Monday
July 31, 2006
arts.michigandaily.com
artspage@michigandaily.com
TSe Midign aug
9
VIce is all glitz,
little substance
By Kimberly Chou
Daily Arts Writer
FILM REVIEW k tfa
To really embody the cocaine cowboys
of the 1980s - not so much Bret Easton
Ellis's rich-bitch abusers but the grown,
effortlessly cool sharks of TV's "Miami
Vice" - everything needs to be real.
Real is Gior-
gio Armani Black
Label suits. Vintage Miami Vice
Armani will have At the Showcase
"A Milano - Bor- and Quality 16
gonuovo21"stitched Universal
on the label.
Real is traffick-
ing thousands ofbricks of cocaine through
the port of Miami. Unadulterated cocaine
hydrochloride will be pearly white. If
you're looking at rocks - God forbid -
make sure the coke flakes off cleanly.
Real is setting previously unmention-
able subject matter to a sonic backdrop of
Phil Collins. It's B-list actors finding small-
screen success during the Reagan era, bust-
ing drug kingpins in a Ferrari Testarossa.
This deliciously flashy excess makes the
"Miami Vice" of the 1980s seem like utter
camp in retrospect. So for director Michael
Mann ("Collateral"), shouldn't making
a darker, edgier film than its predecessor
guarantee success in this anti-kitsch 2006?
At the very least, an Oscar winner
(Jamie Foxx, "Ray") and a semi-tal-
ented lothario (Colin Farrell, "The New
World") must equate sexier results than
the Don Johnson/Philip Michael Thomas
collaboration.
Certain cosmetic details aside (see
Farrell's porn-star mustache), "Miami
Vice" the film is aesthetically perfect.
The film follows Miami-Dade detec-
tives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs
(Farrell and Foxx, respectively) as they
get mixed up in an undercover drug op.
It's part of a cryptic storyline that may
or may not involve white supremacists,
but definitely has to do with Colombian
druglords doing business in Cuba. And
maybe Jackson Pollock.
Of course, nothing is easy when you're
Mann movie partnersespecially two stars
guaranteed cinematic snatch. Notably,
Crockett gets romantically involved with
drug king Jesus Montoya's (Luis Tosar)
tough-as-nails cohort (the stunning Gong
Li, "Memoirs of a Geisha"). Explosions,
business-related tension and salsa danc-
ing abound - all beautifully shot in the
Dominican Republic.
The swell of emotion you feel when
Crockett and cocaine queen Isabella
(Gong) race off to Cuba for cocktails (the
former, we learn, is a "fiend for mojitos")
may not stem from realization of their
inevitably doomed romance but the
breath taking long shot of their boat jet-
ting across the dizzyingly blue expanse;
it's the way the camera pulls out just as
Patti LaBelle's voice hits all the high
notes in the background.
Looks aside, for all of the film's style,
Mann seems unable to control its sub-
stance, instead attempting to squeeze too
much in two and a half hours. Mann obvi-
ously wants the film to be more impres-
"No, no. Smoking marijuana is totally harmless, I swear. I do it all the time!"
sive than the original series, and does
as much as he can with what he's been
afforded - a considerable lot with an esti-
mated $150 million budget. The acces-
sories Mann uses to illustrate the action
only complicate it. Somewhere between
the audience's first glimpse of the duo's
topless black Spider and a trip to Ciudad
del Este with assault weapons packed in
the luggage, the viewer gets lost. How
many rounds of drug deals are they going
through? What do white supremacists
have to do with Barranquilla, Colombia?
And when will the cover of "In the Air
Tonight" come up?
Understanding a big-budget summer
movie shouldn't be this difficult.
Humor in "Miami Vice"is unintention-
al, resulting from co-screenwriter Mann's
decision to sacrifice dialogue for unneces-
sary interjections of Audioslave. There's
barely enough Crockett-Tubbs interplay
to assume the close buddy-buddy relation-
ship associated with the detectives in the
original series.
