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'Miami Vice': Stylish violence, little else

Vintage television does not have much of a track record on film, largely because we're reminded how awful the shows were in the first place. Think of Charlie's Angels or Starsky and Hutch, crime-fighting action series that went camp as they careened onto the silver screen.

Miami Vice, the 1980s show that showed South Florida police could catch bad guys and make a pastel fashion statement too, goes in the other direction in its new film incarnation — it's a darker, grittier, more dramatic exercise in the genre of undercover cops vs. drug dealers.

Universal Pictures 'Miami Vice' C The verdict: Beneath the slick visuals, a formulaic story and sketchy characters. Director: Michael Mann Starring: Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Gong Li, Naomie Harris, Ciaràn Hinds Run time: 132 minutes Release date: July 28, 2006 Rating: R for strong violence, language and some sexual content. See showtimes Grunge aesthetic Gasp! Is this truly the future of movie photography? On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Miami Vice'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Michael Mann executive produced the original series and presumably helped define its visual signatures — high-gloss, neon-and-rain-puddled, noctural-reflected-surfaces — that later served him so well in films from Thief to Heat to Collateral. Here he continues his style-over-substance ways as the film's writer-director, delivering a noisy, hard-edged, heart-thumping police procedural yarn that is not always coherent, but looks terrific.

That may or may not be enough to sustain your interest for a long 132 minutes. Thanks largely to director of photography Dion Beebe, the many Miami locations look seductive, if often murky. The problem is that beneath the slick visuals, the story is formulaic and the sketchy characters are not compelling enough to make us care.

We will have to take Mann's word for it that Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx are detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs, for beyond their names, there is little to connect them to their television antecedents. Just think of them as two generic fictional cops.

Like the often irrelevant opening sequence of a TV show, whose purpose is to hook you in and stop you from changing the channel, Miami Vice opens with a stakeout scene at a South Beach nightclub which ends in muted mayhem. An exciting start that goes nowhere.

From there, Crockett and Tubbs are Haiti-bound, posing as tough hombre drug smugglers who stand up to a squinty-eyed crime boss over the details of a cocaine deal. But before the transaction can go down, Crockett cozies up to Mr. Big's shapely accountant-mistress (Gong Li of Memoirs of a Geisha) and squires her off by speed boat to Havana for a mojito. And some sex.

Foxx may be Farrell's partner, but the division of labor is hardly equal, as the movie often leaves Foxx in the dust. At least he gets a cop girlfriend (Naomi Harris) and one of the most suspenseful scenes, rescuing her from the well-armed thugs who are holding her captive in a potential ambush.

Otherwise, there are stealth missions down to Paraguay and Colombia, gunfire at regular intervals and the suggestion that Crockett may be planning to remain on the criminal side permanently. That is what passes for suspense in this film.

Farrell is aptly sullen, grunting out his dialogue as if he knew it was the least important element of the movie. Foxx is both bulkier and sleeker than he was in his Oscar-winning work in Ray, persuasive enough here that they probably will not ask for the award back.

Still, despite its drawbacks, there is surely a market for this new take on Miami Vice, since the near-elimination of story and character leaves so much more time for stylish violence.