A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Thursday, July 3, 2025

Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell in Miami Vice

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris, Ciaràn Hinds, Justin Theroux, Barry Shabaka Henley, Luis Tosar, John Ortiz, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Dominick Lombardozzi, Eddie Marsan, Isaach De Bankolé, John Hawkes. Screenplay: Michael Mann. Cinematography: Dion Beebe. Production design: Victor Kempster. Film editing: William Goldenberg, Paul Rubell. Music: John Murphy. 

The dark-on-dark credits roll for Michael Mann's film version of his hit 1980s TV series Miami Vice is the most illegible I've ever tried to read. It's as if no one connected with the movie was especially eager to be associated with it. Not that it's a bad movie, but that it never comes to life, never stirs the kind of enthusiasm that the original did. It has all the elements: attractive performers, hip music, fast cars, boats, and planes, the requisite sex and violence. But it doesn't seem to be going anywhere new or interesting. The characters don't generate much empathy or commitment to their fates. It ends on the most perfunctory note I think I've seen in a big American movie, not even trying to make you want a sequel.

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