When Miami Vice came out a few summers ago, we knew that it would be full of Michael Mannisms : badasses, awesome shootouts, contemplative moments and awful dialogue. In these respects, Mann did not disappoint.

The plot is pretty standard. Legendary cops Crockett and Tubbs are on the verge of busting some black pimp when an old snitch calls for help. Some white supremacists are about to shoot some undercover feds with a sniper rifle (which we know is super deadly because it requires assembly). Before anyone can do anything about it, the snitch and the FBI guys are dead. The FBI asks our boys to go undercover and bring down the white supremacists and the drug cartel working with them. A lot of driving through Miami in expensive cars, flying to Haiti in expensive planes and sailing to Cuba in expensive fucking boats later, Crockett has fallen in love with the bad guy's wife. Shit hits the fan and several bullets are shot through heads. End titles.

The movie has flaws, yes, so let's get them out of the way so we concentrate on more important things. First of all, what the fuck is up with all the facial hair? Foxx's goatee makes him look like a black Amenophis IV, Farrell resembles a blond wookie, and the bad guy's beard is so thick you could shoot the next Rambo in it. Also, the bad guy doesn't blink, ever. How tired of a fucking gimmick is that? Well, at least he looks like he's a South American. Gong Li, who's too Chinese for egg rolls, plays a Cuban, and Ciaran Hinds is passed off as a Japanese FBI agent. At this point they could have Farrell play Tubbs and Foxx play Crocket; it would have made as much sense. The "cop vs. dealer" plot itself is very simple, and Mann doesn't really give a fuck about it. Incidentally, neither do we. The dialogue is as bad as anything you'd find in Collateral or Heat, but it's mercifully minimal. From time to time Foxx will open his mouth and, with all the enthusiasm of Kevin Costner on barbiturates, grace us with a subtle gem like, "You know what kills me? The prospect of her losing her life over that bullshit line of work." Actually, Foxx's whole character is sacrificed at style's cruel altar. He does his best to look and act as badass as he can, but Tubbs is an empty shell. Mann's attentions are obviously elsewhere.

This brings us to Colin Farrell. Like many, I wasn't too happy when I heard he was to star in the next Michael Mann project. I'd seen Oliver Stone's abortion about the fairy conqueror. Farrell's wigged performance made me cry tears of blood. Thankfully, the sad eyed Irishman's real life descent into drugs and alcohol came at just the right moment and Mann was clever enough to use this to his advantage. Instead of explaining the how and why of Crokett through painfully insipid dialogue, the veteran director confidently uses Farrell's drug fueled fatigue to create a fully realized character. For example, in one scene our heroes are at a mid-level crook's house to do some standard police movie stuff. The scene is running by the numbers, the snitch is being a pussy and the cops are threatening him. Farrell, watching the action from the background, suddenly stares out at the sea, as if looking for something else. In reality Farrell was probably just spacing out between pills, but Mann re-contextualizes this stare to preface his whole relationship with Gong Li's character later on. There's also a great sequence where Crockett insults an FBI guy. You can see in Farrell's eyes that he's just popped two caps of red devil. It's not acting anymore. It's incarnation. I am French and handsome. Do my opinions not mean more?

Mann's directing also yields some great examples of storytelling by imagery. There is a whole back story between Crockett and Tubbs' girlfriend that is told purely through editing. For example, the first time we see Crockett he is in a club chatting up some Portuguese barmaid (who's probably played by a Swede) while waiting for the big black pimp he is supposed to frame. As he is practicing his routine on the barmaid, we cut to Tubbs' girlfriend, who seems amused to see Crockett seducing the girl. At first you don't really notice it, but the rest of the movie is peppered with these wordless hints. In the end, Mann effectively creates a whole sordid history between two characters without explicitly saying it. At this point you're probably saying, "Nice, but why should we give a fuck?" We should give a fuck, dear readers, because love(Love goddamn it!), not crime, is at the heart of the movie. Miami Vice is a romance.

Crockett and Tubbs go undercover, conning their way inside the cartel throughout some pretty awful scenes. Here they meet Isabella (Gong Li) and Jose Yero (some guy with an incredibly goofy accent). Isabella is married to Yero's boss (The aforementioned Thick Beard) but, when Crockett invites her to check out his big, powerful boat, it's Yero who seems extremely upset. We then follow the couple to Cuba where like, half the running time(even longer in the DVD version) is spent on them having fun, getting to know each other and talking business. This part infuriated many viewers but it's really what Mann seems most concerned with.

The chemistry between Li and Farrell's characters is palpable, almost overdone. Again, we're not sure where acting ends and reality begins. I mean, it's pretty obvious that they were fucking each other on the set. Anyway, in the Cuba scenes Mann again tells more with images than words. Take the scene where Isabella and Crockett are sitting in a bar. Having fucked all night, they realize the party is over and there is no future for their relationship. Mann cuts outside to a bunch of kids walking past the bar. It's so short that you don't really notice it the first time you see it, but it's a perfect illustration of what is going through the heads of the couple.

Later on, when Isabella tells her husband, Thick Beard, that she swallowed a half gallon of Irish DNA, he doesn't even blink. Sex is meaningless to him. It's when true feelings of love appear to the eyes of his wife that the shit really hits the fan. It all happens during a great sequence where Yero watches Isabella and Crockett dancing. They're obviously in love, and as the camera zooms to Yero's eyes, he looks like he's about to fucking cry. Heartbreak! What the fuck am I watching? The mechanics of the story are triggered by feelings. Yero loves Isabella, Isabella loves Crockett, Crockett is lying to her…this will not end well.

By this point it's obvious that two different movies are at work here. One is a paint-by-numbers action flick starring Foxx, while the other is a bittersweet romance featuring Farrell and Li. During the dance scene, at last, both movies meet. Until this moment, everything went pretty smoothly in Foxx's movie, the one where they are supposed to bust the drug dealers. Then Farrell brings his own movie and fucks it all up! Bad guys kidnap Foxx's girlfriend, people are stabbed, shit explodes, and everyone meets for the final showdown. Yero is killed by Foxx with a massive fucking shotgun and Isabella and Crockett escape. The final scene is pretty extraordinary for two reasons. First, Mogwai's mesmerizing "Auto Rock" hits its crescendo on the soundtrack as the lovers say goodbye. Secondly, Farrell's physical condition is fucking ridiculous. Look at his face! He looks like he's been shooting drugs and pounding Guinness for three days straight! You can almost see the medics waiting just off camera to take him to rehab clinic. He doesn't need to act.

I ended up seeing this one like, six times in the theater. The first and last ten minutes are amazing, perfect moments of pure directing. Everything in between is more than respectable with some genuinely good action scenes, which, coming from the guy that directed the shootout from Heat, is no surprise. It's also extremely melancholic, with all this love going nowhere and, therefore, quite beautiful. That's not too bad for something that, in the hands of anybody else, could have been just another action movie.