Miami Vice

Summary

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New Books Network – Miami Vice (2006)

Hosts: Dan Moran & Mike | Date: October 13, 2025
Theme: An in-depth conversation about Michael Mann's Miami Vice (2006) – its cinematic artistry, narrative choices, and place in film culture.

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Episode Overview

Dan and Mike, hosts of 15 Minute Film Fanatics, explore Michael Mann’s distinct take on undercover cop drama in Miami Vice (2006). Known for their love of Mann’s work, the hosts bring their trademark blend of humor, insight, and cinematic scholarship to discuss the film’s unique visual style, unconventional structure, themes of male friendship, and the movie’s evolving place in pop culture.

The episode moves through thoughtful analysis, memorable quotes, and scene-by-scene breakdowns, engaging both long-time Mann fans and newcomers who may have overlooked the film on its release.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Initial Impressions & Mann’s Signature Style

[03:49]

• Mike’s Take:

  • "Miami Vice is as classic as you can get for 19 years old. It's kind of an instant classic."
  • Praises the film’s 'pure surface'—not as a pejorative, but highlighting Mann’s painterly, 2D composition:
    "Michael Mann knows that he works in a 2D medium the same way like a Renaissance painter does...the brilliance...is to create the illusion of a 3D object on a 2D plane...That's what Miami Vice is and...where it sits in the history of film."
  • Notes inspired casting: “Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, who are...inspired casting. You couldn't ask for better."

• Dan (on color and composition):

  • "This movie has more shades of blue than Picasso at the height of his powers."
  • Emphasizes how every frame could be a painting.

• Memorable Moment:

  • The hosts joke about recording with “a live grenade with a pin out, like Colin Farrell does when they go to Haiti” [05:43], setting a playful, urgent tone.

2. Narrative Technique: Starting In Media Res

[06:50–08:15]

• Dan:

  • Praises the film’s decision to start mid-action, without credits or setup.
  • "There's no credits in the beginning, and that can be very pretentious...but I love that the movie just starts. The Paramount thing comes on...it fades out. And then the nightclub starts..."

• Mike:

  • Notes how the film trusts its audience: "It gives ultimate credit to its audience. It assumes that the audience can roll with the vice squad."

3. Depth through Surface – Atmosphere over Exposition

[05:36–06:35, 21:11–22:19]

• Discusses how the film resists psychological explanation, relying on atmosphere and visual cues instead of backstory.

• Mike:

  • “[Miami Vice] is resistant to analysis. For that reason, I have a lot to say about male friendship in this movie and the Michael Maniverse...”

• Dan:

  • “You could freeze us at any moment and it becomes a painting.”

4. Undercover Cop Genre & Stakes

[10:03–13:04]

• Mike:

  • Undercover stories work because “the stakes could not possibly be higher” and “it gives the ultimate opportunity for irony.”
  • Contrasts with heist films—“when it's the good guys, it has to be totally intuitive...like watching an intuitive tightrope act.”

• Dan:

  • Undercover films “put you in the same place emotionally...you kind of like feel like, yeah, I could roll with the vice squad.”

5. Male Friendship: Subtlety & Trust

[13:18–16:19]

• Dan: Highlights two key moments: Jamie Foxx’s “I will never doubt you” earlier in the film, and the exchange before the final shootout:
  • Jamie Foxx: “Are you ready?”
  • Colin Farrell: “I 100% am not.”
• Concept: History without flashbacks:
  • “These two guys have...history without flashbacks...” [14:12]
  • Appreciates the lack of buddy-cop banter or exposition about the men's relationship—trust is shown through terse exchanges and actions.
• Mike:
  • “It's like watching a guy scrub the inside of a pistol...That's the—it's like friendship maintenance. And it gives you the feeling that they're reestablishing or touching trust, because trust is absolutely life essential.” [15:03]

6. The Havana Sequence: Atmosphere & Self-Contained Story

[17:39–22:19]

• Mike:
  • Argues the Havana portion could stand alone:
    "The Havana section itself would work almost as a perfect short story by itself."
• Dan:
  • Praises the scene’s intimacy and the way Mann captures a sense of place—viewers are drawn into the world’s mood, whether “hellish” Haiti or “idyllic” Havana.

