Michael Mann delivers a more mainstream, less brooding and macho movie than usual, so most people will like it better than MIAMI VICE (but not me). He still uses that style he’s been fond of lately, lots of handheld shots, all shot digitally, kind of a strange choice for a period piece like this, but not too distracting (or revolutionary, either).

It has some real good gunfights. Not the choreographed sort of way that I usually like but more like MIAMI VICE, chaotic in-the-thick-of it kind of scenes, like you’re an embedded reporter, hearing different gun sounds in all directions. Sometimes one whisks past you or hits a wall near you but luckily you survive. It has some tense scenes, a couple chuckles, the actors are all pretty good. There are lots of little surprise appearances to keep you on your toes (Lili Taylor, Stephen Dorff, Giovanni Ribisi, random Leelee Sobieski cameo). I didn’t even realize that was Bill Crudup playing J. Edgar Hoover. Good job Billy. The movie is fine.

So why didn’t I like it more? I’m trying to figure it out. It took me a while to get involved in it. It definitely got more exciting as it went along, but never got me in the gut the way some of these Michael Mann movies do.  I think the main problem is that I’m not sure what it is about this version of the story that’s supposed to make it worth telling again. Yeah, maybe the period detail is more accurate, I think they dressed up the actual theater where he was shot, etc. (SPOILER). And they hit on some different themes. There’s a couple nods to him being a folk hero (people cheering him on the road when the cops take him in, refusing to take a bank teller’s money because he only wants money from the bank itself). And I like that they don’t hit you over the head with it, but on the other hand they don’t really do anything with it either. They just bring it up and then move on to something else.

I didn’t notice any important new discoveries or interpretations of Dillinger’s motives. It doesn’t explore the mundane details of the robberies any more than a normal bank robbery movie does. It doesn’t de-mystify or humanize the legend, or if it’s trying to it doesn’t do enough to be all that interesting. When it gets into the backgrounds of the characters it tends to be through clunky dialogue, like when his girlfriend (Marion Cotillard) basically does a monologue about her background during a sex scene. At least she didn’t talk about what kind of music her dad listened to (see my MIAMI VICE review for more on Michael Mann’s belief that your dad’s record collection is the window to your soul).

It’s very possible that I just don’t get it, that there is something special about this and it went over my head. I tried to cheat by reading an interview with Mann, but that didn’t help either. He says that the main thing he started with was the idea that Dillinger was great at planning bank robberies but had no concept of planning for the future. Which is nice and all but I got no clue why that seems like such a fascinating idea to Mann. To me that seems like a pretty obvious attitude for a daring bank robber to have and not enough to hang a movie on.

Also I gotta say I’m concerned about Christian Bale. I mean, I like the guy as Batman. I even like his controversial “Batman voice,” known to non comic book readers as his “Clint Eastwood voice.” And he’s real good at playing dicks. Maybe that’s a talent, maybe it’s a personality quirk, maybe it’s a result of his life long fear of lights being adjusted, whatever it is he’s good at it. For example in the 2000 version of SHAFT he plays a racist rich boy asshole, and despite an accent that shifts here and there he’s very believable in that role and you love to hate him. And of course he joined the pantheon with his all time classic performance in AMERICAN PSYCHO.

