In the Past I Lived
Deep within the trenches of the brain lies a memory. One of a teenaged movie theater going experience during the Summer of 2006. 15 years I was at time, even though 15 years ago I was just 15 years old as well. The time vortex is one you must believe in to believe this story and as a 30 year old man in the guise of a 15 year old, there was a movie I was waiting for; Miami Vice.
Excitement was high concerning the film when it came to me and my buddy Walter. For Walter was the only guy I knew that actually wanted to go see movies. Walter was also the only guy that was willing to pull off the move of buying one ticket between the both of us to get past the ticket ripper and then using it to sneak the other one in. For two kids that had 0 ambition beyond watching R rated movies, this was a crucial maneuver to learn.
But We Would If We Could
It worked most of the time with us getting the opportunity to see such films as the Paul Walker starring Running Scared and Neil Marshall’s The Descent but there was that 1 time when we tried to go see Crank.
What stopped us was the will of a die hard movie theater ticket ripper. This guy made sure that we not only failed in pulling off the one ticket trick by having to buy 2 tickets to that Marky Mark film Invincible but that he stalked us throughout the night to catch us in the theater for Crank. What glee he had in getting us kicked out of the theater for the night. A critical loss for a Friday night but we were determined to show up that ticket ripping son of a bitch. A week passes and on that Friday,we bought ourselves a pair of tickets for Date Movie, us being 20 minutes late for the screening but 10 minutes early for what we wanted to see, and waltzed ourselves into the screening of Crank like we owned the motherfucker. There was about 5 people in that theater but we had ourselves a good time.
Grosses for Crank
Domestic (64.8%)
$27,838,408
We Contributed 0 Dollars To This
Me and Walter were movie fans and we had a great fondness for Michael Mann's previous films Collateral and Heat. Many times we had spent watching those two films back to back among the various other films we had or rented during this time. Shit like Man on Fire and My Cousin Vinny.
It must be noted that during this period of time, watching movies meant time being spent in having to go to a Blockbuster or a Hollywood Video to rent or buy. This was a time in which we would spend an hour walking through the aisles to figure out what the fuck to watch. That’s how much we time we had to not do other stuff that teenagers did. Like Drugs.
These two movies in particular were a part of that rotation up until having the money to purchase them. What a time to believe and be part of a physical world.
So it goes, the summer arrives and the trailers of the film are playing but there's a slight hitch in the anticipation. IMDB news has a small blurb regarding Michael Mann frantically re-editing the picture after a lukewarm reception over the first test screenings or something along those lines. This being the time of the 56k modem, though I do not doubt there was faster internet somewhere in the world I just knew it wasn't in my household, and so movie news spread slow to me but for some reason this piece has always stuck in my head regarding this particular film.
The Friday night arrives. Walter and I execute our buy 1 ticket and get 2 people in routine without trouble and walk into the theater where Miami Vice was playing. We get decent seats, this being the time of fighting to the death for your seat, in the middle of the theater and sit back and relax while praying the usher doesn't walk over and ask us if we have tickets for the movie. The usher enters and does his count then leaves. The 2 of us sit back and the movie begins.
The biggest difference I can remember from that theatrical version in 2006 to the Directors Preferred Version DVD that I watch now is that the film kicks off in the club and nixes the opening boat race that deals more with the investigation that they find themselves in. The overall mood of the film though is intact. The characters are there but they aren't buddy buddy like in Heat and the interactions between characters don't have that flair like in Collateral.
These two films being the only other Michael Mann I could reference at that time and so just about everything that I found a hindrance in Miami Vice would be redirected to their superior counterparts in either Heat or Collateral.
The movie ends and overall, I remember enjoying what I saw. People laughed together at the very few moments that were funny and when Jose Yero gets a fat M40 grenade round shot into his stomach that then erupts his insides against the hull of a ship, everyone cheered. The beats seemed to be on point, at least for me, and I started to clap as the credits started to roll.
I was the only one though. Walter would try to stop me but I couldn't be stopped. Not in that moment. And so I stood and clapped. As people were walking to the exit, they turned to see the clapping then looked quickly away with shame as I kept on clapping and clapping. The people were now walking quickly before needing to run to get out of the theater as they heard my hands smash into one another faster and faster. The pain becoming too much to bare but the clapping did not stop for I needed to show the world that I, a 16 year old kid who had yet to understand his own genius, found this film to be great.
I couldn’t be stopped
Soon enough, the theater was empty except for Walter and I then we too began to leave. The entire theater empty except for employees and it is with my belief that they could not handle nor possibly comprehend the fact that I was right. Walter disagreed with me at every point but nonetheless, I knew I was right. 16 years later as a 46 year old grandfather, I now watch the film to give it another viewing.
I have seen it a couple times throughout the years of understanding, accepting, and spreading my genius to the world but it is only now that I truly dive to lay down a verdict regarding the film.
