Miami Vice: a mini-review.

Remember the scene in Heat where DeNiro and Amy Brennean stand on the veranda of his apartment with the sea in the background and kiss, and it's the most awkward thing you've ever seen - like seriously the least compatible human beings in the known universe, it seems - but it makes sense given who the characters are, and it's freakishly beautiful because of Mann and his genius DP and you kind of want it to go on forever even though you know at some level it's all a bit silly? But at least it seems like it was made by an adult?

OK keep that in mind.

Now remember the bank heist from the same film, its astonishing long central scene on which the whole story turns, arguably the greatest action setpiece ever filmed, and how everyone in Los Angeles seemed to have automatic weapons and you just didn't care because holy fuck?

OK one more thing.

Remember the final scene in the film, DeNiro and Pacino and the chase on foot at the airport, and after it's over and they're holding hands and that song by Moby comes on - 'God Moving Over the Surface of the Waters' - and for an instant you can't help thinking Michael Mann's some kind of ludicrous sentimental macho genius, that this is the moment an entire era of screen acting has been building to, these two men holding hands while one of them dies in a field lit up to look like a street sign from God?

Remember those things?

Miami Vice combines those three elements, and bravo! Only instead of talented actors kissing in front of a gorgeous nighttime ocean you get mannequins (and Gong Li) necking pointlessly in bathrooms while mumbling nonsense dialogue; instead of that awesome bank heist you get a couple of technically flawless shootouts devoid of movement or personality and approximately sixteen hours of boat-racing footage; and instead of the note-perfect ambient electronics and spare guitar rock of Heat you get a Jay-Z track and every song ever recorded by, apparently, Creed.

Miami Vice is without a doubt the worst Michael Mann film since the 1980's. He is touched with something not unlike genius; Miami Vice is smeared with something altogether else.

Dinnertime. Maybe later I'll tell you how I really feel!