But after his John Connor and now this I think I’m starting to sympathize with the naysayers who’re sick of his constant gloominess. He needs the humor back. In this one he’s a dick, but not the kind that’s fun to watch. He’s just not likable, so you root for Dillinger, but only by default (or because you are so fascinated by Dillinger’s contradictory nature in regards to planning). I’m sure Purvis isn’t supposed to be charismatic, but I don’t know man, maybe that would be a more interesting movie to watch. I think about AMERICAN GANGSTER, where I went in excited to see Denzel’s badass gangster character, but ended up rooting for Russell Crowe as the cop trying to bust him. You see how his operation works in detail, much more than in this movie, and you root for him to succeed. That’s a more interesting dynamic in my opinion. Also, wasn’t that cool when I used the word dynamic. The noun version too, not the adjective.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a pretty good movie. I think I like it best when it’s getting into the operations of the police and their need to build new strategies of crimefighting, or when Dillinger does something really bold like escape prison in a stolen police car or walk through the task force headquarters and ask the cops for the score in the ball game. I was also impressed by the casting of some of the roughneck cops, especially the guy that leans down to hear Dillinger’s (fictional) last words. He seems more like my idea of what a real G-man would look like than what these guys in modern movies usually look like, and that last scene with him is real nice. It’s a Michael Mann movie, gotta get a little bit of macho man code of the honorarble warrior shit in there. I like it.

It’s a watchable movie, and most people seem to like it better than I did. I just hope for more out of Michael Mann I guess. He may think I’m being unfair, that it’s a double standard, that other directors would be rewarded for making an okay movie while he is being criticized for it. Well, tough shit Michael Mann. Remember in THIEF when you showed James Caan breaking into a safe for real, and we thought damn, I’ve seen a million thief movies before but I’ve never seen one like this? Well, there you go. You made your bed when you made THIEF. Now you gotta sleep in it.

[ratings]

Remember that show? We, as a nation, stopped wearing socks when that show came on. We stopped shaving. We started wearing pastel shirts under white Armani jackets. We drove Ferraris and had pet alligators. We listened to Phil Collins and Glenn Frey and all that shit. Our hearts pumped to the rhythm of Jan Hammer’s awesome electronic drum pads. It was who we were as Americans. At least that’s what I keep reading in reviews of this movie. Actually, it is partly true, everybody loved that show and people did try to dress up as the characters. Like you Star Wars freakos only it was considered legit. Everybody from little kids to old men in walkers was wearing those ridiculous white suits and sunglasses. Pretending to be an actor on TV pretending to be a cop pretending to be a drug dealer. It was a fun time and it might be fun to make a movie that transports us back to those days.

As you’ve probaly heard by now, Michael Mann is no fun, so he moved it to 2006 and didn’t put any nostalgic nods or references to the show, except for an absolutely horrible rock n roll version of “I Can Feel It Comin In the Air Tonight” on the end credits. So if you’re nostalgic for “the Miami Vice look” and what not you’re gonna have to go rent the DVDs. If you’re nostalgic for Cheech Marin, that’s Nash Bridges you’re thinking of, I think that show’s still on so you’re in luck. MIAMI VICE is not a period piece, so it doesn’t have alot of the superficial shit we remember from the show. But it is a modern equivalent I think, with the same kind of gritty realism, gloomy mood and atmosphere they were going for back then. I don’t think it’s as different from the TV show as everyone is making it out to be, but it is VERY different from Nash Bridges. So if that’s what you’re looking for, you’re gonna be disappointed.

Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx plays Philip Michael Thomas, overrated Colin Farrell plays Don Johnson, and Edward James Olmos is nowhere to be seen. But you get used to this pretty easy and the movie is just as dark, serious and moody as the show was, if I remember right. But now it’s the 2000s so they got some more technology, it’s shot on grainy handheld digital like it’s a documentary, and for some reason they call the speedboats “go fast boats.”

And before you ask, I don’ t think they ever show Crocket’s feet, so it’s hard to tell if he’s wearing socks or not.

The story is just about one case that Sonny and Rico stumble across by accident. If you don’t remember from the show, they’re undercover narcs so they go meet with some guy and try to sell him a huge load of dope, meanwhile trying to figure out this guy’s connection to a white supremacist gang led by the great Tom Towles (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER) who recently killed some feds on a drug sting gone bad. So the whole movie has this feel of impending doom because some feds just got executed trying to make a sale to these guys, and Crocket and Tubbs have volunteered to go do the same god damn thing.