7. Ending & Evolving Reputation

[22:42–31:27]

• Mike:
  • When first released, audiences and even Colin Farrell felt the film’s approach “missed an opportunity.”
  • Describes Miami Vice's “rediscovery” in internet subcultures, particularly Reddit, making it a “great cult movie.”
• Dan:
  • The ending is “just Sonny going into the hospital”—no grand catharsis, just moving on.
  • Contrasts with Mann’s other films (e.g., Heat, Collateral) which “tell you how to watch them” – but Miami Vice “just kind of sits there, and you kind of pick it up and you're like, what's this?”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Mike:

  • "[Miami Vice] is as classic as you can get for 19 years old. It's kind of an instant classic." [03:49]
  • “It’s resistant to analysis. The surface is perfectly smooth.” [05:51]
  • "It's like watching a guy scrub the inside of a pistol...friendship maintenance." [15:03]
  • “If you let the movie drive, it will reward you. But if you insist on driving, you're just going to say, what is this?” [27:06]

• Dan:

  • “This movie has more shades of blue than Picasso...” [05:12]
  • "The less you pour it on, the more it works." [15:03]
  • “A lesser writer would have had what happen—She would have betrayed him, or he would have had to reveal he was a cop...But it really, she says, 'Our luck ran out.'” [31:04]

• On setting and immersion:

  • “Tell me you don't watch those scenes when they're sitting on the veranda or in the bar and the breeze is blowing...that looks like a lot of fun. Like, I'd like to be at that bar.” [21:25]
  • “The universe—it looks so beautiful from start to finish. It's not like Hitchcock, where he goes, like, now watch what I'm gonna do in this shot.” [21:11]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:49] – Mike’s initial take: surface artistry and Mann’s approach
• [06:50] – In media res storytelling; audience trust
• [08:47] – Character moments and supporting performances (Luis Tosar, John Ortiz)
• [10:03] – Why undercover cop stories work
• [13:18] – Exploration of male friendship, “history without flashbacks”
• [17:39] – The self-contained brilliance of the Havana sequence
• [22:42] – Endings, subversion of Hollywood/Cult Movie tropes
• [27:06] – Mann’s refusal to “let you drive” the film; Miami Vice’s legacy

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Thematic Takeaways

• Surface and Depth: Mann constructs depth through visual tone and atmosphere, not exposition.
• Subtlety Over Exposition: Male friendship is shown in action—trust is built through glances, brief statements, not backstory.
• Genre Subversion: The film gives you the trappings of a cop thriller, but subverts expectations through structure, pacing, and ending.
• Evolving Reputation: Initially dismissed, Miami Vice has found a second life in online cinephile communities and is ripe for reappraisal.
• Mann’s Mission: The film lets the viewer “ride along,” rewarding trust and immersion—"If you let the movie drive, it will reward you."

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Essential Scenes & Moments

• Opening nightclub sting: Immediate immersion; “Who’s a cop? Who’s not?” [07:02]
• Jamie Foxx to Farrell: “I will never doubt you.” [13:58]
• Before the final shootout: “Are you ready?” “I 100% am not.” [14:01]
• Havana interlude: Emotional and atmospheric peak [17:39]
• Ending: Sonny walks into the hospital – understated, moving [25:05, 30:08]

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Final Thoughts

Dan and Mike paint a compelling picture of Miami Vice as an atmospheric, unconventional cult classic that merits rewatching and deeper appreciation. They nostalgically and analytically tie its artistic choices, narrative structure, and reception to broader trends in cinema and the enduring allure of Michael Mann’s directorial vision.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Dan Moran]

Hi everybody, It's Dan from 50 Minute Film Fanatics. Before we bring you this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know about two really exciting writing projects. Now the first of these is mine. It's called Pages and Frames. You can go there. It's on substack pagesandframes.com it also will take you there. And that's a site where I offer a weekly essay about the movie we discuss. But I also write about literature. I interview authors about their favorite books. I do shorter pieces, longer pieces. There's a lot of stuff on there and it's all free. Mike also has a great substack called the Grumbler's Almanac. And this is something that comes out every few days where Mike takes a topic of the day and kind of riffs on it in his own unique style. It's really, really funny and I laugh out loud every time I read it. Like I said, they're both free. You go to Substack and look for Pages and Frames or the Grumbler's Almanac. Thanks a lot. We hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Hi everybody, I'm Dan.

[Mike]

And I'm Mike.

[Dan Moran]

So welcome to 15 Minute Film Fanatics. In case you're new to the show, the premise is that one of us will watch a movie, text the other guy, say, you've got to watch this for the pod. And then we talk about it for the first time on the show. The idea is we want to kind of replicate those conversations you have at the diner or in the car on the way home from the theater, because we. Conversations are a lot of fun, and they're a lot of fun to have with people who like movies as much as you do. And we know if you're listening to this, you like movies as much as we do. So we're really excited today. What movie are we doing, Mike?

