Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that this movie is not for kids. It's focused on cops undercover as drug smugglers: This involves lying, dealing with criminals, and performing illegal activities. The film includes frequent references to drug use and some images (crystal meth, cocaine, heroin). It also features brutal violence: gunshots blow through bodies, limbs, and heads, producing much blood. The effect is not cartoonish, but grisly and startling. Characters seek revenge, but don't always feel better when they achieve it.
Families can discuss the friendship between Crockett and Tubbs: Why do they support each other even when one thinks the other is going astray? Why does Crockett decide to help his criminal girlfriend escape? How do the various "sides" (cops, federal agents, and several tiers of criminals) distrust and betray one another?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
An action movie that's actually not very interested in action, Michael Mann's MIAMI VICE is mostly smart, occasionally slowed by clichéd plot turns. Inspired by the 1980s TV series, the new version is more violent and less upbeat, exploring the ways that an expanding international economy of drugs, weapons, and money takes its toll on everyone, even those who try to fight back.
The film opens on Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Rico Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) going about their local business: They're scoping a nightclub for smalltime thugs. Unexpectedly, they're called up to the big time, a multi-agency case that's gone terribly wrong. Summoned by a former associate (John Hawkes) whose family has been targeted by a group of drug dealers who call themselves the Aryan Brotherhood, the detective duo agrees to go undercover: They pilot expensive planes (called Adam A500) and those speedy boats that skip over the water, and cut deals with sinister Jose Yero (John Ortiz) and his cold-blooded employer, Jesus Montoya (Luis Tosar).
Predictably, undercover work wreaks havoc on their love lives: While Rico is in a committed relationship with fellow detective Trudy (Naomie Harris), Sonny is a swaggery player. His romance with Montoya's money launderer Isabella (Gong Li), initiated at a bar in Cuba, is rendered in impressionistic fragments. Gong Li, both out of place and mesmerizing, redirects your attention. Suddenly, it hardly matters what Crockett or Tubbs or Montoya thinks he's doing.
While this shift in focus is actually brief -- the movie soon returns to its more regular business of shooting and dealing -- it reshapes what's at stake. Tubbs worries whether his buddy is in "too deep": "There's undercover," Rico observes, "and then there's 'Which way is up?'" This question of perspective is embodied by the elusive Isabella. While the movie offers the usual line-blurring between cops and criminals, her dislocation is never resolved.
Families who like this movie might want to see Mann's Collateral or Meirelles' City of God, as well as the TV series Miami Vice (available on DVD).
Rate It!
| Content | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CS | adults | kids | ||
Sexual ContentSex scenes show naked bottoms and breasts (two makeout scenes in showers); some kissing and slinky dancing. |
 |
|
 |
|
ViolenceExplosions, bloody gunfights (arms, chests, and heads blown off or open); fighting and stabbing. |
|
|
|
|
LanguageRepeated uses of f-word and s--t; other obscenities and occasional slang for male genitals. |
|
|
 |
|
Message |
|
|
|
|
Social BehaviorCops and criminals corrupt; undercover cops lie for a living and kill many bad guys, but love their women. |
 |
 |
 |
|
CommercialismMac powerbooks, allusion to Fed Ex. |
|
|
|
|
Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoFocus on drug dealers (mostly heroin bricks); protagonists drink liguor; secondary characters smoke cigarettes, cook meth, and drink liquor. |
|
|
|
|