The movie is pretty long and has alot of scenes where characters stare off in different directions. I like that it keeps it simple and kind of minimalistic. They don’t try to explain everything that’s happening. When they start out their operation there’s a great scene where they brazenly jack a huge load of dope, then it just cuts to them driving around the next day and never explains what they’re up to. You’ll just have to wait to find out later.

They don’t try to explain much about the characters either. Alot of times in a movie they think they’re required by law to explain everybody’s backstory and have them come to some revelation about their life during the course of the movie, but not this one. One event causes Rico to refer to “this bullshit line of work,” but they don’t waste any more than that exploring that idea. Sonny may be getting in too deep with the undercover shit, Rico asks him once or twice if this is the case and otherwise you just have to judge by his actions and not by some speech he’s gonna make about it. Because he’s not gonna make one, thank God.

There is one scene where Sonny is with Gong Li and unless I misunderstood something, he tells her that his dad listened to the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. This, to me, is hilarious, because as I’ve pointed out before, Mann goes into an insane monologue about Tom Cruise’s character’s off-screen dad’s love for jazz music on the commentary track for COLLATERAL. Michael Mann is kind of a weird guy and apparently that’s one of his obsessions, he for some reason thinks that to give depth to a character you have to figure out what type of music the character’s dad listened to. All you aspiring filmatists out there take note, that’s the secret. For example, John McClane’s dad probaly listened to Chuck Berry or somebody. That’s why he’s such a great cinema icon. James Bond’s dad I’m guessing listened to field recordings from Moroccan villages. Luke Skywalker’s dad didn’t listen to music ever in the prequels. What the fuck? That’s probaly why nerds hate the prequels. Plus, Darth Vader doesn’t even have a father, so how the fuck would George Lucas know what music his father listens to? He doesn’t. What a stupid character.

Gong Li plays the drug kingpin’s girl Isabella, who Sonny either falls for or screws as a way of getting at the big man, you’re not sure at first. Her English isn’t too hot so she can’t really hide the fact that her dialogue is kind of clunky. But when the acting is non-verbal she’s really good. There’s a scene where she’s screwing Sonny and you see tear streaks by her eyes and I think that says more about her character than the dialogue says, although I’m not sure exactly what it says. Or maybe it just means Colin Farrell is the man.

Speaking of which, he does a pretty good job as Sonny Crocket. I don’t remember Don Johnson being a gravelly-voiced hick, which is sort of how Farrell plays him. But it works. He’s more macho than slick. Sometimes his hair gets fucked up real bad, which is not something Don Johnson would’ve allowed to happen, I don’t think. There’s one shot that is 100% about the fact that his mullet looks funny when he rides in a “go-fast-boat.” Also, he includes a mustache with his 5 o’clock shadow, a 2006 twist to the old classic.

Jamie Foxx is real good as Rico, mixing a little Jamie Foxx swagger with the quiet sensitivity of my man P.M. Thomas. Also he can fly a plane. Rico gets the one joke in the movie, which I gotta assume Jamie Foxx improvised and then he must’ve convinced Michael Mann that his character’s actions came from a song his father used to listen to. Otherwise I can’t think of any reason why Michael Mann would leave a funny part in a movie. But you know what, I appreciate the seriousness. Better to have one joke and one laugh than to have lots of jokes and no laughs.

Although you don’t get to know any of them very well, Crocket and Tubbs have a good team behind them. Tubbs has a girlfriend (Naomie Harris from PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN 2) who you know right away is gonna get into trouble (otherwise why would he have a girlfriend?) but what I love is that she’s not a damsel in distress, she’s a fellow cop. The way they introduce her is completely badass and not in an obvious way. They have her yelling at one of their informants to get him to cooperate with their operation, and she’s very intimidating. So later when the bad guys come after her you actually give a shit, because you like her from earlier.