[Mike]

Miami Vice.

[Dan Moran]

Miami Vice, 2006. Michael Mann. Now, the way the rules work is that the guy who nominates the movie, the other guy gets to go first. I nominated it. Mike gets to go first. And I just want to preface this, though, before I hear Mike's take on this is that we love Michael Mann. We've done other Michael Mann movies. We haven't done some movies that I'm surprised we haven't done yet. Like, we've never done Last in a Mohican. We haven't done the Insider, but we've done a lot of other ones. And we never got to this movie. It was always kind of just laying around. And finally I watched it. It was on Criterion. I texted Mike, said, you got to watch a Miami Vice. I have no idea what Mike's about to say about it, but in part one, we always talk about our overall take. Mike, what do you got?

[Mike]

Miami Vice is as classic as you can get for 19 years old. It's kind of an instant classic. It came out during the height of. I think there's like a 20 year period before you can start being nostalgic about things. And I guess, you know, there's about 20 years between Miami Vice, the show, and Michael Mann. Trying to get that made as a movie and having it made as a television show, and then finally getting to make this movie with Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, who are. It's, it's inspired casting. You couldn't ask for better.

[Dan Moran]

I also want to interject that as, as a. As a man of a certain age, I cannot. I cannot lie and say that I. Colin Farrell and say he has great hair. What. What I would do for that guy's hair. Continue this movie.

[Mike]

So when I say that this movie is almost pure surface, I don't mean that as a pejorative. I mean it's absolute pure surface. It's, there's, there's implied depth to characters. But Michael Mann. Michael Mann knows that he works in a 2D medium the same way like a Renaissance painter does. And all the shadows and all the things that he does are to give the illusion of depth, which is the joke. The beauty, the brilliance. The art is to create the illusion of a 3D object on a 2D plane. And that's what Miami Vice is and kind of where it sits in the history of film. Do you know what I mean?

[Dan Moran]

I know exactly what you mean. Because it's funny what you said about a painter, because one of my thoughts was this movie has more shades of blue than Picasso at the height of his powers. I mean, everything is blue. First, obviously, it's the ocean, but the boats, you know, the nightclubs, their clothes. Even when I watch it again, they're in the hospital. And I'm like, how much blue is in the light in this hospital? But that's what I mean is that you could freeze us at any moment and it becomes a painting.

[Mike]

You think it. You think, David Fincher or somebody works with weird tints, but he makes David Fincher look like he's finger painting.

[Dan Moran]

I also want to add that I'm recording this whole episode holding a live grenade with a pin out, like Colin Farrell does when they go to Haiti. Just to give our conversation a little bit of urgency.

[Mike]

It's filmic universe in which the phrase take your hands off the detonator is not out of place. And at the same time, it contains what I feel are a lot of truths about male friendship or idealized male friendship there. I think that there is such a thing in the Michael Mann universe as idealized male friendship as there is in ancient Greece or the Spartan warrior code. There's. There's definitely something going on there. And it's. What I mean by pure surface is it's difficult to pull those things apart appropriately because you can't grip them. It's like the surface is perfectly smooth and it's. It's actually resistant to analysis. For that reason, I have a lot.

[Dan Moran]

To say about male friendship in this movie and the Michael Maniverse, but we'll talk about that in Part two. I just want to say a couple of things generally about why I love this movie. Let's start with this question. I know you're going to know the answer to this fine, fine reader that you are. What does the phrase in media rest mean?

[Mike]

Start right in the middle.

[Dan Moran]

Start in the middle of things, right? That comes from Aristotle. You start right in the middle. When you're writing a Drama. Now, why is that a good rule?

[Mike]

Because you don't want to bore the reader. You don't want to show what an ordinary day looks like. You start with the change, and that's.

