Miami Vice: A-

Michael Mann is a man of vast talents as both a director and writer. His movies have gained fame for being of distinctive visual styles and gritty atmospheres. His characters speak in eloquent alomst poetic sentences that work suprisingly well in his genre of choice: action thriller. Mann, who exec-produced the original Miami Vice strips away everything of that show except the characters, and some of the pilot's plot. What we have left is a super cool, super dense, super engrossing, and super intense thriller. One of the best of the year. From the very first scene, reveling in it's kinetic danciness, we know that Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Tubbs (Jaimie Foxx) are working on an undercover investigation that leads them to the unexpected door of a global drug king. The plot really isn't important because not only is it kind've predictable it is almost incomprehensible in portions and a major plot line is never resolved. What is important is the aforementioned atmosphere. Farreel and Foxx have a suave chemistry and their respective love interests, Foxx's is another cop and Farrell's is the drug king's right hand, are played with a intimacy and sensuality that is hard to find in a nitty-gritty urban police thriller. What remains are two things: the dramatic, playful, suspenseful script (that occasionally leads our leading men to hokey acting), and the violence that is both fitting for this movie and shocking to behold. Mann has a skilled hand in these things and the camera never wavers from the sex scenes or the gun battles. Be thankful.