bunch of beer drinking trailer trash who 'stand guard' by sitting outside the trailer, under a light, while drinking a beer.

In order to catch the bad guy (who turns into a minor bad guy compared to the big bad guy who was never caught) they imported several thousand kilograms of cocaine/heroine for the big bad guy and then allow it to leave their control.....why would you ever do that?

The bad guys put a loop of det cord/explosive around the neck of the hostage but then 'wire it' with an alligator clip rather than a blasting cap and the wire is only about four feet long....

When the good guys take the trailer down they 'creep up' on it individually, facing in all directions except towards the known threat, and after one of them manages to get 'eyes on' the bad guys inside, rather than stay put and direct the good guys she stops watching as soon as she verifies that they are inside. They fail to stack, or even make a dynamic entry. Of course the bad guys inside are not suspicious when a 'pizza man' rings the door bell. After gaining entry into the house they fail to neutralize anyone or to take up dominant positions around the room. A long and unecessary speach follows before shooting one of the bad guys without warning (why not shoot him right away instead). Also, one of the good guys watches while one of the bad guys pull out a knife, and then runs at him. Rather than shoot him at any point during this encounter he grabs his own knife (or at least one knife). After stabbing the guy he then shoots him in the head once he is down (I guess to show how tough he is).

The bad guys behind the fifty-cal's in the second encounter are invisible to infrared as long as they leave their blankets over them. Of course it is always necessary to throw away your concealment before taking a shot as a sniper, thus exposing yourself. Also, one of those guys was kneeling with a .50 rather than laying prone and shooting under the railing.

The good guys know the bad guys are setting them up so they bring 2 snipers and have a swat team standing by. The snipers only shoot the other snipers and leave the vice cops to battle it out with the drug lords.

There were many other parts about this movie that frustrated me, but I don't have time to lay them out right now.

I did like the scene at the end where paramilitaries raided the big bad guys house in South America. That seemed pretty well executed, though they had way to many entrance points. I suspect that it was cheaper to hire real soldiers for that scene than actors.

Those are my thoughts. If I think of some more I will post it.

 

[RustyShackelford]

Miami Vice(2006) my 2 cents....

I saw Miami Vice in my local 6 story high, 55 stereo speaker system movie theater( ).

For the film, I'd say it was well made. Mann kept the plot simple and the story moved at a steady pace. The acting was a bit wooden and looked like the actors really did not understand what they were saying. Real drug cops and LEOs(law enforcement officers) use a lot of slang, jargon and phrases some people may not pick up on. They kept talking about federal agencies like US Customs and INS(these federal agenices have been folded into Homeland Security and disbanded). Gong Li(the money mover/love interest) did a poor job. A better actor should have got that role.

I did not like the way Colin Farrel/Sonny kept moving his pistol around. He does it 3 times for no reason. He also repeatly racks the slide of a 1911 like a moron, :banghead: .

The final shootout is hard to follow. The loud noise and darkness did not help you understand what was going on. Early morning/daylight would have been better.

The scene were "Gina" shoots the skinhead guy with an HK G-36 was good. The Barret 50/sniper scene was cool too. The film did not have many shootouts/gun use but that may be in Miami Vice 2.

Rusty S

 

[Wes Janson]

OrvilleYertleson summed up most of my complaints with the technical details of the film. Mann usually has some of the most competant gunfights you'll see in a movie, and the ending battle was a definite letdown. Admittedly it wasn't as bad as most, but there were still so many glaring holes in it to make it painful.

* "Snipers" with burlap sacksthrown over their backs out in the open? And not being able to spot them in about five seconds flat? Cmon.

* At least a whole minute goes by before ANY sort of backup arrives to support the team. Where the heck is SWAT? Why weren't they on scene to begin with, along with the rest of the team?

* The whole "running to cover while half a dozen people melt their barrels at me" strategy they kept using. We see Foxx flanking intelligently, and then the others are just running around wildly.

* The entire rescue operation stunk. Moving in, entering, the shootout, leaving the building (let's be paranoid and point our weapons the way we came in, and not bother to check on any of the suspects we just attacked, to make sure they're really all dead).


In a lot of ways, it was a real letdown. Collateral had my hopes up high for some decent cinematography and well-choreographed fights, and the writer really slacked off.

 

[Black Majik]

I fell asleep in Miami Vice..... boring!

I'll keep my comments to myself since it'll just echo mostly everyone else's comments. Humorless, stale acting, long love scenes that just wastes time.... and going to Cuba for a few days? ***?