[Dan Moran]

What this movie does. I love the fact that there's no credits in the beginning, and that can be very pretentious or precious in other movies, but I love that the movie just starts. The Paramount thing comes on or whatever. It fades out. And then the nightclub starts, and it's. It's Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx and their whole squad. I may squad, but you don't really know who's a cop yet. Turns out they're all cops. And they're there and they're waiting for this guy they want to sting, this guy named Neptune. And it's 11:48 at night, and the music is deafening, so you have to put the captions on to see what they're saying to each other. And you're like, wait a minute. Like, what's going on? It starts so hard in the middle of things. And then they get the phone call, and they're like, well, let Neptune. It's your lucky night. And Neptune never comes back. That plotline is never picked up because their CI, it turns out, how to give up the feds to the white supremacist arm dealers that they pull over on the side of the highway, who shows them a grainy photo of his wife wearing the C4 explosive necklace, which you don't even know what that is in the beginning until maybe you think of it later when Jamie Foxx's girlfriend is in the trailer, and then he runs out and commits suicide. And you're like, wait a minute. Like, there's no breathing time. And that's, like, such a great way to begin a cop movie.

[Mike]

It gives ultimate credit to its audience, though.

[Dan Moran]

Totally.

[Mike]

It assumes that the audience can roll with the vice squad. And then, of course, you convince yourself that you certainly could, because you're like, well. Well, I get who's a cop and who's not. My favorite part about that scene is how much time in the first two minutes is spent on the lady bartender. And Colin Farrell kind of flirts with her, and he says that he loves. He's a. He's a fiend for mojitos. And you're like, is she an informant? Is she the one who's gonna get them in the back? Does this have anything to do? It turns out now he's just flirting. He leaves the $20 bill and walks away.

[Dan Moran]

It's $100, bill. And it turns out she's just a pretty bartender.

[Mike]

Cause that's what he reappears in the movie. And that's it, right?

[Dan Moran]

And there's a million touches like that in the movie. Like, there's so many of them and there's so many great performances. Like, let's talk about, let's get some shout outs here. This guy, Luis Tosar as Montoya, the, the, the guy who he, they get to meet once in the back of the limo and he just says, my best wishes to you and your families. Which is this little implied threat like, I'm going to kill your family if you double cross me. Who's so scary that when, when he sees the video later of Sonny dancing with his wife, you only see the back of his head and you're terrified. Or let's talk about Jean Ortiz as Jose Yuro, the middleman who's like, you know, the Americans, they are wrong. They are wrong.

[Mike]

He literally might as well have a sign around his neck that says, hello, I'll be your disarmingly neurotic, chaotic villain today.

[Dan Moran]

But you have to have the guy in the middle of an undercover cop movie who suspects that the cops are really cops. Like, and so he's telling the bad guys these guys are wrong. And he's. But nobody listens to him. He's Chicken Little. And let's talk about the overall structure of the movie, too. Why do you think we love. I have an answer for this, but I want to hear what you say about this. Why do we love movies about undercover cops?

[Mike]

I think it works for the same reason legal dramas work and for the same reason medical dramas work. Because, as the people who lead writing seminars would say, the stakes could not possibly be higher. First of all, you have to set the stakes at liberty or captivity or life and death. Second, I think it gives the ultimate opportunity for irony, right? A character has to say one thing and yet mean another and probably say more than they actually mean. I think that a lot of writers tie themselves in knots trying to imagine a scenario as good as an undercover cop, but it just, it gives you everything that you need.

[Dan Moran]

It does. It gives you everything you need to crank it up. And what I love about this movie, what I love about undercover movies, is what you said before about how you kind of get sucked into the universe and you kind of like feel like, yeah, I could roll with the vice squad. Because it kind of puts you in the same place, you know, emotionally, when you watch it as the cop, you think, yeah, you know, he's pretty cool. And so am I, here on the couch. Like, there's definitely some of that going on. And what I love about this movie is that they're so brazen. Like, the confidence to do that. Like, most of us don't have the confidence to face the guy at the Honda dealership to try to get, you know, a better package when we buy a car or something like that. These guys, the confidence that Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx exude when they say, fine, we're going to go in there. And then they have the confidence. Of course, we got the guys. Remember. Remember the FBI guys? Okay, you could stop now. No, we're not stopping. This is bigger. We're going to keep going. That's all great. So we love that. But what I also love about this movie is that at the same time, Sonny's girlfriend is also an undercover agent of sorts, because she's falling in love with Sonny and she has to pretend that she doesn't care. So in that scene where her husband says, then you know what? We're gonna just fill him full of lead. We're gonna put lead in them. We're gonna sink them. We're gonna kill him. And she says, fine, kill him if you have to, but we know she doesn't believe that. So there's these two great undercover quote unquote cops going on at the same time, and you're on all of their sides.

