The name of the Eighties television series -- fighting crime and looking cool doing it -- has been appropriated for the same reason that the social striver might don Armani. The drug sting in the film could have been pulled off by anybody, not exclusively Sonny and Rico and Co. If you're going to jettison the theme music and the ice-cream color scheme, why retain the proper names? You might as well just settle for Jacksonville Vice. The storytelling, in other words, is strictly generic (suitable for off-the-rack dressers) and yet totally confusing (unsuitable for prime time). The confusion is evidently deliberate, first to cover up the genericness, and second to establish a degree of superiority, to let you know that even if you were sitting in on the planning sessions of drug smugglers and undercover cops, sitting right there shoulder to shoulder with them, you would glean only the dimmest glimmer of what's going on (or coming down). Adding to the confusion are the shifty camerawork, the distracted cutting, and above all, the underworld argot and discordant accents. If all this confusion somewhat diminishes your involvement, you still can't help but notice that Michael Mann is a filmmaker who takes himself seriously. You can see it in the pantheistic worship of the wind -- the manifestations of it in sports cars, in speedboats, on rooftops and beaches, through expensive haircuts and arching palm trees and loose linen jackets. You can see it in the grainy high-def digital photography that fills the night air with phosphorescent mosquitoes and, in a romantic interlude in microscopic closeup, transmutes Jamie Foxx's flesh into lizard skin. You can see it in the awesome range of Alp-like clouds through which a private plane weaves its way on a routine business trip. And you can see it in the Desert Storm scale and severity of the violence. The final firefight is particularly gripping. But confusing. Colin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris, John Ortiz. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
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