You’ve seen these undercover stories a million times, but usually they’re more Hollywooded up than this one. This has a realistic procedural type feel. There’s no plot to end the world. This might not even be the biggest case these guys have worked. It might not change theire lives forever. They are just some cops doing their job. Sometimes the cops talk shop and they use all this lingo and I don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. But I just go with it and it works out.

There’s not really action scenes. There’s a couple explosions and gunfights. There’s one shootout that looks and sounds completely real, and it’s hard to follow what exactly is going on. In an action movie that would be a dealbreaker but in this movie it works because it feels like the confusion of battle. The excitement doesn’t come from a guy doing a flip or jumping a motorcycle onto a boat, it comes from the tension of these two guys facing off against guys who don’t trust them and will kill them if they find out they’re cops. And they gotta somehow get the guys to buy their drugs and also get out of there alive.

When the movie goes off to be about Sonny and Gong Li getting together it’s a little less interesting, but it adds a little emotion to the end and I guess you probaly need something in there between the tense moments to get it to work.

It seems like the general consensus on this one is “it’s not enough like the TV show.” Apparently even Jay Leno said this in his capacity as substitute for ailing Roger Ebert. But honestly man… fuck the TV show. Are you telling me you have watched it at any point in the last 15 years? Or that you will ever watch it again before you die? Or that you remember it in detail? For 96%-97% of you I’m guessing no. I admit I was skeptical when I found out it wasn’t a period piece. But this is better. This is a serious, no bullshit cop movie with all kinds of tension and atmosphere. And the un-Hollywood approach on a miraculous Hollywood budget makes it stand out as a very unique movie. Not that I’m disavowing movies where cars go off of jumps, but it’s nice that they can still make a movie like this for grown ups with some amount of patience and brains still intact.

Hell, I would almost go as far as to say I loved this movie. It’s definitely not for everybody, not a crowdpleaser, but it is a high quality movie. Good job Michael Mann. But don’t get a bigger head about it, you fuckin egomaniac. Just to bring you down a notch here’s a few complaints about the movie, although none of them has any substance.

1. Mojitos. What the fuck is this shit with mojitos lately. Everywhere you turn some motherfucker has to talk about mojitos this, mojitos that, I love mojitos. It would be one thing if mojitos was a brand new invention that has recently been spread to the masses, like Gogurt. But that drink is old, it’s like if all the sudden out of the blue everybody has to show off that they love peanut butter sandwiches. So when there’s a whole scene about Sonny and Gong Li going to Cuba to drink mojitos (”I’m a fiend for mojitos.” “Do you like your mojito?” “It’s a good mojito,” etc.) that’s just too much. How much did Bacardi pay you for that shit?* Or do you own a mint farm?
2. Music in clubs is loud. But for some reason this movie has two different scenes where they’re in clubs and they have quiet conversations over music. I know that sounds dumb but since the movie opens in a club it was really distracting to me, I couldn’t get pulled into the movie like I should’ve. Was it the Twin Peaks movie where people had to yell over loud music and they subtitled it? I don’t expect them to do that every time but if you’re shooting it like it’s a documentary you gotta have semi-realism in the sound design too.
3. What the fuck is so wrong with the theme song you gotta leave it out of this bitch. Come on Michael Mann, you know that theme song was awesome. Thank you for leaving out Don Henley and Glenn Frey, though. If you had put “You Belong To the City” in there this review might not have been so positive. I gotta end on a negative note though so let me just say that the music in general is weak here. You go into these rockin Chris Cornell songs every once in a while and I’m just guessin but I don’t think anybody is gonna be as affected by those as we all were by that cheeseball Phil Collins song back in the day. I mean, I fuckin hate Phil Collins, but you gotta admit that song establishes a strong mood. You coulda done better with the music bud. You blew it. Be humble.