The movie did not flow at all, a lot of the movie felt unrealistic. Definitely not Michael Mann status.

 

[Mike_in_OC]

Don't forget Crockett used to carry a Bren Ten for a while.

 

[longeyes]

I haven't seen it but definitely will because of Mann's previous first-rate work. This is the guy who made Thief, Heat, Ali, The Last of the Mohicans, and Collateral.

 

[RustyShackelford]

Bren 10/Smith and Wesson 4506 .45

This is a topic that comes up often. I've posted this information 5 or 6 times;

Det SGT James "Sonny" Crockett used a Bren 10 10mm for the first 2 yrs then moved on to a S&W 645(later a S&W 4506) .45acp pistol.

He had a Detonics .45 as a back up but also used a S&W 6906 9mm later in the TV series.

Tubbs used a Smith Bodyguard .38spl for most of the show. In the series finale Tubbs also had a SIG P-226 9mm in a shoulder holster(you'd think after 5/6 yrs of working with Crockett he'd pack a semi auto too but what do I know, ).

Tubbs also had the cut down .12ga shotguns so I think he was well armed, .

LT Castillo used several weapons, a 6" bar Smith revolver(.38spl) a .45acp 1911, etc. Zito and Switek used nickeled SIG -220 .45acp pistols. Gina and Trudy just had simple model 36/649 type .38spl revolvers.

Rusty

 

[Handgun Midas]

He also repeatly racks the slide of a 1911 like a moron

I gathered that they were all checking their weapons before the event and that he had just lubed the rails.


As for the rest of the massive nit picking going on in here, I don't personally go into a movie expecting text-book paramilitary tactics to be portrayed, let alone a movie based on an 80's TV show.


It wasn't great, but I enjoyed it enough for my $7.

 

[ny32182]

I finally saw it.

While it didn't have the excellent character development or tactical perfection of HEAT or Collateral, it *is* a movie based on an 80's TV show. The high points for me were the camera work and soundtrack (amazing).

Other aspects of the movie were not up to what I normally expect from Michael Mann, but, he is the best there is. His worst is still better than most people's best, and I will definitely buy the dvd to see what important parts had to be cut out.

 

[psyopspec]

How can you tell what's good camera work and what's bad?

To me it's an art, and like all art, beauty's in the eye of the beholder. Going off that, to me good camera work can do a lot of things:

-give the viewer a good picture of the environment and the people moving around in it.

-convey an extension of a character's feelings, or give a shot a "vibe" of it's own (overhead shots of L.A. at night from Collateral were good for this).

-add to the feeling of a situation by focusing on a character, or a detail. It seems there's a lot of dissension here, but I thought this specifically made Mann's love scenes in Vice particularly good.

-good cinematography can also make for good special effects. Off the top of my head, that's one of the things that made Hero a fun movie to watch. Contrast this with crappy camera work as seen in The Bourne Supremacy, which was used to hide crappier special effects and stunts.

 

[Checkman]

Six Years Later

It's a Zombie thread. Quick. Shoot it in the head.

Interesting all these comments. So lets take a look at it six years later.

1. The movie is basically a big budget episode from the series.
2. Crockett falls for the wrong woman. Again.
3. There is the funny eccentric snitch.
4. Trudy gets taken hostage. The bad guys connect a bunch of explosives to her. This happened twice to Trudy in the series. The famous Smuggler's Blues episode from Season 1 and the last episode of the series Freefall. I'm surprised that nobody caught that one.
5. Crockett and Tubbs get to ride in a really cool and expensive speedboat and airplane. The speedboat gets to run around Miami really fast.
6. Everybody gets to go to a club at least once.
7. The Uber Bad Guy lives like a king and has access to resources that would make the Pentagon jealous.
8. There is a meeting in a limousine.
9. The F.B.I. (Feds in general) screws the pooch and Miami PD has to pull their fat out of the fire.
10.Everyone has top of the line firearms.
11.Even the cops have great places to live.
12.Everyone looks really good and talks really tough. They also have beautiful/perfect sex.
13.Everyone is a workaholic.
14.There are lots of really expensive vehicles being used.
15.There is a big gunfight at the end and the bad guys go down in a blaze of glory.
16.There is no shooting investigation.

I like Mann's movies, but he does have some issues. He tries way too hard to be an auteur. He needs to accept the fact that he makes stylish action movies. His style of reality and drama is just that. Style.

 

[Sam1911]

It's a Zombie thread. Quick. Shoot it in the head.

Yup. And a MOVIE THREAD at that. Bang! Head-shot!