Thus Now We See
The plot of the film is as follows: Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs are working an investigation regarding a pimp when they get a urgent call from an informant they haven't used for some time. A deal has gone bad involving FBI,DEA,CIA,CSI,US Customs agents and he is trying to save his ass. The deal is super fucked all around and as it gets shittier and shittier, the FBI’s only lead is that they have a leak. Miami Dade Police though weren't involved in the deal that went to shit and so the two of them go undercover to find out what happened and who did the deed.
They sabotage a know drug smuggler and that manages them to get their in with Jose Yero and he OK's them but they gotta meet up with the the Big Boss to get the real A-OK before they could start smuggling product. At the meet, Sonny and Ricardo meet Big Boss Arcangel de Jesus Montoya and Isabella, who is working in a weird personal partnership with the main drug dealer, and Sonny falls head over heels at first sight. The rest of the film deals with Crockett and Tubbs maneuvering their way through their undercover identities to such a point that Ricardo declares,"There's undercover then there's which way is up."
It's a cool plot but this movie feels like a platform to explore the various in's and out's of the globalized drug trade than having the characters be a part of it. Movies will only go so far in showing the logistics of the drug trade since they probably want to work more on character development but this one does a real hard turn into showing what you haven't seen before. At least in regards to smuggling.
Going far beyond the television show and even null and voiding it entirely from existence as far as this movie is concerned. I have only seen 2 episodes of the show and 1 of them, or maybe both, had Bruce Willis on as the villain and that was cool but the quips, the one liners, the cops taking down some asshole with drugs is long gone in this.
Brutal in scope is how to describe it. Miami is the grungiest looking place around. Ain't enough neon in the world that can pretty up the disgusting urbanized jungle next to the cool blue of the ocean.
I absolutely love this look and applaud, once more, to the fact that Michael Mann went the other way when it comes to these old television shows being adapted for the big screen. There are previous examples with Starsky & Hutch and Charlie's Angels leaning more into the goofiness of which there dated sensibilities come from and even now, television shows of the past are redirected towards the Comedy genre entirely and avoiding any instance of realigning to the actual drama that they strive for when they came out. Not to say that the two 21 Jump Street films are terrible but that the Baywatch movie is.
Mann goes out of his way to make sure the TV show is nowhere near present except for a cover version of the Phil Collins song In The Air Tonight that plays during the final showdown. It apparently played over the credits in the theatrical version but my clapping silenced any memory of that. I can certify that Michael Mann nailed the overall look and feel of the film but the characters seem a bit out of place.
The Cover in Question
There really isn't any chemistry between anybody in this movie. Certainly not between Sonny and Tubbs. There is hardly anything they say to one another throughout the film and when they are supposed to have their one on one moments, its all mumbles and bad fist bumps.
I’ve come to believe that the reason that it's tough to decipher their relationship in this film because this isn't the origin story between the two. This movie is like 5 years on the job and they get themselves into a situation that they haven’t got into but go in thinking they know they deal before realizing that they might be in over their head. Even still though, these two are no hesitation kind of characters which unfortunately leads to a lack of character growth for either of them to go through.
Like say in Lethal Weapon or even the other Shane Black written film The Last Boy Scout where the characters are one person in the beginning and as the film goes on and on they manage to grow into someone with a little more wisdom or at least become more accepting regarding their place in life. What’s also weird about Miami Vice is just how dead it is between them. It’s like a marriage where the husband and wife have been married for so long that to get a divorce now wouldn’t be worth it because neither one of them are interesting enough to find love again. There’s just nothing there and what a bummer.
Possibly it was intentional that these characters are so professional that they are just robots hidden in plain sight but it certainly is a hard hill for the viewer to get over to try and engage with the film. The chemistry between the two partners should negate the genre filing of 'Buddy Cop' film from it entirely.
There was also the love affair which is like another big piece of the film feels real out of place. According to the script, Isabella was originally Afro-cuban and not the Cuban Chinese angle that the film ended up with when casting Gong Li in the role. Gong Li does the best she can but the heat between her and Colin Farrell is sort of there but not really. It’s more of moving through the motions than anything palpable.
Another problem that comes to be is that the ending is seemingly all for not. The movie is trying to negotiate and navigate towards something big regarding the main bad guy but as viewers, we just get stuck with the middling tier associate of the main bad guy to get our fulfillment from. Not to say it isn’t a cool ending since it has some heat to it but it's far from what is to be expected from Michael Mann. Though after reading the initial draft of the script, dated 9/22/04, the ending to that wasn't that great either.
In the script I read, the plot beats were more or less the same. The deal gone wrong and Sonny and Ricardo going undercover and the ill fated love affair between Sonny and Isabella all play out the same. What is interesting is the use of the criminal Neptune that shows up in the beginning of the film and is never seen again. In the script, he’s used as the fall guy when it came to laying blame on the drug heist that Sonny and Tubbs pulled off earlier in the film to get themselves positioned as drug smugglers.
