Hacker Cinema
Miami Vice
2006 · Film · 132 min
Directed by Michael Mann
A case involving drug lords and murder in South Florida takes a personal turn for undercover detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. Unorthodox Crockett gets involved romantically with the Chinese-Cuban wife of a trafficker of arms and drugs, while Tubbs deals with an assault on those he loves.
1 positive8 neutralfrom 9 commenters
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11 comments on Hacker News
I don't read much any more. Mostly magazine articles.
I did re-read "The Long Run" from Daniel Keys Moran (one of the very short list of books I've re-read, and this was #4 or #5).
"Were you taught to hate Peaceforcers?" "Taught? No."
The only new book that I read was "Heat 2" by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner.
It was "ok". It honestly felt like a mashup of "Heat", "Miami Vice", and "Blackhat". So, not as fresh as I would have liked. (Mind, I really like all of those movies.)
I'll see the movie when it comes out, but the book was just "ok".
- LoTR, at least annually. Never seen the extended edition.
- Anything by Michael Mann, Miami Vice being one of my favorites (simply noted as it's typically not on many folks favored list).
- John Ford Cavalry trilogy.
- I've seen "13 Hours" several times. Not your typical Michael Bay movie.
- Bowfinger. So funny.
- The two best Star Trek Movies: Star Trek 2, and Galaxy Quest.
I think you’ve actually understated the rather precipitous drop off of 007’s campiness. It wasn’t a mistake, the intention was to reboot the series in the same vein as Batman Begins, where he becomes an unbearably gloomy figure who exists as a morally ambiguous antihero brooding among the gritty backdrop of a fully corrupted world.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of both franchises, and enjoy the gritty Bond on its own terms, without tying it to the frequently almost farcical source material. I can easily understand why the “gritty realism” action genre trend didn’t last long, and why some folks do not enjoy it, it quickly becomes somewhat oppressive to endure. I think that’s why Taika Waititi’s Thor movies were so well received, they offered a lot of the fun-for-its-own-sake set pieces that were more common in the late ‘80s-early ‘90s action films.
Patrick H Willems did a really good YouTube video where he talks about “vibe films” [1], where things like plot details and character development are prioritized behind an overall mood and sense of style. Examples cited include Miami Vice, Bond films, and more recently Tenet.
[1] https://youtu.be/ZStkUxC4iL4?si=GSecJKBdbzMcQDVF
When I saw that scene in the theater the first time, it left me shaking in my seat. It's still powerful today.
Watching Val Kilmer's facial expression change at that start. "At the drop of a hat, these guys will rock 'n roll."
I'm one in, I imagine, a very small group. But I find Mann's "Miami Vice" to be one of my favorite films of his. It's the most dangerous movie I've ever seen, it (almost) never lets up. Even the sex was dangerous. Heck, the ROSES were dangerous.
The minor nemesis Neptune is one of the scariest characters I've seen, and we only see a glimpse of him. And John Ortiz' Jose Yero. Sheesh. "I'm a disco guy."
The Heat gunfight scene is intense, the audio is amazing. A late friend of mine was in downtown LA during one of the shooting days, and relayed what it was like.
But MV is intense throughout the whole movie. Just never lets up.
Mann likes to savor the cultural and visual environments his movies take place in. That makes them (later ones like Collateral, and especially Miami Vice and Blackhat) too slow for a mass audience.
There was an essay I can't find about how non-US, European audiences appreciate that kind of thing much more.
Mann's movies don't have endless thrills and they end on a slightly positive to neutral note, not like romances or action movies where the end is supremely positive. Instead, some problem has been averted, but nobody's saved the world. Any positive elements (couple living happily ever after, wounded cop surviving) are tempered by a strong sense of malaise that nothing's keeping the same thing from happening again tomorrow.
I missed most of them (the majority I'd never even seen the movie), some were more obvious (as you mention Miami Vice), but the Fear and Loathing one was very strange to me. I got that one near instantly after seeing but, but unlike the others, was unable to see exactly why
I have seen maybe half of these films. I was able to correctly name some of them immediately upon looking at them: Wizard of Oz, The Matrix, The Big Lebowski.
Some were obvious after reading the title: Star Wars, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (never saw it), Being John Malkovich, Space Jam (never saw it), Miami Vice (never saw it), Office Space.
Some that I half guessed or felt like I knew the name of the film but could not immediately recall the name: Castaway, Mad Max: Fury Road, Edward Scissorhands (Thought it was The Nightmare Before Christmas but Tim Burton so close enough)
Obvious ones: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
With many pictures I instantly got the feeling of what the movie is without really realising why. Could this be because the AI is probably trained with human made pictures from ex. flickr (in most cases after the movie), so the AI will generate pictures that basically resemble how people see/remember the movies?
For example the very strong color scheme in Miami Vice, which is basically 100% something that emerged in popular culture after the movie.
So when the AI is generating the pictures based on the plot, could it be deep down generating the pictures partly based on how we people remember the movie?
So apparently there's a film on Le Roux in the making by Michael Mann ("Miami Vice", "Collateral", "Black Hat"), which is not based on the Evan Ratliff reporting (Atavist Magazine and later the book "The Mastermind", cf. the original HN discussion from 2016), but a different book from NY Times author Elaine Shannon.
Most movie Ferraris are ok, because they either never were real like Modena replica in Ferris or Corvette dressed up as Daytona in Miami Vice, or were gutted by production company with all safeties disabled. The last thing you want during a shoot is a non working car when your burning >$250,000 a day.
very true about the post-rock (I listen to Mogwai while coding as well). I'd add movie soundtracks / scores to the list for the same reason. Still a huge fan of the Battlestar Galactica soundtracks, esp season 2, and pretty much anything done by John Murphy (28 Days Later, Miami Vice).