[Mike]

I think it works also for the opposite reason that a heist movie works. I think if you're going to steal something and you're the bad guys, you want to see those guys have as rigidly structured and intricate a plan as you possibly can. But when it's the good guys, it has to be totally intuitive. And it's like. It's like watching an intuitive tightrope act where any misstep means that you plummet to your death. But there's. There's beauty in watching a guy in the middle of the rope. And so a heist movie has an intricate structure, but an undercover cop movie has an intuitive structure.

[Dan Moran]

That's so true. Right? We watch Heist or we watch Le Circle Rouge or something like that. And the whole fun of we just did an episode on Heist is watching Gene Hackman and Ricky J. Like, do their thing, and we're kind of like. We're amazed as we watch it unfold, and we're like, wow, those guys are really smart. Those guys are really cool. But when you watch a movie like Mandy Weiss or Prince of the City, you're just uncomfortable because you're just thinking, like, I hope they get through this.

[Mike]

In a heist, they're always one step ahead, but in an undercover cop movie, they're always one step behind. Welcome back. In Part two, we always talk about big scenes or key moments of the film. Dan, what do you got?

[Dan Moran]

My moment has to do with something you said before about male friendships and what they're like in this movie and what they're like in movies in generally. And generally, I think that that's a genre that is not widely explored. And I'm not complaining about it. It's fine, whatever. Like, you know, I'm not. I'm not. This is not a clarion call, male friendships and movies. There's plenty of them. But it's funny when you see it happen unironically. And so my moment is it's actually I'm going to cheat and have, like, two moments ago together. One is when early on in the movie, when Jamie Foxx says to Colin Farrell, I will never doubt you. And they keep going. And then later, when they're about to do the big shootout, Jamie Foxx is to Colin Farrell, are you ready?

[Mike]

And he says, I 100% am not.

[Dan Moran]

I absolutely have not. And they kind of just have the same look at each other. Now, we have developed a phrase to give credit. You came up with this phrase. These two guys have what, Mike, what do they have?

[Mike]

History without flashbacks.

[Dan Moran]

They have history without flashbacks because that's what I said in Part one. I love the fact that there's no scene where they meet each other. There's no, like, here's your new partner, and they gotta kind of, you know, work. Like, this movie's the Anti Lethal Weapon. There's no banter between these two guys. You never get the sense that they hang out when they're not at work because it seems like they're always at work anyway. But it's totally unlike cop buddy movies in a way that I think think is so cool and so refreshing. So in those moments when he says, I absolutely am not, and he says, and Jamie Foxx has a couple little things you have to. That, like, you got to remember, you got to be able to walk away. But he doesn't give him, like, a speech, and he doesn't put his hand on his shoulder. And in the middle when he says, I will never doubt you, he just says it and they keep going. And that, of course, the. There's like some kind of inverse proportion rule. The less you pour it on, the.

[Mike]

More it works, or you have to go big. I mean, there's nothing against Lethal Weapon. Lethal Weapon, the universe of Lethal Weapon will convince you that it works. The little terse interactions between the two of them is like they need to depend on each other for their lives. I lit when. When I. When I say I got to trust you with my life, I mean, we're not in the same room, but you're not going to break cover. If somebody pulls a gun on me and I'm not looking, you've got my back. And so the little terse exchanges between them is like watching a guy scrub the inside of a pistol. You know what I mean? And then reassemble it. That's what. That's the. It's like friendship maintenance. And it gives you the feeling that they're reestablishing or. Or touching trust, because trust is absolutely life essential. And I think you. Those two extremes are really the only way that it works, because we've all seen bad buddy cop movies where there's some maudlin, strange intermix that doesn't work. So they're either. They're either a consistently wacky duo and it works, or you don't know when they met. You don't know what's actually going on. You know, that one would sacrifice their life for the other, and that's all you know. And I feel like those are the two poles that hold this spectrum together.

[Dan Moran]

Because in the beginning of the movie, when they're on the rooftop talking to the FBI agent, and he says, well, what do you want to do when their boss is there, too? And then Sonny, of course, is supposed to be hot, you know, the hot rod. And he's kind of like, you know, the hothead. And he says, I'm gonna do it. We're gonna go. We're gonna go undercover. And they look at Jamie Foxx, they go, what about you? And he goes, I'm 100% with him. Like, he just says it, like. And there's something so cool about that. It's like a return to, like, 40s and 50s Westerns where. Where. Like. Where, like, the men are stoic and they don't say a lot because they don't have to. We live in an age now where we're all blabbing. I mean, we're doing a podcast about movies like. Like. Like, we love to talk. We love to hear our own voices. We're on substack. We're on this. That place. Right? But in the movie, like, you can't imagine these guys like, writing a substack called like, you know, a Detective Undercover Adventures.