As far as the ending is concerned though, there are a few moments that differ. Isabella is actually on the freighter that Sonny and Ricardo are smuggling shit on instead of turning into a hostage for the final confrontation. Jose Yero is already in Florida and hanging out with his Aryan business partners but apparently is just viewing the final confrontation between the Aryan Brotherhood and Sonny. The trailer park takedown happens without Sonny and Jose Yero watches them from away with binoculars and calls someone to let them know they’re cops but Ricardo, just right after saving Trudy, is flying to him via a helicopter and shoots him full of holes. Jose Yero dies in the streets.
Ricardo then flies over to help out Sonny and Isabella who are caught in the final shootout. Everybody is shooting everybody with the final shootout of Coleman, the Aryan brother that does all the negotiation in the film, happening about the same except after Sonny shoots him in the leg Ricardo runs up with his M40 Grenade Launcher and blows him up in half.
The ending in the film is better but who knows how great the rewrite of the ending of the film would have been.
Would You Like to Know More?
To explain the strangeness of the film as a whole, one will need to dive into the actual production. The post production I’m not too sure of but I'm sure somewhere there's someone writing the official Michael Mann biography that has all his meticulous research and journal entries regarding his time in making the film and on the day that this biography becomes available, it will be one of the greatest biographies about a filmmaker. Until then, I can only go off speculation and the fact that everyone I asked that was involved in the production refused to speak to me. So speculate I must.
I believe this film is as close as Michael Mann got to his own Apocalypse Now. The similarity being that the production of Apocalypse Now is legendary in its troubles and this film by some degrees is on the same wavelength though the end result may vary.
This man named Michael Mann went up against nature. Up against the triple threat of hurricanes by the name of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. Deciding to shoot during terrible weather and adding an unnecessary risk to everyone involved like a mad Mann but then again, those shots of lighting striking in the background in the beginning of the movie are pretty great. Even though in the end, he apparently lost a week of production because of the hurricanes and with a film that is going worldwide to get the shots it needs, that's troubling. Coppola fought against nature and won and Mann did pretty good against mother nature but ultimately the fight created more harm than good.
It seemed like Mann himself was taking it to the limit of making a film or maybe he was just truly embracing his Chicago sensibility and those around him just couldn't handle it. I choose to believe the latter than the former in this situation. One major contribution to the madness was the constant script rewrites. After having read the script that is available online, it’s easy to see that he must have felt inspired while on set to enhance or just have to make do with what he had but it seems like that the more farther out he goes in making a film, since this is a globe trotting affair, that the harder it is to contain a vision than say a movie that takes place in a single city.
As mentioned before, the man traveled around the world to get what he needed included going to the Caribbean, Uruguay, Paraguay, and the Dominican Republic but he didn't go for the tourist sights. This guy took the production into the nitty gritty of these places that he had to go about hiring gang members to work security since the police wouldn't even bother going into these nitty gritty areas. Which brings a real tone of authenticity to the film whenever those outside of Florida shots come into frame. The way that Coppola probably dealt with the locals via the Filipino government was probably an easier all around situation since he had more support than what Mann had to deal with but there is one thing that Coppola didn't deal with. Ego.
Obviously he dealt with his OWN ego by going insane over there in the Philippines and having every one join him along but Michael Mann had to deal with the ego of an newly anointed Oscar winner by the name of Jaime Foxx.
It's old news now but at the time after Jaime Foxx won the Oscar for Ray, he was a bit of a asshat. This asshat comment is in reference to his demanding top billing on the poster, getting a higher salary than Colin Farrell, and ultimately fleeing the Dominican Republic and refusing to go back to film after shots were fired near the set. I mean, that last one isn’t as egotistical but in the refusal of going back, the supposed 'better' ending of the film had to be scrapped and the one in the film was written in haste and considered 'inferior' by those involved but Mann would later prefer it but the ending has already been talked about in length in a previous paragraph.
A film with tremendous production problems that ultimately did not make the film become the critical darling that something like Apocalypse Now managed to achieve, but what is in this film is something of worthwhile tangibility.
I can't say that the sum of all its parts makes it banger. When the characters turn just a little, you can spot that they are sentient pieces of cardboard stand outs and the ending isn't the most thrilling nor fulfilling as the movie tries to lead up to. The mood though and the rhythm of the film is something truly worth its while. Miami Vice of the past is about the glitz and glamour of the Florida drug scene and this modern adaptation throws all that bullshit nostalgia away and focuses on the nitty gritty of the drug world. You don't get the extreme scope that could be seen in something similar like the Oliver Stone Savages but you get something thematically on its own in this genre.
The winners and the losers are set in stone. The police may solve the case and knock off a bad guy to disrupt the flow of drugs but nonetheless, people get hurt and the dude at the top of the pyramid doesn’t have a worry for losing just a drop in the bucket.
A sense of defeat lives within this film. Something that permeates beyond itself in regards to how it came to be as well as the story involved but the film itself is not a defeat but more of a slight disappointment for there was something more here that just didn't come to be.