*UPDATE: I was half kidding about that but it turns out my paranoia was dead-on. Matt Lynch from Collider pointed out to me that the MIAMI VICE trailer debuted on the Bacardi web sight. And sure enough, a basic knowledge of modern googling technology can quickly bring up other tie-ins between the movie and the booze. Now, I got a kneejerk reaction to some of this consumerism stuff but honestly I am less militant about product placement than most people. For example I thought the corporate sponsor jokes in TALLADEGA NIGHTS were completely legitimate as satire. But this mojito thing is bullshit, a blatant attempt to force a fad drink into the popular consciousness on behalf of a corporate sponsor. Crockett, you should be ashamed of yourself. You are in this shit too deep. I want your badge and your gun on my desk in the morning. And put on some god damn socks.

[ratings]

(To be honest I’m not sure what the Parthenon is, but what I mean is something good enough to last the ages and always stand as a proud beacon of achievement, etc. i.e. not Everybody Loves Raymond or even Miami Vice.)

And you think his tv shows are overblown and pretentious, just watch his movies. I guess I liked Ali more than most (by which I mean sort of), but there’s something about this fucking guy. He did a good job trying to do the impossible (having an actor play Muhammad Ali). But anybody else woulda known not to try, because it’s impossible. Not Michael Mann. He probaly thinks he did it.

And I know every male under the age of 35 has a hard on for that movie Heat, but I don’t know. Maybe I should watch it again. All I remember is a couple amazing shootouts and 3 hours of nothing. Remember when Natalie Portman killed herself? What was that about? Maybe you guys are right. I’ll give it another shot. But I’m saying this to give you my general impression of Michael Mann: talented, but not as talented as many would have you believe. And full of himself. His movies give the impression that they think they are more Important than they actually are.

That’s why this is a better kind of Michael Mann movie for my money because what this is, instead of a Hollywood movie masquerading as Important Art, you got a regular old Hollywood movie done very artfully. In Hollywood, you know they got all these ideas for movies like, what if terrorists took over a [you name it], or what if a guy gets trapped in a phone booth by a sniper, or what if there was a serial killer who was obsessed with the Civil War, or what if a guy had a live shark in the trunk of his car and if he doesn’t win the solar car race before the timer goes off his daughter will be fed to bears, or whatever. Maybe that last one needs a little work. But this one is about what if a hitman forced a taxi driver to drive him around to kill a bunch of people. The driver is played by Jamie Foxx and the hitman is played by Tom Cruise, a very different role for him because one he is the bad guy and two he has grey hair. He also knows a little bit about jazz.

Jamie is just driving his cab, he’s having a good day so far but then luck kicks him in the stones by having him pick up this nutbag who offers him a stack of Ben Franklins to drive him to five “appointments.” He wouldn’t have had to know anything was up except during appointment numero uno the client dies, falls through a second story window and lands on the cab. Cat’s out of the bag so Tom Cruise becomes a little more forceful.

Jamie Foxx himself is not nearly as unlucky as his character. I don’t know what it is, this guy used to be doing Booty Call and dressing up as a woman on tv and doing all kinds of stupid shit, now all the sudden everybody loves him, and with good reason. I saw that movie Ray and it was pretty good. I mean it’s pretty much exactly what you expect from that type of biography movie (even has the corny text at the end telling how many albums and Grammies Ray Charles got) except that this guy Foxx is so damn good. You could argue that he’s a comedian and all he’s doing is an impression, but I don’t know. I kept catching myself forgetting it was Jamie Foxx and just thinking I was watching the real Ray Charles. The real Ray Charles making a record with Booger from Revenge of the Nerds. You talk about lucky, did you see Jamie Foxx on the Golden Globes? They had fucking Prince introducing the clips from Ray. Prince. Jamie Foxx (who was an R&B singer before he stooped to standup comedy) looked like he was about to die and go to heaven and have a big orgy with all the angels.