[Mike]

But the, the other great thing about that is that is how Sonny goes on the rescue mission for the girlfriend.

[Dan Moran]

Right?

[Mike]

Because of course, the whole, the whole drug plot is abandoned as soon as one of them gets kidnapped. You know, it's like his, his girl is taken and it's literally as though his own girlfriend was taken.

[Dan Moran]

Right.

[Mike]

But the universe just stops. And that's. There's something as beautiful about that relationship as there is about wacky friendship in a normal buddy cop movie.

[Dan Moran]

So what's your moment?

[Mike]

Every now and again when you read a great work of art or you watch a great work of art, you find that even though it has an intricate structure, there's scenes or sections that can be detached from the whole and they still work. And that's what I feel about the Havana section. Like, if this were a novel, the Havana section itself would work almost as a perfect short story by itself about, about these two people on the boat, their relationship, what happens, what gets said, what's exchanged. It's the only time Sunny really breaks, but he only breaks for us as the viewer. Not in front of, not in front of anybody. He doesn't blow his cover and then they come back. I would say it's only. It's maybe 12 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it is. But it strikes me that it could be detached from the film as a whole and almost work as a short film. And I don't know what you make of that, but I just got the sense that it could.

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[Dan Moran]

It totally feels like the story version you read in the New Yorker that becomes a novel later on. I think the Havana part was great. You know, when they're in the boat. And she says, you know, they're gonna. She's gonna take it to Havana because they have to go to Cuba. That's. It's like. Like, you know, it has to be done. But I think that even their banter. Right, so Michael Mann could have gone way wrong with that. Right. But he doesn't. And I like it when she shows the photograph of her mother to him, and she kind of, like, rubs her finger on the picture of her mother and says, everyone here is with a date or with a husband, but not her. She is special. And it's just like this tiny. Now she's the bad guy, right? But it's this tiny little glimpse there. You're like. You don't picture their childhoods or things like that. But I think the scene when they're in the bar is great, when they're having the mojitos. And you totally get the sense that he knows. And remember, oh, remember, before he gets in the boat with her, what does he tell Jamie Foxx?

[Mike]

I know what I'm doing.

[Dan Moran]

I know what I'm doing. And of course, the great thing about the movie is he doesn't. He thinks he's gonna play her to get closer into the organization, but of course, he ends up getting played. I mean, that's nothing new, but it works. So because you believe the chemistry of those two, it's.

[Mike]

It's exactly like you just picked one character out of a George V. Higgins novel or something, and you. You film them, and it just. You can plug it back in where it belongs. But it's such a brilliant little set piece. And it's like Michael Mann really doesn't draw any attention to himself. He's trying to draw attention to the universe. The universe? The universe. Like, the. The. The. The way it looks visually is beautiful.

[Dan Moran]

It's beautiful.

[Mike]

But it looks so beautiful from start to finish. It's. It's not like Hitchcock where he goes, like, now watch what I'm gonna do in this shot. But I think in designing this little set piece and not cutting into it, it's the only time that Michael Mann draws any attention to himself at all.

[Dan Moran]

And. Because when you watch those scenes in Cuba. Tell me you don't watch those scenes when they're sitting on the veranda or in the bar and the breeze is blowing. And of course, what you can think of is, well, that looks like a lot of fun. Like, I'd like to be at that bar. I'd like to be sitting there in Cuba, just as when they go to Haiti. And they're walking down the street. It's hell. And it's. It's so scary. And he says to Jamie Foxx, why does everybody look like they've noticed us 15 blocks out? And he says, because they noticed us 15 blocks out and that's super scary. So the atmosphere of those two places, just like the atmosphere of the nightclub, just like the atmosphere on the trailer, the atmosphere at the dock at the end. He's very good at making you feel a sense of place.

[Mike]

It's whatever impression he wants you to have. And it. And it, you think he's a one trick pony, except that's the trick. And he can use it for anything. Cause like that, the whole Havana section, you could take a 20 second snippet and put in black and white and you'll be like, is that a Dior commercial?

[Dan Moran]

And then, you know, the curtains are moving so gracefully.

[Mike]

The Haiti section, you're like, am I in? It looks like Black Hawk down in Haiti, you know, and you have no idea what's going on. But they're in the same movie and it all works. And it's all the same director and it's the same writer, and he can literally just do whatever he wants.