During the drug op's preliminary
negotiations with hotshot middleman Jose
Yro (the fantastic John Ortiz, "Take the
Lead") Foxx runs the show. He comes
away with the film's best lines, including a
death threat referencing Jackson Pollock.
But more than that, Foxx's delivery is
such that nothing shakes the aura of cool
around him, not even Farrell stumbling on
his own lines.Farrell spits out his lines in a
constipated yowl, his accent slipping back
and forth from Irish brogue and slurred
Southern tongue. His performance over-
all isn't bad, necessarily, it's just bizarre.
But you can'tblame him entirely - Mann
must have had past beef with Don John-
son, because half the lines he wrote for
Crockett are insipid at best.
Or maybe it's just Farrell. While theIsa-
bella-Crockett relationship seems mildly
unconvincing at times, Gong commands
every scene she's in, incredibly impressive
for a woman who doesn't actually speak
Spanish or English.
Ultimately, "Miami Vice" struggles
when it incorporates too much at once.
The last battle scene has so many players
it becomes hard to keep up with who's
shooting who. But the camera work with
hand-helds and shaky cams maintains the
film's hold on the audience; dropping the
high-sheen gloss of contemporary action
sequences makes it more approachable,
or as believable as a multi-gunner shoot-
out can be. Here "Miami Vice" reins in
the viewer. In its efforts to be more true
to life, the film eliminates commonly
used scene transitions and extraneous
onscreen explanations of events. As a
result, the film occasionally lacks cohe-
sion, yet its loose, meticulously unstruc-
tured style still commands.
Though "Miami Vice" the film aims
to he more raw and real than the '80s
series, in reality the update comes off
campier than the original. Mann's 2006
film is frivolous fun that tries hard and
takes itself too seriously - and as
a result, it's perfect for summer. Go
ahead and indulge.
Rockers return home to Ann Arbor
By Kimberly Chou
Daily Arts Writer
To misquote Harvey Keitel, before he finally
relocated to Nashville this year, Jack White
sure as hell seemed ready to
get the fuck outta Detroit.
Long a fixture on the shaky The
Detroit music scene, White Raconteurs
and model wife Karen Elson Saturday at 8 p.m.
bought a house in Nashville;
his Raconteurs bandmates - Sold Out
Detroit pop troubadour Bren- At the Michigan Theater
dan Benson and two-thirds of
the Cincinnati rock trio The
Greenhornes - followed suit. In several inter-
views this year, most recently in Anthem, White
has expressed his enthusiasm for moving out of
the Motor City. It's almost sickening, at least for
Midwestern music aficionados that used to wish
Detroit had a slightly cooler image as a music
city. Detroit's music scene is composed much like
the city itself: a vast sprawl, some of it beautiful,
Kid Rock. Jack and Meg White were Detroit rock
music's Great (Peppermint-Striped) White Hope.
Suddenly critics hastened to group the other local
garage-rock bands together, unaware that some
had been toiling for years and others had formed
opportunely. White even beat up the lead singer
from The Von Bondies and we all hoped for a
cool, inner-city rivalry.
As Detroit emigres, it will be interesting to see
White, Benson, Patrick Keeler and Jack Lawrence
(the latter were at least closely associated with
Detroit) return to the city - or at least as close to
the city as they'd like to get: Ann Arbor.
Set to play The Michigan Theater Saturday
night, The Raconteurs have been riding out their
U.S. tour in support of their first album Bro-
ken Boy Soldiers. Released to mostly positive
reviews - they are popular music's latest hope
for a supergroup, afterall (see: cockrock disap-
pointments Audioslave, Velvet Revolver) - the
album is brighter and more Bensonite than any
other influence. Benson and White's co-storytell-
ing is the framework, but Keeler and Lawrence
bring much needed gravity as the rhythm section.
Catch them if you can this weekend.
FORtST CASstYDtly
Jack White shreds a Detroit performance.
some of it horrid, connected by winding concrete
but often blocked by construction. Berry Gordy
uprooted Motown to the west coast, classic rockers
like Alice Cooper and Ted Nugent have become
State Fair novelties - and don't even mention