Taglines: No Rules. No Law. No Order.
When an informer, his family and two FBI agents are killed by an international gang of drug dealers, Detectives James ‘Sonny’ Crockett and Ricardo ‘Rico’ Tubbs are assigned to work undercover for the FBI in a joint operation to disclose which agency leaked the information to the criminals. They plot a scheme to approach with their team of agents to the manager José Yero and later to the druglord Arcángel de Jesús Montoya. Along the mission, Sonny meets the accountant, investor and mistress of Montoya, Isabella, and after a romantic affair, they fall in love for each other, blurring his professional commitment with his personal feelings.
Miami Vice is a 2006 American action crime thriller film about two MDPD detectives, Crockett and Tubbs, who go undercover to fight drug trafficking operations. The film, written, directed and produced by Michael Mann, is an adaptation of the 1980s’ television series of the same name, on which Mann was an executive producer. The film stars Jamie Foxx as Tubbs and Colin Farrell as Crockett, as well as Gong Li, Justin Theroux, Naomie Harris, Ciarán Hinds, Barry Shabaka Henley, Luis Tosar and John Ortiz, with supporting roles by Isaach De Bankolé, Eddie Marsan and others.
Miami Vice opened at No. 1 in the United States, knocking Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest out of the number one position at the box office that weekend, after Pirates led the box office for almost a full month. In its opening weekend, the film grossed over $25.7 million at 3,021 theaters nationwide, with an average gross of $8,515 per theater. The film would go on to earn $63.5 million domestically. Miami Vice would fare better internationally. The film aired in 77 countries overseas, grossing $100,344,039 in its international run. Overall the film grossed $164 million worldwide only barely managing to surpass the reported $135 million budget.
About the Production
For three decades, Michael Mann has remained one of the most compelling filmmakers, and his consistent level of artistry has created an indelible influence on cinema. His stylish, lasting dramas from Manhunter and Heat to The Insider and Collateral examine the complicated dynamic-and sometimes indefinite margin-between criminals and those struggling to keep one step ahead of them.
In 2006, Mann returns to the seminal franchise on which he first gained his reputation in television: Miami Vice. According to writer F.X. Feeney, in his book Michael Mann (Taschen, 2006), “After Collateral, Mann lost no time choosing Miami Vice as his next project. What attracted him to the original teleplay in 1984-the reality of life undercover-he finds no less compelling in our new, `globalized’ millennium.” Mann’s interest in telling the story of a dark world connected through “multi-commodity,” continues Feeney, lies in the fact that “drugs, weapons, pirated software, counterfeit pharmaceuticals, even human beings are all routinely trafficked and sold.”
In the mid-’80s, the television series Miami Vice, with a brilliant pilot screenplay written by the show’s creator Anthony Yerkovich, arrived and created a tectonic revolution in television. Drawing its creative inspiration from Mann’s work, Miami Vice became one of the most groundbreaking series in television history, pioneering a new way in which televised dramas were conceived and staged. As Film Comment critic Richard T. Jameson remarked at the time, “It’s hard to forbear saying, every five minutes or so, `I can’t believe this was shot for television!’”
Now, the filmmaker comes back to his “new Casablanca,” Miami, where third-world drug running intersects with the billion-dollar corporate-industrial complex-for the first postmillennial examination of what globalized crime looks and feels like-with a big-screen contemporization of Miami Vice, one unrestricted by the limitations of television. The roles he helped to create of Miami vice cops “Sonny” Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs are inhabited by Colin Farrell and Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx, who both underwent extensive training and simulations by undercover officers from the DEA, FBI, ATF, Miami-Dade Police Department (including S.W.A.T.) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE)-people who themselves tread the dangerous world of trafficking.
During the hunt, the partners encounter the cartel’s beautiful Chinese-Cuban financial officer Isabella (Gong Li, Memoirs of a Geisha)-a woman who moves, launders and invests money. The seductress provides Crockett a way of exorcising his own demons as he tries to keep her safe from darker forces… while the new lovers learn just who’s playing (and falling for) whom. Simultaneously, the stoic Tubbs infiltrates the elusive criminal enterprise while keeping a protective eye on his intel-analyst girlfriend, Trudy (Naomie Harris, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest).
As Crockett and Tubbs work undercover transporting drug loads into South Florida, they race to identify the group responsible for their friends’ killings while jointly investigating the New Underworld Order. During their mission, lines will get crossed as the partners start forgetting not only which way is up, but on which side of the law they’re supposed to be…
Supplementing the five-star cast, supporting players who join Mann in Miami Vice include Ciaran Hinds (Munich) as FBI Special Agent Fujima, Justin Theroux (Mulholland Dr.) as fellow vice cop Zito, Barry Shabaka Henley (Collateral) as Lieutenant Castillo, Elizabeth Rodriguez (Dead Presidents) as Detective Gina Calabrese, John Ortiz (Narc) as drug middleman José Yero and Luis Tosar (Cargo) as the stateless plutocrat (and Isabella’s pygmalion) Montoya.
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Miami Vice (2006)
Directed by: Michael Mann
Starring: Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Gong Li, Naomie Harris, Ciaran Hinds, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Barry Shabaka Henley, Justin Theroux, Eddie Marsan, John Hawkes, Isaach De Bankolé
Screenplay by: Michael Mann
Production Design by: Victor Kempster
Cinematography by: Dion Beebe
Film Editing by: William Goldenberg, Paul Rubell
Costume Design by: Michael Kaplan, Janty Yates
Set Decoration by: Jim Erickson
Art Direction by: Carlos Menéndez, Seth Reed
Music by: John Murphy
MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, language and some sexual content.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: July 28, 2006
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