Let me say for starters that I really wanted to like this movie, so I am somewhat biased. I also am extremely fond of Mann's work, and love the movie Heat, which I rewatched after seeing this film.
The camera work is absolutely top notch, a TON of great shots. However, this grittyness can be like salt, too little is bland but no big deal, too much and the food can become unedible. There were a few unedible moments in this film. Take for instance the shower scene. Now, a woman's neck and shoulder can be extremely sexy, but the closeup of that little patch of neck under the chin, with wet hair sticking to it, no not sexy at all, an WAY to long on camera.
I just couldn't get into the characters. He tried to give them each a little something but it just didn't work. This really stands out next to Heat, which I consider a pretty good movie with a few great action scenes. Even though the actors were often Oscar winners, the acting was just average in Heat, with a few good moments. Just the opposite in Miami Vice, the acting was abysmal, with just a few decent moments. It is like the actors were just trying to be cool and tough, and brought no other emotions to the screen. Mann can do good dialog, although he always has a tendancy to get a tad bit corney or carried away. In Vice, he just didn't deliver good dialog to the actors.
The movie started out weak, going with hip and fashion more than an fast action opening, which worked, plus had a lot of good music in the opening, but it dwindled after that, never picking itself back up. Even the secondary action build scene, the rescue, didn't give me anything to get emotionally involved over, and seemed way to easily accomplished.
And finally, the ending. I could have walked away satisfied from a crappy movie with an excellent gun battle, I could have walked away satisfied from a crappy movie with what was close to an excellent gunbattle except for a few flubbers.
I didn't walk away satisfied.
His gunfight scene is one area Mann shouldn't have botched it on. Chaos is good in such a scene, but here it was too dark and too chaotic to tell what the hell was going on. Twice I thought it was a badguy who got hit, but it turned out to be a good guy. There should be enough lighting that I can tell who people are when necessary. The actual gunplay was not bad, probably a tad above average, however, it was not good enough to take away from the real problem I had with the last action scene. It just sounded fakey. It sounded like someone had cranked the volume on a TV set and the news was reporting "live from bagdad" The gunshots had taht extremely TV news, extremely filtered, extremely long distance sound. You can't jsut take that sound, increase the decibles and call it close range gunfire. Standard mikes have a very difficult time catching firearms sounds, it takes skill to recreate what sounds like actual gunshots.
Again, take Heat, where the revirbirations of rifleshots in that movie's ending scene is what I most recall, so Mann has the technical knowhow to get the guns sounding right, and sounding LOUD, and adding to the feel of chaos. This really helped the feel of chaos in heat, as that scene was in broad daylight and well lit. Maybe he feared the actual gunsounds and increased volume would have made Vice's end scenes too chaotic. No, that was the darkness, and other problems.
Maybe someone convinced him that 'TV news background gunfire' sounds at a high volume would make the movie seem much more realistic to the average moviegoer. I don't buy that theory for a second. You can't fake or second guess realism or else it will bite you in the ass later. This holds true of gunfire, medical dramas, airplanes, or whatever. Again, harkening back to Heat, the average moviegoer would have been equally ignorant at that time, yet he chose supreme realism, even though at the time softer gunfire that could easily be spoken over was the norm (see T2 for this). Instead he went with true realism. And what happened? When real life occured a while later in the form of the North Hollywood Bank Robbery, it was described as 'Unrealistic, like a movie, like that scene from Heat!' Which doesn't make North Hollywood Bank Robbery unrealistic, it just shows how realistic the sound effects and pacing were in Heat. And weren't in Vice.