[Dan Moran]

Welcome to part three, where we always talk about the ending or the title or our big takeaways. Mike, what do you want to talk about?

[Mike]

When this first got made and it came out, I don't think audiences appropriately understood it. I mean, I think that the timing was right from a 20 year perspective as, okay, we're going to make this Miami Vice, which is the only contemporary reboot I've ever heard about that I would endorse. And it was 20 years ago and audiences were very ambivalent. And even Colin Farrell, after it came out and it. And it didn't work quite as well as they did, he said, maybe we should have done more buddy cop stuff. Maybe, maybe we missed an opportunity. And a lot of people just forgot that the movie was made.

[Dan Moran]

Including us.

[Mike]

Slight. Including us. And slightly before COVID and during COVID this movie was sort of, quote, rediscovered on Reddit. And there are a lot of amateur film critics or people just getting back into movies that are like, this is the most beautiful movie ever made. Why didn't I see this movie? There's people that are 20 years old now that rediscovered it. And it came out, you know, right around the time that they were born or they were a year old. And they're like, this is. This is the ultimate guy movie. This has this director can do Anything he wants. All the praise that we lavish on Michael Mann got rediscovered kind of in Internet subculture. And it's just interesting how I think you can see why this would never be a mainstream Hollywood movie. But it is a great cult movie. It's like a cult guys movie at the same time, right?

[Dan Moran]

And it has the elements of a big Hollywood movie. I mean, there's cops, there's guns, there's the big. The big shootout, capital, capital letters. The big shootout at the end. But it doesn't feel that way. Like it doesn't. Like, it doesn't feel like Heat. It doesn't feel like Collateral. So at the of Collateral, when they're on the train and Tom Cruise, the unkillable Tom Cruise is going like, that's a big Hollywood kind of ending. Not to take anything away from Collateral, but I like that this movie doesn't push all the buttons in the exact same way. Like I love, I love the end of this movie for the same reason I love the beginning. And by the ending, I don't mean the big shootout, which of course is great. I love the fact that the last shot of the movie is Sonny going into the hospital. Like, that's it. He opens the hospital door and the in the Air Tonight comes on and the Miami flight, the credits. And I'm like, oh, that's good. Because he's like, I got to go on my life now.

[Mike]

I feel like it used to be that movies would tell audiences how to appreciate them. Like a movie comes out and says, I'm going to tell you how to watch it. Raiders of the Lost Ark comes out and says, you've never seen anything like this. I'm going to tell you how you watch this movie. And I think that that mentality is what led to this movie not being appreciated appropriately. It does not take from the viewer or the viewer's preferences and use those viewers preferences to align or make decisions about like how the Havana sequence is going to go or what the guys are going to be like it. It just resists their desires and tries to teach them how to watch it. And I feel like it took audiences another 20 years of the movie just sitting there and being neglected. For some people to learn how to watch it and then like it, which I think is just such an interesting journey from 1986 to 2025.

[Dan Moran]

That is really interesting because what you said about Raiders is true even for other, you know, and Raiders, we love Raiders. And it's true for a lot of movies, right? Like Heat, let's do another Michael Mann movie Heat tells you how to watch it and how to feel about it, right? Every single human being that would. That goes to see Heat knows. I heard it's long. I heard it's a big crime epic. But the big thing is that Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are in the movie and they're gonna have a scene together. So we got teased, and of course, Godfather 2, where all roads lead, but we're gonna have the big scene. And of course, that scene comes halfway through the movie when they're in the diner and you watch these two guys. So he tells you how to feel about it. It tells you what to think about Pacino, that he's gonna be kind of comic and, like, do his, like, whoa. Like, his overacting stuff and that De Niro's gonna be super cool at his modern apartment. You're told everything had to. And that's not to take away from Heat, because that's very hard to do anyway. But you're right. Miami Vice is kind of just there, and you kind of pick it up and you're like, what's this? And it gives you all the things you expect, but it doesn't really. It doesn't do them in the kind of by the numbers way we're used to.

[Mike]

It just doesn't. It doesn't care what you want. And only one of you can drive. You can drive or the movie can drive. And if you let the movie drive, it will reward you. But if you insist on driving, you're just going to say, what is this? And never watch it again.

