Director: Michael Mann
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 2.0
Part excellent mood piece about Miami/Miami Beach nightlife and criminal doings and part blotchy, hackneyed action disaster. Mann wisely avoids the TV show trappings to make something dark and violent, but too many factors work against him: the silly plot (kidnapping women, white Supremacist bad guys), the awkward love scenes (set to Chris Cornell's voice ... Chris Cornell being the voice of unsexiness), the ups-and-downs of high definition video (some scenes look eerie and gorgeous, others like they used the wrong codec to render the footage, though I will grant that it could be the theater I saw it in). Jamie Foxx feels right at home - he was also fine as the moody cab-driver in Collateral - but Colin Farrell simply doesn't work - it's either his put-on gruff accent or his mullet or his wardrobe (it's hard to pin-point the most blatant flaw). Fellow moviegoer John and myself came up with an alternative to Foxx and Farrell - if they wanted to do a sequel - and that would involve casting Al Pacino and Samuel L. Jackson, and having them scream at each other the entire time.
