Miami Vice
Senior Member
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 4,301
Likes: 0
From: Indianapolis
I liked the idea, but not the actors. Jamie Foxx should just stick to, well not being on camera. I think Will Smith would have been good, but it would have been too close to being Bad Boys.
Wannabe yuppie
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 25,918
Likes: 0
From: Madison, WI
Went with a coupla folks including Josh M to see Miami Vice tonight. We all thought it was good, and we have totally different tastes in movies.
First thing: no way is it like Bad Boys 2. That movie is all about superficial contrived shots, stupid one-liners, not really anything you might call refer to as "craft." Miami Vice does also happen to be about a pair of cops going after drug dealers in Miami, has violence, sex, hot cars, etc, but they're totally different flavors.
First the simple part. Josh liked it because it has a good selection of cars cars (Range Rover, Chrysler 300C, Dodge Charger, BMW 645i, and all variety of full size Americaon SUVs; everything pretty custom. plus Crockett & Tubbs' Ferrari F430 spyder, which has fire glowing out its exhausts in one sequence, and a Bentley Continental GT), kickass planes, boats, cool clubs, a few bits of somewhat graphic violence, and other action-movie bits that are done well.
First, allow me as a movie geek to set off on a tangent about shooting movies in HD. I'm putting it in a spoiler box so you can skip it if you don't care.
[spoiler="HD"]Honestly, the HD is not very good. It's only "high definition" in comparison to regular television, which is hardly any resolution at all. Movies are shot on 35mm film and with an off-the-shelf film scanner I get a 5400x3550 (19 megapixel) image. The highest resolution you get from HD is 1920x1080 (2 megapixel). Blown up on the big screen, the detail is not there. The HD cameras are also totally unable to reproduce even close to the range of tones as film does. Digital still cameras have equalled and probably surpassed the image quality of film. HD ain't even close.
One advantage of digital is it's a lot easier to shoot with available light in situations where there is not much available light, but bumping up the sensitivity produces lots of blotchy chroma noise which blows even more detail. But, with film those shots might not even be possible at all. Overall, the digital look doesn't help things, and for a good portion of the movie I found myself thinking about how much better all the very solid camera work would look if only it was shot on film. But since I very much enjoyed the movie in spite of the HD, that speaks for the other good things.[/spoiler] Aside from my dislike of the HD look (if you could call it that), the movie is still very nicely shot and edited. There were a few spots where I was like, come on why didn't you bust out the steadicam?! But it was by no means as annoying as the constantly shaking camera work of Bourne Supremacy, to name a particularly heinous offender of "hey if we don't hold the camera steady it makes things look more actiony" mistake. I think "ooh look we're shooting handheld" shots need to pretty much go the hell away, but sometimes they actually kind of worked here, which is saying a lot. There are also several very nice shots of planes, boats and cars which are properly stabilized, and other framing scenery shots. Real solid editing for the most part, sound was great, just in general the craftsmanship was very tasty (again in spite of HD sucking).
More subjectively, the movie is very good at pacing and setting particular vibes and really committing to them. This is necessary because plot intricacies and dialogue are not really what's to be had here. Thematically it's familiar ground from other Michael Mann flicks: everybody involved is quite professional, and the people whose profesionalism lapses usually pay for it in some way. Don't worry that's not spoiling anything. Don't try to figure out the plot. It's yer standard Miami cops chasing drug dealers that's been recycled who knows how many times since the original Miami Vice tv show basically started the genre. It's a very solidly put together popcorn flick that will satisfy people looking for that, but it goes deeper than that for the movie geeks to get into it also, and so I appreciated it for being a movie that I as a movie geek can enjoy along with my popcorn-flick-fan buddies, even if for completely different reasons.
First thing: no way is it like Bad Boys 2. That movie is all about superficial contrived shots, stupid one-liners, not really anything you might call refer to as "craft." Miami Vice does also happen to be about a pair of cops going after drug dealers in Miami, has violence, sex, hot cars, etc, but they're totally different flavors.
First the simple part. Josh liked it because it has a good selection of cars cars (Range Rover, Chrysler 300C, Dodge Charger, BMW 645i, and all variety of full size Americaon SUVs; everything pretty custom. plus Crockett & Tubbs' Ferrari F430 spyder, which has fire glowing out its exhausts in one sequence, and a Bentley Continental GT), kickass planes, boats, cool clubs, a few bits of somewhat graphic violence, and other action-movie bits that are done well.
First, allow me as a movie geek to set off on a tangent about shooting movies in HD. I'm putting it in a spoiler box so you can skip it if you don't care.
[spoiler="HD"]Honestly, the HD is not very good. It's only "high definition" in comparison to regular television, which is hardly any resolution at all. Movies are shot on 35mm film and with an off-the-shelf film scanner I get a 5400x3550 (19 megapixel) image. The highest resolution you get from HD is 1920x1080 (2 megapixel). Blown up on the big screen, the detail is not there. The HD cameras are also totally unable to reproduce even close to the range of tones as film does. Digital still cameras have equalled and probably surpassed the image quality of film. HD ain't even close.
One advantage of digital is it's a lot easier to shoot with available light in situations where there is not much available light, but bumping up the sensitivity produces lots of blotchy chroma noise which blows even more detail. But, with film those shots might not even be possible at all. Overall, the digital look doesn't help things, and for a good portion of the movie I found myself thinking about how much better all the very solid camera work would look if only it was shot on film. But since I very much enjoyed the movie in spite of the HD, that speaks for the other good things.[/spoiler] Aside from my dislike of the HD look (if you could call it that), the movie is still very nicely shot and edited. There were a few spots where I was like, come on why didn't you bust out the steadicam?! But it was by no means as annoying as the constantly shaking camera work of Bourne Supremacy, to name a particularly heinous offender of "hey if we don't hold the camera steady it makes things look more actiony" mistake. I think "ooh look we're shooting handheld" shots need to pretty much go the hell away, but sometimes they actually kind of worked here, which is saying a lot. There are also several very nice shots of planes, boats and cars which are properly stabilized, and other framing scenery shots. Real solid editing for the most part, sound was great, just in general the craftsmanship was very tasty (again in spite of HD sucking).
More subjectively, the movie is very good at pacing and setting particular vibes and really committing to them. This is necessary because plot intricacies and dialogue are not really what's to be had here. Thematically it's familiar ground from other Michael Mann flicks: everybody involved is quite professional, and the people whose profesionalism lapses usually pay for it in some way. Don't worry that's not spoiling anything. Don't try to figure out the plot. It's yer standard Miami cops chasing drug dealers that's been recycled who knows how many times since the original Miami Vice tv show basically started the genre. It's a very solidly put together popcorn flick that will satisfy people looking for that, but it goes deeper than that for the movie geeks to get into it also, and so I appreciated it for being a movie that I as a movie geek can enjoy along with my popcorn-flick-fan buddies, even if for completely different reasons.
