With moderately placed hopes, I saw this film hoping for something between average and good. Instead, I got disaster.<\/p>\n
Historically, I like Michael Mann’s direction style, and in particular his most recent projects, including Collateral and Ali. I also count myself as a fan of the original television show, Miami Vice, which he directed. Considered it very much ahead of its time, while being a reflection of the Eighties cocaine and glossy neon and pastel era.<\/p>\n
But this was…ahem…my exact words when the closing credits started, “What a fucking piece of crap.” I said this loud enough that The Wife scolded me because people stared at us. Hell, it was an R-movie. I’m not responsible for the twelve delinquents that told their parents they were seeing Barnyard. And besides, no one disagreed.<\/p>\n
What works about this movie:
\n1) Concept. Revisiting the glory days of a great show with a new cast and crew was an idea with good intentions. Maybe in someone else’s hands, it could have been SWAT. I wanted to believe it might work.
\n2) It does end.<\/p>\n
What needs improvement:
\n1) Cast. Colin Farrell – not a good fit for his character. Jamie Foxx, too talented for a project so weak.
\n2) Budget. Less money on hookers for Colin, more on cameras. 135 million dollars for something shot on a digital video camera that failed to keep up with the transition from well lit to poorly lit environments? Uh-huh, don’t think so, homey. Many scenes the picture was grainy. Not a little, either. I’m talking visible colored blobs of static, dancing around on X.
\n3) Story. Might have worked as a sixty minute television show. Had no business being stretched to 110 minutes.
\n4) Soundtrack. I would have preferred no music to these arrangements. Again, what works as background noise for a trailer, doesn’t hold up for a whole film.<\/p>\n
Verdict: A disappointment. Change the channel when it comes to cable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With moderately placed hopes, I saw this film hoping for something between average and good. Instead, I got disaster. Historically, I like Michael Mann’s direction style, and in particular his most recent projects, including Collateral and Ali. I also count myself as a fan of the original television show, Miami Vice, which he directed. Considered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}