Smartassery

I generally steer clear of giving movie reviews because people’s tastes run the gamut. What it’s completely entertaining to one person is a total bore to another and so on. But…when an entire theater room composed of a cross-section of the populace collectively agrees that what they are watching is a turd wrapped in celluloid, I can’t contain myself.

Such was the case with Miami Vice. If I had to reduce my review to two words, it would have to be: implausible exasperation. However, I’m not into “reducing” so I’ll spare no details.

In a nutshell, the movie is about two greasy cops (one of them with an impossible mullett helmet from 1987) who infiltrate the Colombian drug cartel. Surprinsingly they are able to do this with great ease, getting to personally meet the head of the cartel in a matter of days. To put this in perspective: this is like meeting Pablo Escobar today when yesterday you didn’t know what “llello” meant. Bullshit.

If the head of a drug cartel wants to remain the head for just a tad longer, common sense dictates he doesn’t reveal his identity to the first johnny boy that comes knocking. That’s what the second, third, fourth and tenth in command are for: to deal with the little people. Doesn’t Michael Mann know anything about the drug world?!

While you try to wrap your head around that, now picture a drug shipment which is intercepted by the poser cops and which they try to sell back to the drug lord to pad the case against him (as if they don’t know what he does already). Astonishingly, the cartel is willing to risk life and limb to try to get it back (as if the cartel is running out of drugs and needs to get this 1 shipment back to make this month’s quota). A better plot would have been for the cartel to take a loss and then execute all the amateur dealers (including the annoying ass cops).

Hilarity ensues as greasy-cop-with-bad-hair takes some time to bag the Asian lady who should be a tough bitch (that’s how she got to be CFO of the cartel, right?) but behaves more like a school girl with a crush. I should mention here that this bitch is horrid whether speaking either English or Spanish. Listening to her muffled talk is like talking underwater or having your mouth stuffed with feathers. Things that you can do during her speaking parts are: talking about the weather with the person in the next chair, catching a game of Star Wars in the theater’s arcade, or scoring some “blow” with the ticket taker.

By the way, borders are no barrier for this power couple. They go in and out of Cuba, the U.S.A., Paraguay, Colombia, etc. aboard their jets or superboats and never ever run into the coast guard, the air force, or for that matter, any branch of law enforcement. You should see the ease with which they move $60M worth of blow into the country. Either the law is turning a blind eye on the big drug shipments or it’s in on it. Wait, I just the said the same thing. Oh, right. It’s because that’s the way “the war on drug” works (if you don’t believe it, do the math – $29 billion spent so far; don’t think they are planning on scratching that budget any time soon, do you?).

Suppossedly some bits of the movie were filmed in Cuba. But…there’s no fucking way. First off, they trot around the island in this pimped out 1959 Chevy. True, Cuba has a lot of these laying around given that 1959 was probably the last year that foreign cars (or for that matter anything…like bread or rice) were imported into the country. Naturally, that was also the last year in which car wax and paint were imported. Thus, it’s utterly impossible for a 1959 Chevy in Cuba to be colored a shiny teal. A more accurate portrayal would have been a rusty, patched up “cacharro” that blew a spark plug a mile from the hotel leaving its confused passengers to trek it back to their pad.

Finally, there’s the love scenes. Completely unnecessary and booooring. Love ruins everything in movies. Is it too much to ask to see a movie were bad guys are bad and not softies for skirts?

Oh yes, for those of you who don’t like to know about a movie before watching it…warning, this review contains spoilers.

Otherwise, please leave the movie to the audience for which it was intended: gullible 12-15 year old males. Or wait until it you can rent it so you can take numerous trips to the vomitorium.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 at 10:56 pm and is filed under movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.