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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Entertainment
Brogan Morris

Edgier than the TV series, Michael Mann’s take on Miami Vice is gritty and intoxicating

Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx are Miami detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs in Michael Mann’s reboot of the 80s TV show of the same name
‘What appeared shockingly new back then, though, looks miraculous today’ … Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx are Miami detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs in Michael Mann’s 2006 film. Photograph: Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy

On its release in 2006, Michael Mann’s Miami Vice seemed primed to quickly fade from cultural memory. A summer blockbuster with the flavour-of-the-month hook that it was based on a popular 80s TV series, the film was at the time coolly received by audiences and critics, in part owing to how wilfully dissimilar it was from the show that inspired it.

Now, 20 years later, there’s a different picture. Critics have since declared Miami Vice “genius” and a “demented masterwork”, while the fervency of the film’s fandom today rivals that of arguably any movie by the Heat and Collateral film-maker Mann.

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