The cocaine cowboys of the 80’s are gone, but Miami’s Casablanca allure, the undercover cops and the attitudes of Michael Mann’s culturally influential television series have been enhanced by time in the feature film version of Miami Vice. The roles he helped create of Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs are inhabited by COLIN FARRELL (ALEXANDER, THE NEW WORLD) and Academy Award© winner JAMIE FOXX (RAY, COLLATERAL), who both underwent extensive training and simulations by undercover officers from the DEA, ATF and ICE – people who tread the dangerous world of international trafficking.
MIAMI VICE begins as Crockett and Tubbs learn that a high-level leak has led to the slaughter of undercover federal agents and the murder of an informant friend’s family. Pulled into the case, the two detectives’ investigation takes them straight to the doorstep of vicious killers from the Aryan Brotherhood and a sophisticated network of globalized traffickers protected by world-class security.
Urbane and dead smart, Tubbs lives with Bronx-born intel analyst Trudy, played by British actress Naomie Harris (28 Days Later, Pirates of the Caribbean II and III), as their team works to infiltrate the group responsible for the deaths. Crockett is charismatic and flirtatious, until he encounters the beautiful financial criminal Isabella, played by premiere Chinese actress Gong Li (Raise the Red Lantern, Memoirs of a Geisha).
The best undercover identity is oneself with the volume turned up and restraint unplugged. The intensity of this case pushes Crockett and Tubbs out onto the edge where identity and fabrication become blurred, where cop and player become one – especially for Crockett in his romance with Isabella and for Tubbs in the provocation of an assault on those he loves.
Miami Vice, as a large-scale feature film, liberates what is adult, dangerous and alluring about working deeply undercover… especially when Crockett and Tubbs go to where their badges don’t count…