Well he’s good in this one too, a less showy role as a charismatic but somewhat timid guy who has to deal with being a hostage forced into taking part in murders. And actually that brings me to the Mannly portion of the movie. It is a theme throughout the movie that Jamie Foxx is too much of a sissy. He has to GROW SOME BALLS and TAKE A STAND and BE A FUCKING MAN YOU LIMP WRISTED PUSSY. That’s the message of the movie, as delivered by the heartless serial murderer who helps him find his true self. The same way E.T. flew down from space to teach Elliott how to be good, Tom Cruise took Jamie Foxx hostage to teach him to be more of a go-getter in life.

(And Michael Mann really does know how to go after what he wants. He wants to be treated as a serious artist, so he has an amazingly humorless and pretentious commentary track on the DVD. He alternates between narrating the movie shot by shot and going into way too much detail about the backstories of the characters, like he thinks they’re real people. He goes on at length about how Tom Cruise knows about jazz music from his dad, but his dad didn’t actually share his love of jazz music with his son because they weren’t close, so Tom Cruise actually resented jazz music but at the same time he learned about it inadvertently by being exposed to it, blah blah blah.)

That whole Straw Dogs grow some balls theme is macho cliche garbage, but you get that in other action movies. The one scene that is unbearably pretentious is the one where a wolf suddenly walks across the street and gives them the evil wolf eye. And before you can even savor the moment of embarassing art school symbolism, it starts playing some cheesy rock song. (Don’t worry, not “Hungry Like the Wolf” or anything. Something more modern.)

But despite all that, I liked this movie. It’s a good simple gimmick. Two opposite guys in this car together. They go to different destinations (an office building, a jazz bar, a night club, etc.) where they face loud music and physical threats, but in between it’s this intimate, quiet movie, two guys in a car talking, surrounded by Los Angeles at night. At least some of it is shot on the high definition digital electronical video type deal, and if I haven’t already I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the scientists for making this hi-def-dig-vid crap into a viable medium. I used to hate digital video and had to include a warning on any review of a movie shot on it. Now it’s so good that sometimes, like on this one, it looks better than if it was film. Well played, scientists. Well played.

Like Leon D. Caprio, I’m neutral on Tom the Cruiser. Not sure what the big deal is on this guy, but he can be pretty good sometimes, especially for a short guy playing regular sized characters (also known as the reverse hobbit). I liked him in this one. He’s just a real intense asshole killer guy, and he’s got a couple good moves, especially in this scene where he has to kill a guy in the middle of a crowded dance club. It’s no Blade but it’s a good murder in a dance club scene by any other standards.

The movie has a real heightened feel to it, somewhere between an ordinary real life cab ride and the worst night you never had. Only in the end does it start to feel more like a normal action/thriller type deal, with repeated dialogue and lessons learned and of course a chase on a subway. (All movies take place in either New York or Los Angeles and if somebody’s gonna get chased, which they are, they’re gonna jump on a subway.) But that’s okay. It already has enough momentum going at that point that it can just put it into neutral and coast into the end credits.

that last part by the way is just a general automobile metaphor, it is not supposed to be some kind of this-movie-as-taxi-cab metaphor. due to my Committment to Excellence in 2005 I’m not allowed to pull that kind of hack critic horse shit. If that was the case it would’ve been like “the fare has already been paid, plus tip, so Mann turns the meter off.” Oh jesus, how can those people look themselves in the mirror after writing that shit? Man I swear I read a review of The Life Aquatic with Bill Murray, I was underlining all the boating analogies, and there was like 12 or 13 of the motherfuckers. Like, it’s covered in the rust of whimsy and the barnacles of quirk, it sails into port with Bill Murray on the starboard side and Willem Dafoe swabbing the deck with a parrot of humor, an eyepatch of comradery and a peg leg of sorrow, ’cause his leg was bit off by the great white whale of meticulously detailed art design. I’m getting off track here though, the point is, something about Collateral. Not sure what the point was I was gonna make but I’m glad I saw the movie Collateral, it was pretty good.