[Dan Moran]

It's funny what you said, too, about it growing in popularity and seeing that on Reddit. That's fascinating, the reception history of movies and how things go up and down because, you know, do a little side pod. Is that on Criterion this month? I also have the Keep, which is the movie Michael Mann made. He made Thief, then he made the Keep, and then he kept making his other movies. And the Keep has this kind of quote unquote, cult following. It's. It's terrible. There's no shadow movie behind it. I know Michael Mann's original version was 3 hours long and the studios would chop it up. But even if you watch the bad, chopped up version of Heaven's Gate, you get the sense that, no, there's a good movie behind this. And then you see the Michael Cimino version, you're like, yeah, it's great. There's nothing beyond that. So the Keep may be a cult movie, but, you know, cult movie implies that something's really not that good, but it really is. Like, I saw the other day, someone described the Big Lebowski as a cult movie. And I'm like, well, that's an underappreciated classic, but it's also the cult movie that everyone in the universe and their grandmother has seen 10 times. So it's not really a cult movie movie the way that other movies are. So it's kind of funny. Like, I don't know if I'd call Miami Vice a cult movie. I don't know what I'd call it. I mean, I think it's a great movie. But everything we're trying to say, it's. We're trying to articulate what makes this movie good. And that's very hard to do.

[Mike]

It seems to subscribe to this artistic credo, never apologize, never explain. And I think what that ultimately does is if you trust the movie, if you let it drive, as I said, which. Which means allow it to resist your preferences. Is that it? It actually rewards your intelligence because as we said in the beginning, it assumes that you can kind of keep up with the movie. You don't need everything explained to you. You don't need to be apologized to because you're just as cool as Colin Farrell or Jamie Foxx, which of course you're not. But.

[Dan Moran]

But that's the beauty of movies.

[Mike]

It creates the. It creates the aura as though it is.

[Dan Moran]

When you.

[Mike]

When you go see a Spider man movie and you bring an eight year old, right, and you leave Spider man, you expect to see a bunch of 8 year olds headed towards the exit who think that they can climb on the walls on the way out. That's how eight year olds work. And I think that the brilliance of movies like these are that. That they're intended to give you the aura as though you're going to walk out to the movie theater bar and order a mojito and leave $100 tip. And of course you're not, but there's. There's just something. If a person is defined by their fantasies, you could do much worse than have Michael Mann try to shape yours. Because there is something integral to a tough or productive society about men that can cooperate without talking.

[Dan Moran]

And that's why at the end of the movie, you know, the last shot when I first saw it, walk into the hospital door, he just walks into the door. That's a man walking into a hospital. There's nothing. The camera's very far away, right? He sent. He said that, you know, he sends his Girl. Back on the. On the boat, Jamie Foxxer's girlfriend comes back to life, so to speak. Everything's gonna be okay. He just walks in and. And I thought to myself, oh, like, that was so cool. But it's really just a guy walking in the hospital.

[Mike]

It's. But it's not. It's actually. It's given equal weight, as though he were walking in to see Jose Yarrow. And why? Because Colin Farrell's character is the person who does exactly whatever the next thing that needs to be done is. And it's. And there's no special emphasis given to any of those actions. They all exist on an equal plane. If the next best thing is to send your girlfriend off, you do it. And then if the next best thing is to buy a hamburger, you do it.

[Dan Moran]

And that's why the scene with when he has to send her off and he says, listen, you're gonna go on a boat, no one's gonna follow you. You're gonna work your way back through, you know, get to Havana, and then she leaves. That's perfect, right? Because a lesser writer would have had what happened. She would have betrayed him, or he would have had to reveal he was a cop in some kind of tense situation to save her life. And it just like it really. She says, our luck ran out. It didn't work out.

[Mike]

We would need another podcast to cover it. But my next favorite thing is that there's no go medium boats.

[Dan Moran]

They only use go fast boats. And also, we haven't touched upon this, that Jamie Foxx is also a good enough pilot that he can go in.

[Mike]

And out of these situations and everybody's a fantastic shot. And if you saw a necklace bomb, you would know where the detonator was.

[Dan Moran]

Thanks for listening, everybody. We hope you enjoyed our conversation about Miami Vice and that you come to love the movie as much as we do. You could follow us on X5min.film. You could follow us on. Where else, Mike?

[Mike]

Substack.

[Dan Moran]

Substack. Right. Where we each have a substack handle. You can follow me. Daniel Moran at pagesandframes. And Mike, how about you?

[Mike]

You can find me at the Grumbler's Almanac.

[Dan Moran]

Thanks for listening.

[Mike]

We'll see you next time.